Language Legacies Grant Recipients - 2013
Ayla Bozkurt Applebaum - University of California, Santa Barbara
Phonetic Features of Hatkoy
Hatkoy, a dialect of East Circassian (ISO 639-3 language code: kbd), is unique among the Circassian languages in that it is no longer being spoken in the Caucasus, but only in the Diaspora. Hatkoy is endangered due to pressure not only from the dominant language, Turkish, but also due to pressures from other Circassian dialects in rural areas. Hatkoy is one of the most phonetically rich dialects of the Northwest Caucasian languages, but there is yet no systematic phonetic analysis of Hatkoy. This project will provide a word list and quantitative phonetic description of typologically unusual segments of Hatkoy, which will be made available to the community for learning the sounds of the language.
Kayla Rae Carpenter - Hoopa Tribe
Q'un-ya'wilchwil mil-na:sa'a:n, With the Next Generation It Remains: Hupa Language Materials Project
There are currently fewer than 5 first-language speakers of Hupa (ISO: hup), all of whom are around 70 years of age or older. Though this language of northern California is critically endangered, it is fortunate to have a long history of documentation covering most major linguistic subjects. With elders passing and changing worlds each year, utilizing this documentation is increasingly important to the survival of the language. The goals of this project are to 1) ensure that forms of community documentation are passed on to the next generation by digitizing and transcribing materials before they are lost to deterioration and 2) support language and cultural art revitalization efforts with culturally appropriate DVDs and written materials.
Rosey Billington - University of Melbourne
Documentation of Lopit Children's Stories
Lopit (ISO: lpx) is an Eastern Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan) language traditionally spoken in the Lopit Mountains of South Sudan. Decades of civil war and the current security situation have hindered linguistic research, so the project will work with Lopit speakers in Melbourne (in communication with northern Lopit communities). There are no existing stories or language learning materials in Lopit, as the language has thus far only been an oral language. For this project, stories traditionally told by Lopit mothers to their children before bed will be documented. As the first written documentation, this will assist the Lopit people in the transmission of linguistic and cultural knowledge, both in homeland and diaspora communities, and will help with understanding this undescribed language's tones and patterns of vowel contrast and vowel harmony.
Gabor Szekely - University of Pecs
Language Documentation of Upper-Sosva Mansi Language
Mansi (ISO: mns), also known as Vogul, belongs to the Ugrian branch of the Finno-Ugrian language family. Mansi is an aboriginal language on the territory of the eastern part of the Northern-Ural Mountains whose speakers live in a remote taiga area. According to the census of the Russian Federation in 2002, there were 2,764 native speakers of Mansi. The preliminary results of the last census in 2010 show that there may now be only 938 speakers. This project will document narratives and everyday communication, which will be described in Latin and Cyrillic orthography, and will be used for revitalization and analysis of Mansi acoustic properties.
Raymond Huaute - University of Arizona
Documenting Naturally Occurring Speech and other Informal Speech Registers in Desert and Mountain Cahuilla
The Cahuilla language (ISO: chl) of southern California is part of the Uto-Aztecan family and currently moribund. The main intention of this study is to collect new data that may have been missed by previous studies, which can be used for future descriptive work on Cahuilla. Older studies did not focus on how the language is used in everyday conversations. This project will consist of audio and video recordings of naturally occurring speech and the creation of a conversational phrase booklet accompanied by an audio CD, which will be used by the community for revitalization.
Adjaratou Oumar Sall - University of Dakar
Ethnobotanical Documentation of Bedik
This project aims to produce an ethnobotanical documentation of Bedik. The Bedik are an ethnic minority living mainly in southeastern Senegal near the Senegal-Guinea border. Their language, called Menik (ISO: tnr), is part of the Tenda group of the North Atlantic family and is highly endangered. It is spoken by between 1,500 and 3,500 people. This project will, as part of the documentation of Bedik culture, generate an ethnobotanical database in Menik-French-English. Entries in this database will include the name of the plant, the plant presentation (including a picture) and its specifications, and will show the important contribution of plant species to the lives of the Bedik people.
Martin Kohlberger - Leiden University
A Descriptive Grammar of Shiwiar
The Shiwiar are a group of roughly 1,000 people living in the areas near the border between Ecuador and Peru. The Amazon basin is one of the least known and least understood linguistic regions in the world in the sense that adequate grammars of Amazonian languages are few and far between and often incomplete. The final aim of this project is to produce a descriptive grammar of Shiwiar (ISO: acu), an undocumented language of a remote region in the Amazon. This documentation project will include video recordings of grammaticalized gestures and is the next stage in a series of field research which has already provided collections of audio recordings: including storytelling, anecdotes, biographies and elicitations.
Michelle Garcia-Vega - University of Alberta
Zihuateutla Totonac
Zihuateutla Totonac (ISO: too), part of the Totonacan language family, is spoken by about 1,124 people in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, Mexico. Most people speak their indigenous language and are fluent in Spanish, but very few are monolingual. Relatively little is known about the language. The project objectives are to build a corpus of basic vocabulary items, and produce professional audio recordings of people speaking the language through the elicitation of personal and cultural histories. The data collected will be used to create a practical orthography, build an audio archive of the language as it is spoken today, and write the first grammatical sketch of Zihuateutla Totonac.
Melanie Redeye - University of California, Berkeley
Seneca Language Documentation Project
Seneca (ISO: see) is an Iroquoian language traditionally spoken in Canada and the United States. With currently less than 100 speakers, this language is critically threatened by extinction. With no speakers under 70 and many in their 80s and 90s, it is crucial to take advantage of the time these elders have left. The project, undertaken by a tribal member, aims to fill this gap by documenting anaphoric and other relationships in Seneca, which will be helpful for linguists and for the community's revitalization efforts.
Mohamed Yunus Rafiq - Brown University
A Study of the Current Status of Daiso/Daisu/Dhaiso
This project will provide information on the current status of the severely endangered Daiso/Daisu/Dhaiso language (ISO: dhs) of northeastern Tanzania and will expand the limited existing information on the lexicon and verbal system of this language. Daisu is currently spoken by a very small population and is not being transmitted to children. Thus this project will document the current number of speakers to design a community level project for preservation and transmission of the language. Five villages will be visited to identify the users of the language, document their demographics, and record responses to the lexical survey and verbal system questionnaire.
Montgomery Hill - University at Buffalo
Talking Tuscarora
Tuscarora (ISO: tus) is a critically endangered language of the United States and Canada spoken near Lake Ontario. This project will document the language of the Tuscarora Indian Nation in northern New York, in collaboration with teachers in the Tuscarora language program and two out of five of the remaining L1 elders. The continuation of discourse documentation and translation of ceremonial texts will be interesting linguistically and will provide useful materials for the ongoing cultural and linguistic revitalization that is occurring within the Tuscarora Indian Nation.
Vera Ferreira - Centro Interdisciplinar de Documentacao Linguistica e Social
Documenting Fala - A Minority Language in Spanish Extremadura
This project aims at documenting Fala (ISO: fax), an Ibero-Romance language spoken by about 4,500 speakers in three small villages in the northwestern part of Extremadura (Spain). The main goal of this project is to document the many village varieties of Fala as the language of everyday communication and traditional work methods in agriculture, animal husbandry and households in the speech community. A multimedia corpus and dictionary will be the basis for the development of teaching material for the communities.
Brook Danielle Lillehaugen - Haverford College
An Introduction to Linguistics for Community Members of Valley Zapotec
This project concerns several varieties of Tlacolula Valley Zapotec (ISO: zab) found in the Mexican district of Tlacolula. Each variety is endangered, though some are in a more critical condition than others. The project combines linguistic fieldwork, language maintenance efforts, and community activism during a five-week field trip to Oaxaca, in order to enhance, revise, and develop course materials for a new audience and implement a two-week course for Zapotec community members. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for members of the Zapotec community to learn about linguistics and how to use the linguistic materials available.
Andres Pablo Salanova - University of Ottawa
Documentation and Description of Mebengokre- Xikrin (Je, Brazil)
This project will document the Xikrin dialect of the Mebengokre language (ISO: txu) in central Brazil. Mebengokre-Xikrin is a considerably endangered linguistic variety and is subject to drastic "stylistic shrinkage" in the very short term. The main goals of the project are: (a) to collect and analyze spoken text from varied linguistic genres, primarily from the last living generation of individuals born before permanent contact with Western civilization; (b) to train native speakers in the skills necessary for language documentation (i.e. recording, transcription and data management); (c) to publish an illustrated collection of texts for immediate use by the Xikrin community, in particular to encourage literacy in Mebengokre among the younger generations, who are currently schooled only in Portuguese.
Kepor Mara
An Effort to Document and Revitalize the Endangered Tagin Language
The Tagin language (ISO: tgj) is spoken in Upper Subansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Tagin is the name for both the language and the people who speak it. According to the 2001 census, the Tagin tribe has a population of 38,244 people but exactly how many of them speak Tagin is currently unknown. It is no longer being transferred to younger generations. One purpose of this project is to provide a preliminary grammar of Tagin. A second part of the project is to introduce Tagin in schools at the primary level to strengthen its transfer to youth. ELF funding will be used to collect materials such as literature, folk tales and cultural items to facilitate the maintenance of Tagin and its embedded traditional knowledge and culture.
Phonetic Features of Hatkoy
Hatkoy, a dialect of East Circassian (ISO 639-3 language code: kbd), is unique among the Circassian languages in that it is no longer being spoken in the Caucasus, but only in the Diaspora. Hatkoy is endangered due to pressure not only from the dominant language, Turkish, but also due to pressures from other Circassian dialects in rural areas. Hatkoy is one of the most phonetically rich dialects of the Northwest Caucasian languages, but there is yet no systematic phonetic analysis of Hatkoy. This project will provide a word list and quantitative phonetic description of typologically unusual segments of Hatkoy, which will be made available to the community for learning the sounds of the language.
Kayla Rae Carpenter - Hoopa Tribe
Q'un-ya'wilchwil mil-na:sa'a:n, With the Next Generation It Remains: Hupa Language Materials Project
There are currently fewer than 5 first-language speakers of Hupa (ISO: hup), all of whom are around 70 years of age or older. Though this language of northern California is critically endangered, it is fortunate to have a long history of documentation covering most major linguistic subjects. With elders passing and changing worlds each year, utilizing this documentation is increasingly important to the survival of the language. The goals of this project are to 1) ensure that forms of community documentation are passed on to the next generation by digitizing and transcribing materials before they are lost to deterioration and 2) support language and cultural art revitalization efforts with culturally appropriate DVDs and written materials.
Rosey Billington - University of Melbourne
Documentation of Lopit Children's Stories
Lopit (ISO: lpx) is an Eastern Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan) language traditionally spoken in the Lopit Mountains of South Sudan. Decades of civil war and the current security situation have hindered linguistic research, so the project will work with Lopit speakers in Melbourne (in communication with northern Lopit communities). There are no existing stories or language learning materials in Lopit, as the language has thus far only been an oral language. For this project, stories traditionally told by Lopit mothers to their children before bed will be documented. As the first written documentation, this will assist the Lopit people in the transmission of linguistic and cultural knowledge, both in homeland and diaspora communities, and will help with understanding this undescribed language's tones and patterns of vowel contrast and vowel harmony.
Gabor Szekely - University of Pecs
Language Documentation of Upper-Sosva Mansi Language
Mansi (ISO: mns), also known as Vogul, belongs to the Ugrian branch of the Finno-Ugrian language family. Mansi is an aboriginal language on the territory of the eastern part of the Northern-Ural Mountains whose speakers live in a remote taiga area. According to the census of the Russian Federation in 2002, there were 2,764 native speakers of Mansi. The preliminary results of the last census in 2010 show that there may now be only 938 speakers. This project will document narratives and everyday communication, which will be described in Latin and Cyrillic orthography, and will be used for revitalization and analysis of Mansi acoustic properties.
Raymond Huaute - University of Arizona
Documenting Naturally Occurring Speech and other Informal Speech Registers in Desert and Mountain Cahuilla
The Cahuilla language (ISO: chl) of southern California is part of the Uto-Aztecan family and currently moribund. The main intention of this study is to collect new data that may have been missed by previous studies, which can be used for future descriptive work on Cahuilla. Older studies did not focus on how the language is used in everyday conversations. This project will consist of audio and video recordings of naturally occurring speech and the creation of a conversational phrase booklet accompanied by an audio CD, which will be used by the community for revitalization.
Adjaratou Oumar Sall - University of Dakar
Ethnobotanical Documentation of Bedik
This project aims to produce an ethnobotanical documentation of Bedik. The Bedik are an ethnic minority living mainly in southeastern Senegal near the Senegal-Guinea border. Their language, called Menik (ISO: tnr), is part of the Tenda group of the North Atlantic family and is highly endangered. It is spoken by between 1,500 and 3,500 people. This project will, as part of the documentation of Bedik culture, generate an ethnobotanical database in Menik-French-English. Entries in this database will include the name of the plant, the plant presentation (including a picture) and its specifications, and will show the important contribution of plant species to the lives of the Bedik people.
Martin Kohlberger - Leiden University
A Descriptive Grammar of Shiwiar
The Shiwiar are a group of roughly 1,000 people living in the areas near the border between Ecuador and Peru. The Amazon basin is one of the least known and least understood linguistic regions in the world in the sense that adequate grammars of Amazonian languages are few and far between and often incomplete. The final aim of this project is to produce a descriptive grammar of Shiwiar (ISO: acu), an undocumented language of a remote region in the Amazon. This documentation project will include video recordings of grammaticalized gestures and is the next stage in a series of field research which has already provided collections of audio recordings: including storytelling, anecdotes, biographies and elicitations.
Michelle Garcia-Vega - University of Alberta
Zihuateutla Totonac
Zihuateutla Totonac (ISO: too), part of the Totonacan language family, is spoken by about 1,124 people in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, Mexico. Most people speak their indigenous language and are fluent in Spanish, but very few are monolingual. Relatively little is known about the language. The project objectives are to build a corpus of basic vocabulary items, and produce professional audio recordings of people speaking the language through the elicitation of personal and cultural histories. The data collected will be used to create a practical orthography, build an audio archive of the language as it is spoken today, and write the first grammatical sketch of Zihuateutla Totonac.
Melanie Redeye - University of California, Berkeley
Seneca Language Documentation Project
Seneca (ISO: see) is an Iroquoian language traditionally spoken in Canada and the United States. With currently less than 100 speakers, this language is critically threatened by extinction. With no speakers under 70 and many in their 80s and 90s, it is crucial to take advantage of the time these elders have left. The project, undertaken by a tribal member, aims to fill this gap by documenting anaphoric and other relationships in Seneca, which will be helpful for linguists and for the community's revitalization efforts.
Mohamed Yunus Rafiq - Brown University
A Study of the Current Status of Daiso/Daisu/Dhaiso
This project will provide information on the current status of the severely endangered Daiso/Daisu/Dhaiso language (ISO: dhs) of northeastern Tanzania and will expand the limited existing information on the lexicon and verbal system of this language. Daisu is currently spoken by a very small population and is not being transmitted to children. Thus this project will document the current number of speakers to design a community level project for preservation and transmission of the language. Five villages will be visited to identify the users of the language, document their demographics, and record responses to the lexical survey and verbal system questionnaire.
Montgomery Hill - University at Buffalo
Talking Tuscarora
Tuscarora (ISO: tus) is a critically endangered language of the United States and Canada spoken near Lake Ontario. This project will document the language of the Tuscarora Indian Nation in northern New York, in collaboration with teachers in the Tuscarora language program and two out of five of the remaining L1 elders. The continuation of discourse documentation and translation of ceremonial texts will be interesting linguistically and will provide useful materials for the ongoing cultural and linguistic revitalization that is occurring within the Tuscarora Indian Nation.
Vera Ferreira - Centro Interdisciplinar de Documentacao Linguistica e Social
Documenting Fala - A Minority Language in Spanish Extremadura
This project aims at documenting Fala (ISO: fax), an Ibero-Romance language spoken by about 4,500 speakers in three small villages in the northwestern part of Extremadura (Spain). The main goal of this project is to document the many village varieties of Fala as the language of everyday communication and traditional work methods in agriculture, animal husbandry and households in the speech community. A multimedia corpus and dictionary will be the basis for the development of teaching material for the communities.
Brook Danielle Lillehaugen - Haverford College
An Introduction to Linguistics for Community Members of Valley Zapotec
This project concerns several varieties of Tlacolula Valley Zapotec (ISO: zab) found in the Mexican district of Tlacolula. Each variety is endangered, though some are in a more critical condition than others. The project combines linguistic fieldwork, language maintenance efforts, and community activism during a five-week field trip to Oaxaca, in order to enhance, revise, and develop course materials for a new audience and implement a two-week course for Zapotec community members. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for members of the Zapotec community to learn about linguistics and how to use the linguistic materials available.
Andres Pablo Salanova - University of Ottawa
Documentation and Description of Mebengokre- Xikrin (Je, Brazil)
This project will document the Xikrin dialect of the Mebengokre language (ISO: txu) in central Brazil. Mebengokre-Xikrin is a considerably endangered linguistic variety and is subject to drastic "stylistic shrinkage" in the very short term. The main goals of the project are: (a) to collect and analyze spoken text from varied linguistic genres, primarily from the last living generation of individuals born before permanent contact with Western civilization; (b) to train native speakers in the skills necessary for language documentation (i.e. recording, transcription and data management); (c) to publish an illustrated collection of texts for immediate use by the Xikrin community, in particular to encourage literacy in Mebengokre among the younger generations, who are currently schooled only in Portuguese.
Kepor Mara
An Effort to Document and Revitalize the Endangered Tagin Language
The Tagin language (ISO: tgj) is spoken in Upper Subansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Tagin is the name for both the language and the people who speak it. According to the 2001 census, the Tagin tribe has a population of 38,244 people but exactly how many of them speak Tagin is currently unknown. It is no longer being transferred to younger generations. One purpose of this project is to provide a preliminary grammar of Tagin. A second part of the project is to introduce Tagin in schools at the primary level to strengthen its transfer to youth. ELF funding will be used to collect materials such as literature, folk tales and cultural items to facilitate the maintenance of Tagin and its embedded traditional knowledge and culture.
