Language Legacies Grant Recipients - 2017
Zahid Akter – Documentation and Description of the Pangkhua Language
Pangkhua is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by around 2,400 people in the Rangamati district of Bangladesh. This project will create a body of audio-visual recordings of the language, transcribed, annotated, and translated into English. Traditional folk stories, personal accounts, procedural texts, ceremonial speech, and everyday conversation will be collected. These recordings will serve as the basis for work on typological and sociolinguistic aspects of the language, as well as a trilingual dictionary of Pangkhua, English, and Bengali.
Elnur Aliyev – Audio/Video Archive of Budukh Language
The Budukh language is spoken by a small number of people in a mountainous region of Azerbaijan, in the South Caucasus. Stories and conversations will be recorded, transcribed, and translated into English and Azerbaijani, creating an archive from which future research can be conducted. This project will concentrate on phonetic and lexical analysis. The archive will be shared with the Budukh people, who will be able to create teaching materials from it.
Jonathan Amith – Audio-visual Encyclopedia of Ritual and Daily Life: Yoloxóchitl Mixtec
Yoloxóchitl Mixtec is spoken on the Pacific coast of Guerrero, Mexico. This pilot project is a collaboration between a filmmaker, a linguist, indigenous scholars, and community authorities and schools. They will develop four short documentary films about ritual traditions and daily life in the community. The recordings will be transcribed in ELAN, translated, and then edited into 10-15 minute vignettes, which will be made available on Vimeo. Videos which have already been created can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/channels/1223182.
Bernat Bardagil-Mas – A Dictionary of Panará Language and Culture
This grant will enable the recipient to continue fieldwork with Panará, leading to completion of a dissertation on Panará morphosyntax. Panará is spoken by about 500 people in the Eastern Amazon. During this project, work will be undertaken with indigenous educators to create a digital dictionary of the language. Each entry will contain example sentences, pictures, and recordings.
Joshua Benn – Dadiidznu Literacy Workshop 2017
This project will conduct a five-week literacy workshop in Santa María Guienagati, Oaxaca, Mexico. Dadiidznu is a variety of Zapotec spoken in the village by approximately 300 adults, all over 60. The workshop will teach the writing system to community members, and together they will develop written materials in the language.
Anne Bertrand – Encoding Meaning across Domains in Ktunaxa
Ktunaxa is a language isolate with two distinct dialects, spoken in four communities in Canada, in British Columbia, and two in the United States, in Montana and Idaho. This project will fill a gap in pedagogical materials by concentrating on conversation, specifically in the areas of speech acts and reference tracking with nouns and pronouns. The research team will create a phrasebook, short videos depicting stories and conversations, and a description of the principles for turn-taking, speech acts, and reference tracking.
Brian Best – A Shipibo-Konibo Language Assessment
This project will assess the status of Shipibo-Konibo in all realms of usage, and examine language ideologies that could support or provide challenges to language maintenance. The data will be provided to the local Shipibo-Konibo political entities, and will function as a baseline for future grant proposals, including one for a dictionary which the project team has begun to develop.
Dubi Nanda Dhakal – Documentation of Oral Genres and Wordlist of Raji
Raji is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal (also spoken in parts of India). The project will record oral narratives, conversations, historical and personal narratives, and procedural texts, as well as a preliminary wordlist to supplement the vocabulary in the narratives. The data gathered will be distributed to the community, and reading materials will be developed from the narratives.
Geertje Heijkoop – Pedagogical Grammar of Yaaku
Yaaku, formerly spoken in Kenya, only has a few semi-speakers left. The community is eager to revive their language, but they lack materials. A grammar was written in the 1970s, but it is too technical for the community to use. The researcher has been ‘translating’ that grammar into more colloquial language, and for this project will travel to Kenya to work with teachers testing its utility. Reviving their language is critical to Yaaku identity, as they work to reclaim rights to their original territories in the Mukogodo forest of Kenya.
Jasmine House – Tsyunhehkwa (Our Life Substance)
The Iroquoian language Oneida has 212 fluent speakers, but only three live in Oneida, Wisconsin. Although the Oneida Nation provides a variety of Oneida language programming, the community seeks to further engage young language learners with their traditions by planting and maintaining a traditional Three Sisters garden using Oneida horticulture techniques. This program will also collect Oneida words for traditional medicinal plants, as well as phrases and stories connected to planting, maintaining and harvesting the garden.
Suzi Oliveira de Lima – Documenting Complex Structures in Yudja: Pedagogical Materials
Yudja is an endangered and understudied language spoken by 300 residents of the Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil. Although local students currently study both Yudja and Brazilian Portuguese, missionary efforts and social pressures threaten this bilingual education. This project aims to describe the syntax of Yudja and produce pedagogical materials for high-school level study of Yudja.
Jason William Lobel – Documentation of Lolak, Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia
The Lolak language has 500 remaining fluent speakers, and the community is eager to preserve and revitalize their language. This project will record native speakers’ accounts of history and traditional religious and agricultural practices. Lexical items will also be elicited in order to create a Talking Dictionary for use by the community.
Melquiades Gregorio Porfirio – Documentation of Tù'ùn Sávì
Tù'ùn Sávì (Mixtec) is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken by a community of around 420 people in the Guerrero region. The project, led by a native speaker of Tù'ùn Sávì, will involve both documentation and community efforts to raise awareness of the language through writing workshops and movie screenings.
Pafnuncio Antonio Ramos – Documentation: Data Collection and Transcription of Zapotec
The variety of Zapotec studied in this project is spoken by a community of about 1000 near Oaxaca City, Mexico. Although some sociolinguistic study of this language has taken place, this project will be the first major effort to document it. Using elicitations with older native speakers, 10 hours of recorded legends and traditional knowledge will be created, and research will also be undertaken to complete a book on the phonology and morphology of Zapotec.
Wary Kamaiurá Sabino, Vera da Silva Sinha and Sheena Shah – Awetý Language and Culture Documentation
The Awetý language of Brazil is spoken by around 360 people, and although it has been the subject of significant study, very little of that knowledge has been returned to the community. This project, helmed by a native speaker of the language, seeks to remedy that by creating recordings of traditional songs, dances, sports and tales to create an archive for the community.
Nathan Schrieber – Gunggay Cultural Heritage Project
The Australian Aboriginal language Gunggay is dormant and has no living fluent speakers, although eight elders have some knowledge of the language and there are two younger partial speakers. One of these partial speakers is leading this project, which will transcribe and annotate 50-year-old field recordings of traditional Gunggay songs in order to archive them as well as use them in the development of Gunggay pedagogical materials.
Brendon Yoder – Documentation of the Abawiri Language
This project, an expansion of an ELF-supported pilot from 2015, will document the Abawiri language of Papua New Guinea using recordings of a wide variety of genres of natural speech. Abawiri, which has only 350 speakers, has not been previously documented.
Pangkhua is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by around 2,400 people in the Rangamati district of Bangladesh. This project will create a body of audio-visual recordings of the language, transcribed, annotated, and translated into English. Traditional folk stories, personal accounts, procedural texts, ceremonial speech, and everyday conversation will be collected. These recordings will serve as the basis for work on typological and sociolinguistic aspects of the language, as well as a trilingual dictionary of Pangkhua, English, and Bengali.
Elnur Aliyev – Audio/Video Archive of Budukh Language
The Budukh language is spoken by a small number of people in a mountainous region of Azerbaijan, in the South Caucasus. Stories and conversations will be recorded, transcribed, and translated into English and Azerbaijani, creating an archive from which future research can be conducted. This project will concentrate on phonetic and lexical analysis. The archive will be shared with the Budukh people, who will be able to create teaching materials from it.
Jonathan Amith – Audio-visual Encyclopedia of Ritual and Daily Life: Yoloxóchitl Mixtec
Yoloxóchitl Mixtec is spoken on the Pacific coast of Guerrero, Mexico. This pilot project is a collaboration between a filmmaker, a linguist, indigenous scholars, and community authorities and schools. They will develop four short documentary films about ritual traditions and daily life in the community. The recordings will be transcribed in ELAN, translated, and then edited into 10-15 minute vignettes, which will be made available on Vimeo. Videos which have already been created can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/channels/1223182.
Bernat Bardagil-Mas – A Dictionary of Panará Language and Culture
This grant will enable the recipient to continue fieldwork with Panará, leading to completion of a dissertation on Panará morphosyntax. Panará is spoken by about 500 people in the Eastern Amazon. During this project, work will be undertaken with indigenous educators to create a digital dictionary of the language. Each entry will contain example sentences, pictures, and recordings.
Joshua Benn – Dadiidznu Literacy Workshop 2017
This project will conduct a five-week literacy workshop in Santa María Guienagati, Oaxaca, Mexico. Dadiidznu is a variety of Zapotec spoken in the village by approximately 300 adults, all over 60. The workshop will teach the writing system to community members, and together they will develop written materials in the language.
Anne Bertrand – Encoding Meaning across Domains in Ktunaxa
Ktunaxa is a language isolate with two distinct dialects, spoken in four communities in Canada, in British Columbia, and two in the United States, in Montana and Idaho. This project will fill a gap in pedagogical materials by concentrating on conversation, specifically in the areas of speech acts and reference tracking with nouns and pronouns. The research team will create a phrasebook, short videos depicting stories and conversations, and a description of the principles for turn-taking, speech acts, and reference tracking.
Brian Best – A Shipibo-Konibo Language Assessment
This project will assess the status of Shipibo-Konibo in all realms of usage, and examine language ideologies that could support or provide challenges to language maintenance. The data will be provided to the local Shipibo-Konibo political entities, and will function as a baseline for future grant proposals, including one for a dictionary which the project team has begun to develop.
Dubi Nanda Dhakal – Documentation of Oral Genres and Wordlist of Raji
Raji is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal (also spoken in parts of India). The project will record oral narratives, conversations, historical and personal narratives, and procedural texts, as well as a preliminary wordlist to supplement the vocabulary in the narratives. The data gathered will be distributed to the community, and reading materials will be developed from the narratives.
Geertje Heijkoop – Pedagogical Grammar of Yaaku
Yaaku, formerly spoken in Kenya, only has a few semi-speakers left. The community is eager to revive their language, but they lack materials. A grammar was written in the 1970s, but it is too technical for the community to use. The researcher has been ‘translating’ that grammar into more colloquial language, and for this project will travel to Kenya to work with teachers testing its utility. Reviving their language is critical to Yaaku identity, as they work to reclaim rights to their original territories in the Mukogodo forest of Kenya.
Jasmine House – Tsyunhehkwa (Our Life Substance)
The Iroquoian language Oneida has 212 fluent speakers, but only three live in Oneida, Wisconsin. Although the Oneida Nation provides a variety of Oneida language programming, the community seeks to further engage young language learners with their traditions by planting and maintaining a traditional Three Sisters garden using Oneida horticulture techniques. This program will also collect Oneida words for traditional medicinal plants, as well as phrases and stories connected to planting, maintaining and harvesting the garden.
Suzi Oliveira de Lima – Documenting Complex Structures in Yudja: Pedagogical Materials
Yudja is an endangered and understudied language spoken by 300 residents of the Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil. Although local students currently study both Yudja and Brazilian Portuguese, missionary efforts and social pressures threaten this bilingual education. This project aims to describe the syntax of Yudja and produce pedagogical materials for high-school level study of Yudja.
Jason William Lobel – Documentation of Lolak, Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia
The Lolak language has 500 remaining fluent speakers, and the community is eager to preserve and revitalize their language. This project will record native speakers’ accounts of history and traditional religious and agricultural practices. Lexical items will also be elicited in order to create a Talking Dictionary for use by the community.
Melquiades Gregorio Porfirio – Documentation of Tù'ùn Sávì
Tù'ùn Sávì (Mixtec) is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken by a community of around 420 people in the Guerrero region. The project, led by a native speaker of Tù'ùn Sávì, will involve both documentation and community efforts to raise awareness of the language through writing workshops and movie screenings.
Pafnuncio Antonio Ramos – Documentation: Data Collection and Transcription of Zapotec
The variety of Zapotec studied in this project is spoken by a community of about 1000 near Oaxaca City, Mexico. Although some sociolinguistic study of this language has taken place, this project will be the first major effort to document it. Using elicitations with older native speakers, 10 hours of recorded legends and traditional knowledge will be created, and research will also be undertaken to complete a book on the phonology and morphology of Zapotec.
Wary Kamaiurá Sabino, Vera da Silva Sinha and Sheena Shah – Awetý Language and Culture Documentation
The Awetý language of Brazil is spoken by around 360 people, and although it has been the subject of significant study, very little of that knowledge has been returned to the community. This project, helmed by a native speaker of the language, seeks to remedy that by creating recordings of traditional songs, dances, sports and tales to create an archive for the community.
Nathan Schrieber – Gunggay Cultural Heritage Project
The Australian Aboriginal language Gunggay is dormant and has no living fluent speakers, although eight elders have some knowledge of the language and there are two younger partial speakers. One of these partial speakers is leading this project, which will transcribe and annotate 50-year-old field recordings of traditional Gunggay songs in order to archive them as well as use them in the development of Gunggay pedagogical materials.
Brendon Yoder – Documentation of the Abawiri Language
This project, an expansion of an ELF-supported pilot from 2015, will document the Abawiri language of Papua New Guinea using recordings of a wide variety of genres of natural speech. Abawiri, which has only 350 speakers, has not been previously documented.
