Language Legacies Grant Recipients - 2019
Uday Raj Aaley – Pilot Project on Documentation of Kusuṇdā Language and Culture
The principal aim of the project is to make good quality sound and video recordings of the last two remaining fluent speakers and one semi-fluent speaker regarding several carefully selected aspects of the Kusuṇdā culture, hence preserving elements of both the language and the culture for posterity. A second aim of this project is the recording of natural speech among fluent Kusuṇdā speakers.
Rosemary Beam de Azcona – Xhti’ch no: a Linguistic Inheritance for Ricardito and the People of Asunción Tlacolulita
This project will produce documentation and description that is valuable for speech communities and their descendants as well as for the worldwide community of linguists and others such as historians and anthropologists with intersecting interests. Compared to other Zapotec languages, Tlacolulita has some unexpected reflexes of Proto- Zapotec single/geminate consonants, and these reflexes are conditioned by phrase-level prominence in unusual ways. This language offers us new insights about the development of the fortis/lenis contrast in Zapotec languages and offers the discipline of Linguistics new understanding of the behavior of consonants with respect to phrasal prominence.
Samantha Disbray –Transforming the Paunya Bilingual Luritja Collection Through Digitization, Access and Learning
Through a series of workshops with educators and community members in four Central Australian communities, ‘Transforming the Papunya Bilingual Luritja Collection through Digitisation, Access and Learning’ aims to repatriate and repurpose a rich collection of Pintupi and Pintupi-Luritja materials, created in the 1970s and 1980s for the now defunct Bilingual Education Program. The materials contain traditional knowledge and language features, to which younger speakers have ever diminishing access under the pressure of intense contact with English and English-medium school programs. In this dispersed language region with less than 1000 Pintupi-Luritja speakers, creation of teaching and learning resources in the workshops will support language and cultural revitalisation and maintenance of this endangered language.
Wesley Nascimento dos Santos– Kawahíva Language Documentation Project
Kawahíva is the name of both the language and the groups’ name of nine Brazilian indigenous peoples commonly known by exonyms such as Amondawa, Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, Karipuna, Capivari, Tenharim, Parintintin, Juma, Jiahui and Piripkura. The language documentation project is the result of a request by the Kawahíva peoples after the awakening of awareness of the language loss widespread among these groups. It is thus a project designed for, with and by these peoples. This project will involve a continuation of collection of audio texts of varied genres (narrative, testimonial, autobiography, recipe, prayer etc.), and whenever possible, of different ages.
Andrea Fulgham – Swooxsxw: The Traditional Ways and the Gitksan Family
The aim of this project is to draw a distinct connection between indigenous language with family and community health. Further, the project will endeavor to reconnect the community with the cultural, traditional, and spiritual wisdom of Gitksan elders, and to promote interest in Gitksan language preservation to all age groups. This project will include the collection of original elicitations, the documentation and linguistic analysis of audio and video recordings, the training of community language activists, and the creation of pedagogical material intended for both present and future community use.
Mikatu Garba and Christopher Green – Documentation and Description of Mbat (Jarawa)
The aim of this project is to begin describing and documenting Mbat, one of approximately 20 varieties of the Jarawa cluster (also called Jarawan Bantu). A primary goal of the project is to a record of living Jar traditions through the collection, organization, and analysis of Mbat narratives and lexicon.
Meg Harvey – Marimba in Uspanteko: A Culturally-centered Pedagogy
This project has three goals: (1) develop a pedagogy centered around Uspanteko community needs (2) produce Uspanteko teaching materials using this methodology (3) collect, transcribe, and archive narratives concerning Uspanteko musical culture. The data collected will inform both general knowledge of the Uspanteko language as well as future writings on linguistic attitudes and culture in highland Guatemala. Additionally, by documenting extended narratives, prosodic and discursive analyses that are largely impossible with word-list elicitation will be more accessible.
Colleen Hattersley –Survey of Waima/Roro Heritage Materials Collection
This project will involve work with archived heritage documents. Cataloguing and stabilizing this information in scans or photos will provide material for the creation of high-quality language resources for current and future teaching, both for the resident community and the expatriate members in Australia and other countries.
Néstor Hernández Green – Documentation of Jiquipilco Otomi [ots] (Mexico)
The main goal of this project is to collect 15 hours of audio/video recordings in Ñätho, 3 of 6, which will be annotated (i.e. transcribed and translated into Spanish) on Saymore. The genres we aim to have represented in the collection are personal narratives, oral tradition, procedural discourse, and descriptions of cultural manifestations in the community; other desirable genres are conversations, verbal art, and oratory. A secondary goal is to elicit as many verb paradigms as possible, to explore the inflectional morphology of the language.
Joshua Holden – Quiotepec Chinantec Oral Histories and Lexicographic Description
This project will involve visits to the satellite community of Santiago Cuasimulco within the municipality of Quiotepec, to compile and translate into Spanish a full collection of oral histories in Chinantec from Quiotepec and Cuasimulco elders about the splitting and founding of Chinantec communities in the decades after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and the Oaxacan sovereignty movement (1920s), e.g. the splitting off of San Martín Buenavista from Quiotepec (1940s) and abandonment and eventual reoccupation of Cuasimulco (1970s). This book will contain detailed historical introduction and linguistic analysis.
Incamu Ray Huaute – Multimedia Documentation and Description of Conversational Cahuilla
Documentation of Cahuilla conducted in the early twentieth century focused largely on elicited speech, resulting in a lack of quality data representative of conversational discourse and other genres of naturalistic, culturally relevant speech. The creation of a multimedia corpus using high-quality audio and video recording equipment will allow for a careful acoustic analysis of the sound patterns of the language and the development of language learning materials for the Cahuilla community. Project outcomes are aimed at contributing to future scholarly linguistic research, as well as the current language revitalization efforts of the community.
Ben Levine – Intensive Multiple Community Self-documentation of Isthmus Zapotec
This project will employ community self-documentation in three Isthmus Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. This evolving model introduces two new components: inter-community collaboration introduced via a short, intensive language documentation and awareness campaign. Video documentation of facilitated, speaker-driven, natural conversation and activity with contextualizing public feedback events has been the transdisciplinary framework of our approach in single communities. This project aims to establish coordination and mutual support between three (video) documentation teams working in the three communities to generate an outstanding variety, quality, and amount of video documentation of endangered Zapotec that can positively impact community attitudes toward the language.
Brook Danielle Lillehaugen and Felipe Lopez – Documenting Endangered Cultural Knowledge in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec
The co-PIs propose to document endangered linguistic knowledge in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec by working closely with expert knowers of cultural protocol and plants, especially medicinal and culinary plants. The project focuses on Zapotec-language knowledge that is in danger of disappearing within a generation, specifically cultural knowledge of Zapotec-language protocols and specialized knowledge of plants and their uses. Even though in Quiaviní young people still use Zapotec in everyday conversation, these particular types of knowledge are in danger of being lost because people younger than 50 do not know the names and uses of medicinal plants. Thus, the documentation of this knowledge is particularly urgent.
Monica Peters–Kanien'kéha ISO Codes
This project aims to create distinct iso codes for each Kanien'keha dialect. 3 distinct iso codes for each Kanien’kéha dialect will make it possible for software developers to support and maintain language revival efforts including new software tools and providing stable tech foundations to support those that speak Kanien’kéha dialects with voice recognition, text to speech and more - - without continuing the current confusion with all the dialects spellings and pronunciations being mixed together into one new confusing language that does not acknowledge all of our dialect differences.
Jhonnatan Rangel– Zoque Ayapaneco Community Revitalization Workshop
El presente proyecto tiene tres objetivos claros. El primer objetivo es reactivar el curso-taller de ayapaneco en la comunidad que ha estado suspendido desde el 2018 por falta de recursos. El segundo objetivo es sentar las bases de una ortografía práctica utilizando el curso-taller de ayapaneco como espacio de intercambio y creación en donde los hablantes, los aprendices y la comunidad participan activamente en este proceso. El tercer objetivo es documentar el proceso comunitario de creación ortográfica para una lengua en alto riesgo de desaparecer que además presenta múltiples variaciones lingüísticas inter e intra-hablante.
Sumathi Renganathan– Documentation of Uma Beluvuh Kayan Language and Culture
This focuses on the Uma Beluvuh Kayan language which is spoken by approximately 2000 people living in Long Panai, a longhouse situated in remote up-river location in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia. As the collaborator of this project is an indigenous scholar from the community, we will adhere and respect indigenous methodology and protocols in all areas related to this research. We propose a four- week fieldwork located in Long Panai longhouse. We will document the oral life story narratives of the Tekná singers to capture the language, history, culture and practices of the Uma Beluvuh Kayan elders.
Tsutri Wangmo, Damchoe Yarphel and Agnes Conrad – Promoting Minyang Language and Traditional Culture Through Film
This project is a local documentation initiative organized by three native speakers of Western Minyag (mvm), an endangered, under-researched Tibeto-Burman language spoken by an estimated 10,000 minority Tibetans living in Kangding and Jiulong Counties, Sichuan Province, China. After working with the collaborating researcher (Agnes Conrad) on a year-long project documenting Western Minyag, the project applicants (Tsutri Wangmo, Damchoe Yarphel, and Lhamo Yangzom) developed an interest in finding ways to inspire other young people to engage with Minyag language and traditional culture. To achieve this goal, the applicants plan to produce high quality film shorts in the Minyag language for local distribution on social media platforms. These films will highlight traditional knowledge and handicrafts, and will aim to generate positive language attitudes and a sense of heritage pride among community members, while also providing valuable speech data for linguistic analysis. It is our hope that these data will be of use for future efforts to create language learning materials for Minyag, and in safekeeping traditional skills in danger of disappearing within our lifetimes.
Zhang Shuya– Ethnobotanical Vocabulary of Two Endangered Rgyalrongic Varieties: Brag-bar Situ and Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This project focuses on ethnobotanical vocabulary, which is non-negligible for the complete documentation of the two languages under investigation. The Rgyalrongic speaking region is typically mountainous, with deep valleys and rapid river flows. This particular geographical structure endows this region with heavy vegetation and large number of local species. Plants play therefore a very important role in the daily life of the people (e.g. medicine, farming, sacrifice, etc.). The realization of the project is assured on the one hand by the applicants’ advanced knowledge of the target languages, and on the other hand by the expertise in botany of the external advisers, Wu Kai, Gao Qian and Li Guodong, botanists at Yunnan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The principal aim of the project is to make good quality sound and video recordings of the last two remaining fluent speakers and one semi-fluent speaker regarding several carefully selected aspects of the Kusuṇdā culture, hence preserving elements of both the language and the culture for posterity. A second aim of this project is the recording of natural speech among fluent Kusuṇdā speakers.
Rosemary Beam de Azcona – Xhti’ch no: a Linguistic Inheritance for Ricardito and the People of Asunción Tlacolulita
This project will produce documentation and description that is valuable for speech communities and their descendants as well as for the worldwide community of linguists and others such as historians and anthropologists with intersecting interests. Compared to other Zapotec languages, Tlacolulita has some unexpected reflexes of Proto- Zapotec single/geminate consonants, and these reflexes are conditioned by phrase-level prominence in unusual ways. This language offers us new insights about the development of the fortis/lenis contrast in Zapotec languages and offers the discipline of Linguistics new understanding of the behavior of consonants with respect to phrasal prominence.
Samantha Disbray –Transforming the Paunya Bilingual Luritja Collection Through Digitization, Access and Learning
Through a series of workshops with educators and community members in four Central Australian communities, ‘Transforming the Papunya Bilingual Luritja Collection through Digitisation, Access and Learning’ aims to repatriate and repurpose a rich collection of Pintupi and Pintupi-Luritja materials, created in the 1970s and 1980s for the now defunct Bilingual Education Program. The materials contain traditional knowledge and language features, to which younger speakers have ever diminishing access under the pressure of intense contact with English and English-medium school programs. In this dispersed language region with less than 1000 Pintupi-Luritja speakers, creation of teaching and learning resources in the workshops will support language and cultural revitalisation and maintenance of this endangered language.
Wesley Nascimento dos Santos– Kawahíva Language Documentation Project
Kawahíva is the name of both the language and the groups’ name of nine Brazilian indigenous peoples commonly known by exonyms such as Amondawa, Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, Karipuna, Capivari, Tenharim, Parintintin, Juma, Jiahui and Piripkura. The language documentation project is the result of a request by the Kawahíva peoples after the awakening of awareness of the language loss widespread among these groups. It is thus a project designed for, with and by these peoples. This project will involve a continuation of collection of audio texts of varied genres (narrative, testimonial, autobiography, recipe, prayer etc.), and whenever possible, of different ages.
Andrea Fulgham – Swooxsxw: The Traditional Ways and the Gitksan Family
The aim of this project is to draw a distinct connection between indigenous language with family and community health. Further, the project will endeavor to reconnect the community with the cultural, traditional, and spiritual wisdom of Gitksan elders, and to promote interest in Gitksan language preservation to all age groups. This project will include the collection of original elicitations, the documentation and linguistic analysis of audio and video recordings, the training of community language activists, and the creation of pedagogical material intended for both present and future community use.
Mikatu Garba and Christopher Green – Documentation and Description of Mbat (Jarawa)
The aim of this project is to begin describing and documenting Mbat, one of approximately 20 varieties of the Jarawa cluster (also called Jarawan Bantu). A primary goal of the project is to a record of living Jar traditions through the collection, organization, and analysis of Mbat narratives and lexicon.
Meg Harvey – Marimba in Uspanteko: A Culturally-centered Pedagogy
This project has three goals: (1) develop a pedagogy centered around Uspanteko community needs (2) produce Uspanteko teaching materials using this methodology (3) collect, transcribe, and archive narratives concerning Uspanteko musical culture. The data collected will inform both general knowledge of the Uspanteko language as well as future writings on linguistic attitudes and culture in highland Guatemala. Additionally, by documenting extended narratives, prosodic and discursive analyses that are largely impossible with word-list elicitation will be more accessible.
Colleen Hattersley –Survey of Waima/Roro Heritage Materials Collection
This project will involve work with archived heritage documents. Cataloguing and stabilizing this information in scans or photos will provide material for the creation of high-quality language resources for current and future teaching, both for the resident community and the expatriate members in Australia and other countries.
Néstor Hernández Green – Documentation of Jiquipilco Otomi [ots] (Mexico)
The main goal of this project is to collect 15 hours of audio/video recordings in Ñätho, 3 of 6, which will be annotated (i.e. transcribed and translated into Spanish) on Saymore. The genres we aim to have represented in the collection are personal narratives, oral tradition, procedural discourse, and descriptions of cultural manifestations in the community; other desirable genres are conversations, verbal art, and oratory. A secondary goal is to elicit as many verb paradigms as possible, to explore the inflectional morphology of the language.
Joshua Holden – Quiotepec Chinantec Oral Histories and Lexicographic Description
This project will involve visits to the satellite community of Santiago Cuasimulco within the municipality of Quiotepec, to compile and translate into Spanish a full collection of oral histories in Chinantec from Quiotepec and Cuasimulco elders about the splitting and founding of Chinantec communities in the decades after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and the Oaxacan sovereignty movement (1920s), e.g. the splitting off of San Martín Buenavista from Quiotepec (1940s) and abandonment and eventual reoccupation of Cuasimulco (1970s). This book will contain detailed historical introduction and linguistic analysis.
Incamu Ray Huaute – Multimedia Documentation and Description of Conversational Cahuilla
Documentation of Cahuilla conducted in the early twentieth century focused largely on elicited speech, resulting in a lack of quality data representative of conversational discourse and other genres of naturalistic, culturally relevant speech. The creation of a multimedia corpus using high-quality audio and video recording equipment will allow for a careful acoustic analysis of the sound patterns of the language and the development of language learning materials for the Cahuilla community. Project outcomes are aimed at contributing to future scholarly linguistic research, as well as the current language revitalization efforts of the community.
Ben Levine – Intensive Multiple Community Self-documentation of Isthmus Zapotec
This project will employ community self-documentation in three Isthmus Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. This evolving model introduces two new components: inter-community collaboration introduced via a short, intensive language documentation and awareness campaign. Video documentation of facilitated, speaker-driven, natural conversation and activity with contextualizing public feedback events has been the transdisciplinary framework of our approach in single communities. This project aims to establish coordination and mutual support between three (video) documentation teams working in the three communities to generate an outstanding variety, quality, and amount of video documentation of endangered Zapotec that can positively impact community attitudes toward the language.
Brook Danielle Lillehaugen and Felipe Lopez – Documenting Endangered Cultural Knowledge in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec
The co-PIs propose to document endangered linguistic knowledge in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec by working closely with expert knowers of cultural protocol and plants, especially medicinal and culinary plants. The project focuses on Zapotec-language knowledge that is in danger of disappearing within a generation, specifically cultural knowledge of Zapotec-language protocols and specialized knowledge of plants and their uses. Even though in Quiaviní young people still use Zapotec in everyday conversation, these particular types of knowledge are in danger of being lost because people younger than 50 do not know the names and uses of medicinal plants. Thus, the documentation of this knowledge is particularly urgent.
Monica Peters–Kanien'kéha ISO Codes
This project aims to create distinct iso codes for each Kanien'keha dialect. 3 distinct iso codes for each Kanien’kéha dialect will make it possible for software developers to support and maintain language revival efforts including new software tools and providing stable tech foundations to support those that speak Kanien’kéha dialects with voice recognition, text to speech and more - - without continuing the current confusion with all the dialects spellings and pronunciations being mixed together into one new confusing language that does not acknowledge all of our dialect differences.
Jhonnatan Rangel– Zoque Ayapaneco Community Revitalization Workshop
El presente proyecto tiene tres objetivos claros. El primer objetivo es reactivar el curso-taller de ayapaneco en la comunidad que ha estado suspendido desde el 2018 por falta de recursos. El segundo objetivo es sentar las bases de una ortografía práctica utilizando el curso-taller de ayapaneco como espacio de intercambio y creación en donde los hablantes, los aprendices y la comunidad participan activamente en este proceso. El tercer objetivo es documentar el proceso comunitario de creación ortográfica para una lengua en alto riesgo de desaparecer que además presenta múltiples variaciones lingüísticas inter e intra-hablante.
Sumathi Renganathan– Documentation of Uma Beluvuh Kayan Language and Culture
This focuses on the Uma Beluvuh Kayan language which is spoken by approximately 2000 people living in Long Panai, a longhouse situated in remote up-river location in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia. As the collaborator of this project is an indigenous scholar from the community, we will adhere and respect indigenous methodology and protocols in all areas related to this research. We propose a four- week fieldwork located in Long Panai longhouse. We will document the oral life story narratives of the Tekná singers to capture the language, history, culture and practices of the Uma Beluvuh Kayan elders.
Tsutri Wangmo, Damchoe Yarphel and Agnes Conrad – Promoting Minyang Language and Traditional Culture Through Film
This project is a local documentation initiative organized by three native speakers of Western Minyag (mvm), an endangered, under-researched Tibeto-Burman language spoken by an estimated 10,000 minority Tibetans living in Kangding and Jiulong Counties, Sichuan Province, China. After working with the collaborating researcher (Agnes Conrad) on a year-long project documenting Western Minyag, the project applicants (Tsutri Wangmo, Damchoe Yarphel, and Lhamo Yangzom) developed an interest in finding ways to inspire other young people to engage with Minyag language and traditional culture. To achieve this goal, the applicants plan to produce high quality film shorts in the Minyag language for local distribution on social media platforms. These films will highlight traditional knowledge and handicrafts, and will aim to generate positive language attitudes and a sense of heritage pride among community members, while also providing valuable speech data for linguistic analysis. It is our hope that these data will be of use for future efforts to create language learning materials for Minyag, and in safekeeping traditional skills in danger of disappearing within our lifetimes.
Zhang Shuya– Ethnobotanical Vocabulary of Two Endangered Rgyalrongic Varieties: Brag-bar Situ and Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This project focuses on ethnobotanical vocabulary, which is non-negligible for the complete documentation of the two languages under investigation. The Rgyalrongic speaking region is typically mountainous, with deep valleys and rapid river flows. This particular geographical structure endows this region with heavy vegetation and large number of local species. Plants play therefore a very important role in the daily life of the people (e.g. medicine, farming, sacrifice, etc.). The realization of the project is assured on the one hand by the applicants’ advanced knowledge of the target languages, and on the other hand by the expertise in botany of the external advisers, Wu Kai, Gao Qian and Li Guodong, botanists at Yunnan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.