Language Legacies Grant Recipients - 2020
* MKARL Funding
** International Phonetic Association Funding
Verónica Aguilar Martínez and Bernardo Galindo Sánchez - Historic and Linguistic Documentation of a Migrant Mixtec Community (ISO 639-3: mix)
The San Juan Mixtepec language is spoken in three towns in Oaxaca, Mexico as well as in Abasolo del Valle, Veracruz. This project focuses on the documentation of the Veracruz variety, which has few speakers and is endangered. ELF funding will enable Veronica Aguilar Martínez and Bernardo Galindo Sanchez, two native speakers of Mixtec, to work on documenting this language. This documentation will involve video interviews with speakers of the language, which will be analysed and subtitled.
McKinley Alden - */**Adapting Archival Yup’ik Materials for Acoustic and Corpus Analysis (ISO 639-3: esu)
Yup’ik is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Alaska, and it is categorized as vulnerable by UNESCO. The results of this work are two-fold: (1) the recordings will be transcribed and phonetically annotated for use as data in an acoustic study of Yup’ik stress cues; (2) the text materials will be repurposed into a corpus to be made available for both community and linguistic research use.
Elnur Aliyev - *Audio/Video Archive for Endangered Caucasian Languages of Georgia (ISO 639-3: udi, bbl)
The completion of project activities will result in the creation of Udi and Bats audio/video archive, which will be supplemented by texts. Creating an audio/video archive will support further research in the following: (1) allows using of collected texts in the schools at Udi and Bats language lessons; (2) allows possibility to continue research of the language in the directions of phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexical structure.
Julius Arerierian - Documentation of Oral Genres of Okpẹ (ISO 639-3: oke)
Okpẹ is one of five languages of the South-Western Edoid sub-group of the Benue-Congo family. It faces external impact from the use of English and geographically-close languages (Urhobo, Itsekiri and Izon) and from globalization. The project will provide pedagogical material for the teaching of Okpẹ language to the younger generation at home and at school. It will provide information for national language policy makers and local policy makers to make decisions on the use of all three languages of Urhobo people, including Okpẹ. This project will also provide academics, particularly linguists with sociolinguistic information for further studies in Okpẹ language.
Irina Burukina and Polina Pleshak - Documenting Kaqchikel Traditional Stories and Recipes (ISO 639-3: cak)
The proposed project aims to create a collection of recorded materials in Kaqchikel that will include, first, stories about preserved Kaqchikel traditions and customs and, second, traditional Mayan recipes provided primarily by members of the cooperative Cooperativa Integral de Produccion Aj Su'm R. L. The collection will also contain photos of everyday life of Kaqchikel people living in Patzún, Guatemala. The materials will be further made public and form the basis of a printed trilingual (Kaqchikel – Spanish – English) book of recipes, interesting for foreigners as well as for citizens of Guatemala, and bilingual (Kaqchikel – Spanish) brochures that will be distributed by members of the cooperative among the local communities.
Shobhana Chelliah and Samir Debbarma - *Creating the KokBorok Language Resource at CoRSAL (ISO 639-3: trp)
This project will curate and archive materials on Kokborok, a language spoken in Tripura State, India by about 101, 294 speakers. The materials this project will curate are from James Matisoff collection, the collection of Jonathan Evans, and additional materials that community members might want to contribute, especially audio and video of connected text and cultural events. The curated Kokborok collection will help the community know what is already available and what further documentation efforts are needed for creation of pedagogical materials.
Altaci Corrêa Rubim - Digital Story-Telling of Kokama Narratives: A Language Documentation & Capacity-building Workshop for Revitalization (ISO 639-3: cod)
The goal of this project is twofold: (1) audio-video documentation of traditional Kokama stories; and (2) create digital story-telling materials based on these recordings. These activities will be done in collaboration with community members, thus providing capacity-building opportunities to Kokama speakers in methods of language documentation, and elaboration of language materials.
José Armando Fernández Guerrero - Documenting Ja’a Kumiai Narratives and Conversation (ISO 639-3: dih)
This project will result in a series of children’s language booklets, pedagogical language descriptions, and tri-lingual annotated stories. Data collected and derived materials will (1) be available for community members, (2) be used for workshops and classes Yolanda leads, (3) be archived at the California Languages Archive, and (4) form the basis of further descriptions of Ja’a Kumiai.
Andrea Fulgham - Swooxsxw: The Traditional Ways and the Gitxsan Family (ISO 639-3: git)
The aim of the project is to draw a distinct connection between indigenous language with family and community health. The project endeavors 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. The goal of the project is to continue the creation of recordings of Gitksan elders in interviews, stories, or lessons with a specific focus on the traditional practices and healing in the Gitksan family. Through further internships, the project aims to engage even more nascent Gitksan language activists by providing training for these next generations of Gitksan community activists and/or linguists.
Yustinus Ghanggo Ate - Documentation of Kodi (ISO 639-3: kod)
This project is a pilot project proposed to document Kodi, an underdocumented language spoken in Sumba Island, eastern Indonesia. This small-scale project would be an essential step for a much-needed full-scale documentation of Kodi. The outcome of this project will be annotated video with transcription and translation which will be important for further linguistic research and supporting mother tongue literacy in Kodi.
Hannes Kalisch - Collection and Transcription of Guaná Stories (ISO 639-3: gva)
The Guaná language is a language with the fewest speakers in the Enlhet-Enenlhet family (which was previously known as Maskoy). It is spoken exclusively in Paraguay. Today most Guaná people are monolingual in Guaraní. This project works with two of the remaining speakers of Guaná, and will produce audio and video recordings of the last speakers of Guaná, as well as contribute to a lexicon on the language.
Yulha Lhawa - **Khroskyabs Orthography Design Workshops (ISO 639-3: jiq)
This project is aimed to design a writing system based on the Tibetan alphabet primarily for language maintenance purposes for Khroskyabs-speaking communities that will be hosted in the meeting hall of Siyuewu Village. The workshop has three goals: (1) discuss important questions and parameters (socio-political, technical-linguistic, psycho-cognitive) related to orthography development; (2) consider an approach to orthography development based on community involvement, writing practice, and analysis to in order to design learnable and useable alphabet; and (3) lay foundation for linguistic research as well as community-led language revitalization work such as enabling them to put their stories, songs, history, and wisdom into written form for present and future generations.
Kate Lynn Lindsey - Kawam Documentation and Technology Training (ISO 639-3: kit)
This project aims to begin the documentation and conservation of the language as well as to train young Kawam speakers in the documentation process. Young speakers are targeted in this training effort as this population has indicated enthusiasm for technological training, and the community has expressed a desire for younger members to engage with their linguistic and cultural heritage. Involving young speakers from the beginning will have a positive effect on both future language efforts and skill sets among the youth, who have no other opportunities to develop skills in technology. This project will also provide a dual opportunity for the Kawam community and a linguistics graduate student to meet one another. There will also be great value in the documentation and descriptive materials that are collected during this project.
Carmen Eva Marseille - *Tai Leng Oral History and Grammar (ISO 639-3: tjl)
This project undertakes the comprehensive documentation and description of Tai Leng, an endangered Tai-Kadai language of Myamar, spoken in Sagaing region and Kachin state. The focus of this project is on the documentation of oral texts. Using these stories to study Tai Leng grammar feeds into a need to advance language training beyond literacy. Understanding more about the structure of Tai Leng will also provide new insights into language contact in mainland Southeast Asia.
Steve Parker, Scott Berthiaume, Maggie Mabell Romani Miranda, Miles Cary, and Whitney Cary - **Documentation of Chamikuro (ISO 639-3: ccc)
The goal of this project is to conduct intensive documentation of Chamikuro in order to extend the limited knowledge currently available and provide the community with a permanent record of their linguistic history and cultural identity. This project will enhance the existing documentation of Chamikuro words with audiovisual recordings of three speakers, while also extending the current research on Chamikuro syntax with a more ample corpus of sentences and connected discourse.
Lia Morgan Siewert and Steven George - *Identifying and Documenting Ottawa-Language Texts from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory in the Archive of the Jesuits in Canada (ISO 639-3: otw)
This project will conduct on-site investigation into uncatalogued missionary texts currently housed at the Archive of the Jesuits in Canada (AJC) in Montreal, Quebec. Unexamined holdings at the Archive of the Jesuits are likely to contain linguistic information that is of immense value to linguists and educators as well as Wiikwemkoong’s elders and speakers who are working to maintain and revitalize spoken Nishaabemwin. Unexamined missionary texts such as those held at AJC contribute critical information for continued linguistic research. Furthermore, new lexicon or storytelling narratives contained within these holdings will contribute to the robust philological knowledge of elders who are documenting their own language through a collaborative storytelling approach to linguistic theorizing that was described as Indigenous storywork.
Rose Stamp - Documenting Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL): A Local Sign Language in Israel (ISO 639-3: N/A)
This project will document one of the sign languages that has been researched to a lesser extent in Israel, Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL). This project aims to elicit data from the last remaining older signers of the languages, and to document ‘oral’ traditions specific to the Kufr Qassem deaf culture, that will be lost with the language when these individuals pass on. The data will be made fully accessible to the deaf community and their relatives – since the corpus will be accessible in KQSL and Arabic. The project also contributes towards linguistic science and more specifically, sociolinguistics. The aim of the project is to explore the degree of contact-induced change in KQSL and predict how it might continue to change. The findings of this sociolinguistic study will help to inform us about the status of KQSL.
Nguyen Thu Quynh - Documentation of Qabiao in Pho La, Vietnam (ISO 639-3: laq)
The project plans to collect and document the Qabiao language spoken by the Qabiao community in Pho La Commune, Dong Van District, Ha Giang Province, Vietnam in various aspects: words, sentences and speeches. The data including audio and video documents, and text documents (phonological and lexical information) will be digitalized for better accessibility and storage, contributing to preserve this severely endangered language.
Giulia Valsecchi - **Documentation of Dunan Folk Songs in the Ryukyu Islands (ISO 639-3: yoi)
This documentation project aims at recording (both in audio and video), transcribing, annotating, translating and archiving all fifty-four indigenous folk songs in Dunan. This project will contribute to a broader documentation effort by focusing on Dunan from the perspective of local knowledge, aesthetic and cultural value encoded in and reproduced through the language in the form of folk songs. A documentation that follows such an approach can produce results relevant not only to linguists but also to ethnographers, historians and students of literature.
The San Juan Mixtepec language is spoken in three towns in Oaxaca, Mexico as well as in Abasolo del Valle, Veracruz. This project focuses on the documentation of the Veracruz variety, which has few speakers and is endangered. ELF funding will enable Veronica Aguilar Martínez and Bernardo Galindo Sanchez, two native speakers of Mixtec, to work on documenting this language. This documentation will involve video interviews with speakers of the language, which will be analysed and subtitled.
McKinley Alden - */**Adapting Archival Yup’ik Materials for Acoustic and Corpus Analysis (ISO 639-3: esu)
Yup’ik is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Alaska, and it is categorized as vulnerable by UNESCO. The results of this work are two-fold: (1) the recordings will be transcribed and phonetically annotated for use as data in an acoustic study of Yup’ik stress cues; (2) the text materials will be repurposed into a corpus to be made available for both community and linguistic research use.
Elnur Aliyev - *Audio/Video Archive for Endangered Caucasian Languages of Georgia (ISO 639-3: udi, bbl)
The completion of project activities will result in the creation of Udi and Bats audio/video archive, which will be supplemented by texts. Creating an audio/video archive will support further research in the following: (1) allows using of collected texts in the schools at Udi and Bats language lessons; (2) allows possibility to continue research of the language in the directions of phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexical structure.
Julius Arerierian - Documentation of Oral Genres of Okpẹ (ISO 639-3: oke)
Okpẹ is one of five languages of the South-Western Edoid sub-group of the Benue-Congo family. It faces external impact from the use of English and geographically-close languages (Urhobo, Itsekiri and Izon) and from globalization. The project will provide pedagogical material for the teaching of Okpẹ language to the younger generation at home and at school. It will provide information for national language policy makers and local policy makers to make decisions on the use of all three languages of Urhobo people, including Okpẹ. This project will also provide academics, particularly linguists with sociolinguistic information for further studies in Okpẹ language.
Irina Burukina and Polina Pleshak - Documenting Kaqchikel Traditional Stories and Recipes (ISO 639-3: cak)
The proposed project aims to create a collection of recorded materials in Kaqchikel that will include, first, stories about preserved Kaqchikel traditions and customs and, second, traditional Mayan recipes provided primarily by members of the cooperative Cooperativa Integral de Produccion Aj Su'm R. L. The collection will also contain photos of everyday life of Kaqchikel people living in Patzún, Guatemala. The materials will be further made public and form the basis of a printed trilingual (Kaqchikel – Spanish – English) book of recipes, interesting for foreigners as well as for citizens of Guatemala, and bilingual (Kaqchikel – Spanish) brochures that will be distributed by members of the cooperative among the local communities.
Shobhana Chelliah and Samir Debbarma - *Creating the KokBorok Language Resource at CoRSAL (ISO 639-3: trp)
This project will curate and archive materials on Kokborok, a language spoken in Tripura State, India by about 101, 294 speakers. The materials this project will curate are from James Matisoff collection, the collection of Jonathan Evans, and additional materials that community members might want to contribute, especially audio and video of connected text and cultural events. The curated Kokborok collection will help the community know what is already available and what further documentation efforts are needed for creation of pedagogical materials.
Altaci Corrêa Rubim - Digital Story-Telling of Kokama Narratives: A Language Documentation & Capacity-building Workshop for Revitalization (ISO 639-3: cod)
The goal of this project is twofold: (1) audio-video documentation of traditional Kokama stories; and (2) create digital story-telling materials based on these recordings. These activities will be done in collaboration with community members, thus providing capacity-building opportunities to Kokama speakers in methods of language documentation, and elaboration of language materials.
José Armando Fernández Guerrero - Documenting Ja’a Kumiai Narratives and Conversation (ISO 639-3: dih)
This project will result in a series of children’s language booklets, pedagogical language descriptions, and tri-lingual annotated stories. Data collected and derived materials will (1) be available for community members, (2) be used for workshops and classes Yolanda leads, (3) be archived at the California Languages Archive, and (4) form the basis of further descriptions of Ja’a Kumiai.
Andrea Fulgham - Swooxsxw: The Traditional Ways and the Gitxsan Family (ISO 639-3: git)
The aim of the project is to draw a distinct connection between indigenous language with family and community health. The project endeavors 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. The goal of the project is to continue the creation of recordings of Gitksan elders in interviews, stories, or lessons with a specific focus on the traditional practices and healing in the Gitksan family. Through further internships, the project aims to engage even more nascent Gitksan language activists by providing training for these next generations of Gitksan community activists and/or linguists.
Yustinus Ghanggo Ate - Documentation of Kodi (ISO 639-3: kod)
This project is a pilot project proposed to document Kodi, an underdocumented language spoken in Sumba Island, eastern Indonesia. This small-scale project would be an essential step for a much-needed full-scale documentation of Kodi. The outcome of this project will be annotated video with transcription and translation which will be important for further linguistic research and supporting mother tongue literacy in Kodi.
Hannes Kalisch - Collection and Transcription of Guaná Stories (ISO 639-3: gva)
The Guaná language is a language with the fewest speakers in the Enlhet-Enenlhet family (which was previously known as Maskoy). It is spoken exclusively in Paraguay. Today most Guaná people are monolingual in Guaraní. This project works with two of the remaining speakers of Guaná, and will produce audio and video recordings of the last speakers of Guaná, as well as contribute to a lexicon on the language.
Yulha Lhawa - **Khroskyabs Orthography Design Workshops (ISO 639-3: jiq)
This project is aimed to design a writing system based on the Tibetan alphabet primarily for language maintenance purposes for Khroskyabs-speaking communities that will be hosted in the meeting hall of Siyuewu Village. The workshop has three goals: (1) discuss important questions and parameters (socio-political, technical-linguistic, psycho-cognitive) related to orthography development; (2) consider an approach to orthography development based on community involvement, writing practice, and analysis to in order to design learnable and useable alphabet; and (3) lay foundation for linguistic research as well as community-led language revitalization work such as enabling them to put their stories, songs, history, and wisdom into written form for present and future generations.
Kate Lynn Lindsey - Kawam Documentation and Technology Training (ISO 639-3: kit)
This project aims to begin the documentation and conservation of the language as well as to train young Kawam speakers in the documentation process. Young speakers are targeted in this training effort as this population has indicated enthusiasm for technological training, and the community has expressed a desire for younger members to engage with their linguistic and cultural heritage. Involving young speakers from the beginning will have a positive effect on both future language efforts and skill sets among the youth, who have no other opportunities to develop skills in technology. This project will also provide a dual opportunity for the Kawam community and a linguistics graduate student to meet one another. There will also be great value in the documentation and descriptive materials that are collected during this project.
Carmen Eva Marseille - *Tai Leng Oral History and Grammar (ISO 639-3: tjl)
This project undertakes the comprehensive documentation and description of Tai Leng, an endangered Tai-Kadai language of Myamar, spoken in Sagaing region and Kachin state. The focus of this project is on the documentation of oral texts. Using these stories to study Tai Leng grammar feeds into a need to advance language training beyond literacy. Understanding more about the structure of Tai Leng will also provide new insights into language contact in mainland Southeast Asia.
Steve Parker, Scott Berthiaume, Maggie Mabell Romani Miranda, Miles Cary, and Whitney Cary - **Documentation of Chamikuro (ISO 639-3: ccc)
The goal of this project is to conduct intensive documentation of Chamikuro in order to extend the limited knowledge currently available and provide the community with a permanent record of their linguistic history and cultural identity. This project will enhance the existing documentation of Chamikuro words with audiovisual recordings of three speakers, while also extending the current research on Chamikuro syntax with a more ample corpus of sentences and connected discourse.
Lia Morgan Siewert and Steven George - *Identifying and Documenting Ottawa-Language Texts from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory in the Archive of the Jesuits in Canada (ISO 639-3: otw)
This project will conduct on-site investigation into uncatalogued missionary texts currently housed at the Archive of the Jesuits in Canada (AJC) in Montreal, Quebec. Unexamined holdings at the Archive of the Jesuits are likely to contain linguistic information that is of immense value to linguists and educators as well as Wiikwemkoong’s elders and speakers who are working to maintain and revitalize spoken Nishaabemwin. Unexamined missionary texts such as those held at AJC contribute critical information for continued linguistic research. Furthermore, new lexicon or storytelling narratives contained within these holdings will contribute to the robust philological knowledge of elders who are documenting their own language through a collaborative storytelling approach to linguistic theorizing that was described as Indigenous storywork.
Rose Stamp - Documenting Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL): A Local Sign Language in Israel (ISO 639-3: N/A)
This project will document one of the sign languages that has been researched to a lesser extent in Israel, Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL). This project aims to elicit data from the last remaining older signers of the languages, and to document ‘oral’ traditions specific to the Kufr Qassem deaf culture, that will be lost with the language when these individuals pass on. The data will be made fully accessible to the deaf community and their relatives – since the corpus will be accessible in KQSL and Arabic. The project also contributes towards linguistic science and more specifically, sociolinguistics. The aim of the project is to explore the degree of contact-induced change in KQSL and predict how it might continue to change. The findings of this sociolinguistic study will help to inform us about the status of KQSL.
Nguyen Thu Quynh - Documentation of Qabiao in Pho La, Vietnam (ISO 639-3: laq)
The project plans to collect and document the Qabiao language spoken by the Qabiao community in Pho La Commune, Dong Van District, Ha Giang Province, Vietnam in various aspects: words, sentences and speeches. The data including audio and video documents, and text documents (phonological and lexical information) will be digitalized for better accessibility and storage, contributing to preserve this severely endangered language.
Giulia Valsecchi - **Documentation of Dunan Folk Songs in the Ryukyu Islands (ISO 639-3: yoi)
This documentation project aims at recording (both in audio and video), transcribing, annotating, translating and archiving all fifty-four indigenous folk songs in Dunan. This project will contribute to a broader documentation effort by focusing on Dunan from the perspective of local knowledge, aesthetic and cultural value encoded in and reproduced through the language in the form of folk songs. A documentation that follows such an approach can produce results relevant not only to linguists but also to ethnographers, historians and students of literature.