Northern Brazilian Cariban Languages Documentation Project

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ABSTRACT The Cariban languages spoken in northern Brazil are among the least documented in the world, and many are in danger of extinction. This project will collect documentary recordings of as many northern Brazilian Cariban languages as possible and begin the process of transcribing word lists and grammatical information from these recordings. The project will also provide support for the Brazilian Cariban linguistics students to do intensive field work in three different northern Brazilian Cariban language communities. The linguists will use traditional field techniques, including recording, transcribing, and translating word lists and tests; syntactic analysis will be via elicitation and analysis of transcribed texts. For these three languages, the project will produce analyses of phonology, morphology, basic syntax, and papers on theoretically or typologically relevant issues. With these new data, the co-PI will work towards a more reliable classification of the Cariban family and reconstruction of Proto Cariban lexicon and morphosyntax. This project is a collaborative effort, designed to help train new Brazilian linguists in basic linguistic description and historical/typological/functional approaches to linguistics. It will also be responsive to the needs of Cariban language communities, offering help in preserving their unique languages and cultures.//