Phonological Analysis of Indigenous Languages of Eastern Bolivia

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This NSF grant will fund the PI's work in documenting and analyzing the sound patterns of indigenous languages of Bolivia's eastern lowland. This region, also called Amazonia, is a rich and ethnically diverse area where more than twenty-five distinct indigenous groups engage in an ongoing struggle to preserve the routine, every-day use of their ancestral languages. To this end, recent years have witnessed internationally-supported efforts to develop bilingual education programs in Bolivia in which children will be educated partly in Spanish (the geographically dominant language) and partly in the traditional indian language of their communities. Leaders of such programs have sought to involve North American and European linguists as consultants in ongoing efforts to create linguistically informed materials (such as, grammars, dictionaries, readers) that can be used to educate children in indigenous languages. In exchange for our labor as consultants, the PI for this project and other linguists are gaining the opportunity to study a variety of indigenous languages for purposes that benefit the North American scholarly community. As most languages of eastern Bolivia are understudied to date, the detailed information to be acquired as part of this project is expected to contribute to linguists' understanding of what human languages are like from a structural point of view; the similarities and differences that exist between languages spoken in diverse regions of the world; and what this information might tell us about the cognitive underpinnings of our linguistic systems. The PI's role in the ongoing research just described is tied to her experience as a phonologist--a linguist who analyzes aspects of sound structure in human languages, from the basic inventories of consonants and vowels used, to the stress and intonation contours imposed upon them in running speech. The funds awarded by NSF will be used to cover costs associated with travel to Bolivia for stu dy and data acquisition; to purchase equipment needed to analyze sound structures in these languages; to employ a graduate student at the University of North Carolina to assist in this analysis (a valuable aspect of that student's training); for travel to scholarly conferences at which the results of this work may be presented; and to assist in preparing work for publication in scholarly journals and in magazines more accessible to the general public, such as Science.