Maa (Maasai) Lexicography and Text Databases

Maa（Maasai）语言目前在肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚有多达50万Maasai，Samburu和Camus人使用。 没有语言学上适当的文本或语言词典。目前的项目将产生计算机化的文本和词典数据库，涉及一整套领域，以便最终根据各种受众的需要出版各种词典和文本材料，包括语言学家、人类学家、历史学家、双语学校教师和讲Maa语的人本身。词典编纂数据库将包括关于每个词条形式的语音结构、形态学和语法特性的准确信息;关于每个词根可用于的句子类型的信息;以及文化和人种学信息。同时，一个单独的动词数据库的形态和句法信息，已经开始由首席研究员，将进一步阐述，和句法假设的基础上开发的以前的工作将检查新的数据。 在供资期间，该项目将纳入来自至少四种Maa方言的广泛信息。 目前项目的第一阶段将侧重于IlKeekonyokie地区所讲的Maa语的多样性，该地区在地理上位于肯尼亚马赛地区的东部到中部。该项目随后将扩展到位于肯尼亚领土西部边缘的IlWuasinkishu部分。第三，它将包括北Maa方言（Samburu或Camus），然后是坦桑尼亚方言，如Arusa Maasai。选择这四个品种是因为主要研究者过去对其中两个品种的研究，以及与母语人士的联系，以及从北到南，从东到西的Maa地区的地理分布。 在所有的文化中，都有基本的和专门的词汇来描述活动、传统、宇宙论、宗教以及该文化特有的无数生活方式。如果不了解表达构成文化传统的概念的词汇，就无法彻底理解这些特征。广泛的词典和文本数据库将是保存和传播马阿人文化知识的宝贵文件，马阿人正受到世纪末迅速文化变革的影响。

The Maa (Maasai) language is currently spoken by up to 500,000 Maasai, Samburu, and Camus people in Kenya and Tanzania. No linguistically adequate set of texts or dictionary of the language exist. The current project will produce computerized text and lexicography databases, with a comprehensive set of fields, such that a variety of dictionaries and text materials can eventually be published depending on the needs of various audiences, including linguists, anthropologists, historians, bilingual school teachers, and Maa speakers themselves. The lexicography database will include accurate information about the sound structure, morphology, and grammatical properties of each entry form; information about sentence types in which each word root can be used; and cultural and ethnographic information. Simultaneously, a separate verb database with morphological and syntactic information, already begun by the Principal Investigator, will be further elaborated, and syntactic hypotheses developed on the basis of previous work will be checked against new data. The project will incorporate extensive information from a minimum of four Maa dialects during the funding period. The first stage of the current project will focus on the variety of Maa spoken by the IlKeekonyokie section, which, geographically, is on the eastern-to-central part of the Kenyan Maasai area. The project will then expand to the IlWuasinkishu section, which lies on the western edge of the Kenyan territory. Thirdly, it will incorporate a North Maa dialect (Samburu or Camus), and then a Tanzanian variety, such as Arusa Maasai. These four varieties are chosen because of the Principal Investigator's past work on two of them and connections with native speakers, and geographic distribution from the north to south, and east to west extremes of the Maa area. In all cultures there is both basic and specialized vocabulary which describes activities, traditions, cosmology, religion, and the myriad ways of life specific to that culture. These features cannot be thoroughly understood without an understanding of the vocabulary which expresses the concepts comprising the traditions of the culture. The extensive lexicographic and text database will be valuable documents for preserving and transmitting the cultural knowledge of the Maa people, who are being impacted by rapid cultural change at the end of the 20th Century.