The Chadic Languages of Yobe State, Nigeria

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，罗素·G·Schuh和他的同事、尼日利亚迈杜古里大学的Alhaji Maina Gimba博士将花三年时间记录尼日利亚约贝州的五种语言。这些是Bole，Karekare，Ngamo，Bade和Ngizim，都是乍得家族的主要语言。这些语言中没有一种在完整的语法或词典中得到全面的描述，也没有任何一种被其使用者以书面形式使用。Schuh博士和Gimba博士将培训以母语为母语的团队，以他们自己的语言收集和转录数据。这些小组将开始建立现有的词汇数据库和文本集。目前的数据库从Ngamo的700-800字到Bole的3000多字不等。研究人员将致力于每种语言几千个条目的相对较大的词典。目前的文本强调民间故事。研究人员将收集新的文本，包括口述历史，对习俗和传统的描述，诗歌和歌曲，以及个人叙述。新文本的一个来源将是被认为在各个领域特别有知识或技能的人的音频和视频记录的转录。该项目的一个目标是鼓励发言者用母语写作。为此，该项目将向已经掌握豪萨语（尼日利亚北方的一种弗兰卡）的人，特别是中学生征集书面文本。随着文本收藏的增加，它们将在当地出版，以便人们可以在印刷品中看到自己。最终，该项目将为每种语言编制大量的书面和电子形式的词典（光盘和可搜索的网络数据库），并为当地发行和翻译的文本汇编，以书面和电子形式提供给尼日利亚以外的读者。同样重要的是，在项目结束后，应继续以书面形式自行编写语言文件，这是一个长期成果。首先，它强调的是在词汇编码的语言结构。这包括从动词派生名词，使动词被动，或创造名词表示代理或工具;曲折的过程，表明性别，数量，紧张，或（不）明确;复合创造单词组合，其整体意义是不可预测的部分。其次，该项目对一组相关语言的记录揭示了语言历史。例如，这些语言的词汇告诉我们，哪些词可以被重建为原始祖先语言所共有的，词在各个语言中的含义是如何变化的，以及哪些词是从其他语言中采用的。第三，词汇也是民族生态学的宝库。它包括植物群、动物群和自然物体的名称，以及为环境中的事物构造名称的方法（复合、词派生等）。最后，词汇代表了文化的各个方面，包括来自整个工艺、职业、传统和社会组织的词汇。文本集对于研究历史和文化变迁尤其重要。所有这些问题都需要详细的文件和文化的本地人的投入，这一项目将提供。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Russell G. Schuh and his colleague Dr. Alhaji Maina Gimba of the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, will spend three years documenting five languages of Yobe State, Nigeria. These are Bole, Karekare, Ngamo, Bade, and Ngizim, all major languages of the Chadic family. None of these languages has yet been described comprehensively in full grammars or dictionaries; nor is any used in written form by its speakers. Drs. Schuh and Gimba will train teams of native speakers to collect and transcribe data in their own languages. The teams will begin by building on existing lexical databases and collections of texts. Databases currently range from 700-800 words for Ngamo to over 3000 words for Bole. Researchers will work toward relatively large dictionaries of several thousand items per language. Texts currently emphasize folktales. Researchers will collect new texts, including oral history, descriptions of customs and traditions, poetry and song, and personal narrative. One source of new texts will be transcription of audio and video recordings of people recognized as being particularly knowledgable or skilled in various domains. One goal of the project will be to stimulate speakers to write in their native languages. To this end, the project will solicit texts in written form from people already literate in Hausa (the lingua franca of Northern Nigeria), particularly secondary school students. As collections of texts increase, they will be published locally so that people can see themselves in print. Ultimately the project will produce sizable dictionaries for each language in both paper and electronic form (CD and searchable web databases) and collections of texts both for local distribution and, with translations, in both paper and electronic form for an audience outside Nigeria. Not least, a long-term outcome, extending beyond the duration of the project, should be continued self-documentation of the languages in written form.This language documentation project is significant in four ways. First, it emphasizes linguistic structure that is encoded in the lexicon. This includes derivational processes that make nouns from verbs, make verbs passive, or create nouns indicating agent or instrument; inflectional processes that indicate gender, number, tense, or (in)definiteness; compounding creating word combinations whose overall meaning is not predictable from the parts. Second, the project's documenting of a group of related languages reveals language history. The lexicons of these languages tell us, for example, which words can be reconstructed as having been shared by the original ancestor language, how words may have shifted in meaning in individual languages, and which words have been adopted from other languages. Third, the lexicon is also a repository of ethnoecology. It includes names for flora, fauna, and natural objects, and means of constructing names for things in the environment (compounding, word derivation, etc.). Finally, the lexicon represents all aspects of culture, including words from the entire range of crafts, occupations, traditions, and social organization. The text collections are especially critical to the study of historical and cultural changes. All these issues require detailed documentation and input from natives of the culture, which this project will provide.