Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Grammar of Hupda Maku

在Eve Danziger博士的指导下，Patience Epps女士将为她的博士论文收集数据。她将对Hupda进行语言研究，Hupda是马库族的一种很少有文献记载的语言，在巴西西北部亚马逊州的沃佩斯地区使用。调查将为语法、正字法、词汇和文本集合提供材料。据估计，说Hupda语的1500人中，大多数人过着半游牧的生活，靠打猎、采集、捕鱼和种植苦木薯为生。考虑到说这种语言的人口相对较少，以及像胡普达人这样的土著群体的文化和生活方式的未来不确定，胡普达语可能在未来很多年内都不会存在。这种濒危语言的记录具有双重意义。首先，这些努力增加了我们对人类语言中可能存在的东西的理解。第二，这样的努力有助于语言的保存。保护世界语言多样性对于人类知识的持续丰富和发言者本身的社区都很重要，因为他们的文化知识和艺术成就往往与他们的语言遗产密切相关。Hupda社区特别希望创建正字法，这将是朝着母语识字和创建教学材料迈出的重要一步，这反过来将鼓励社区的语言保护努力。这项研究还探讨了该地区历史和史前语言接触和族群间关系的问题。

Under the direction of Dr. Eve Danziger, Ms. Patience Epps will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will conduct linguistic research on Hupda, a little documented language of the Maku family, spoken in the Vaupes region of the northwestern Brazilian state of Amazonas. The investigation will produce materials for a grammar, orthography, lexicon, and collection of texts. Most of the estimated 1500 speakers of Hupda follow a semi-nomadic lifestyle and rely on hunting, gathering, fishing, and the cultivation of bitter manioc for subsistence. Given this relatively small population of speakers and the uncertain future of the cultures and lifestyles of indigenous groups like the Hupda people, the Hupda language may not be viable for many more years.The significance of this documentation of an endangered language is twofold. First, such efforts add to our understanding of what is possible in human language. Second, such efforts contribute to language preservation. The preservation of the world's linguistic diversity is important both for the continued richness of human knowledge and for the communities of speakers themselves, whose cultural knowledge and artistic achievements are often closely intertwined with their linguistic heritage. The creation of an orthography is especially desired by the Hupda community, and this will be an important step toward native-language literacy and the creation of pedagogical materials, which in turn will encourage the community's language preservation efforts. This research also addresses questions of language contact and intergroup relations in the history and prehistory of the region.