Documentation of Akawaio (Cariban)

Akawaio（加勒比）文档

• 批准号: 0117619
• 负责人: Spike Gildea
• 金额: $ 9.45万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-08-01 至 2006-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0117619&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Documentation; Akawaio; Cariban

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Spike Gildea and his colleague Desrey Fox will conduct three years of linguistic research on Akawaio, an indigenous language in Guyana that is a member of the Cariban language family. One goal of their research is to create the first comprehensive reference grammar of Akawaio. Another is to publish on the web the collection of transcribed, translated, and annotated Akawaio texts that Ms. Fox will prepare as part of her doctoral dissertation. Preliminary research indicates that certain aspects of Akawaio grammar are unlike anything ever documented before, so a careful grammatical description supplemented and illustrated by annotated texts will benefit linguistic theory. The grammatical description will expand Dr. Gildea's reconstruction of the grammar of Proto-Carib, the ancestor language for all modern Cariban languages. It is already clear that Akawaio forms a group with its closest neighbors (the Pemong Group), but relationships between this group and other languages and/or groups in the Cariban family are unclear, in large part because there is so little reliable information about many of the languages (including Akawaio). The grammar and associated wordlist will provide additional bases for connecting the Pemong Group to other Cariban languages/groups. The collection of texts will also be of great interest to anthropologists, as they address traditional ways of life, oral history, Akawaio cosmology, and shamanistic practices. They will be especially valuable because they were recorded by Ms. Fox, a native Akawaio with anthropological training.Two important scientific debates motivate the documentation of little-known languages. First, each new language tests theories about the human capacity for language. Second, each comparative reconstruction provides information that can inform hypotheses about early connections among peoples, including their migration patterns. The indigenous languages of Guyana are virtually unknown, and thus have not contributed significantly to either debate until now. Such documentation is urgent because so many languages are in danger of disappearing in the near future. In addition, documentation of endangered languages like Akawaio is a prerequisite to the creation of educational materials that may help prevent language loss.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，斯派克·吉尔达博士和他的同事德斯雷·福克斯将对圭亚那的土著语言阿卡瓦约进行为期三年的语言研究，阿卡瓦约是加勒比语系的一员。他们的研究目标之一是创建Akawaio的第一个全面的参考语法。另一个是在网上发布福克斯女士将作为博士论文的一部分准备的转录，翻译和注释的Akawaio文本的集合。初步研究表明，Akawaio语法的某些方面与以往任何文献都不同，因此，通过注释文本补充和说明的仔细语法描述将有利于语言学理论。语法描述将扩展Gildea博士对原始加勒比语语法的重建，原始加勒比语是所有现代加勒比语的祖先语言。已经很清楚的是，Akawaio与其最近的邻居（Pemong Group）形成了一个组，但是这个组与加勒比语系中的其他语言和/或组之间的关系尚不清楚，这在很大程度上是因为关于许多语言（包括Akawaio）的可靠信息很少。语法和相关的词汇表将为将Pemong组与其他加勒比语言/组联系起来提供额外的基础。人类学家也将对这些文本集产生极大的兴趣，因为它们涉及传统的生活方式、口述历史、Akawaio宇宙学和萨满教习俗。它们将特别有价值，因为它们是由福克斯记录的，她是土生土长的阿卡瓦约人，受过人类学训练。两个重要的科学争论促使人们对鲜为人知的语言进行记录。首先，每一种新语言都是对人类语言能力理论的检验。第二，每一次比较重建都提供了信息，可以为关于各民族之间早期联系的假设提供信息，包括他们的移徙模式。圭亚那的土著语言几乎无人知晓，因此迄今为止对这两种辩论都没有作出重大贡献。这类文件是紧迫的，因为许多语言在不久的将来都有消失的危险。此外，记录像Akawaio这样的濒危语言是制作可能有助于防止语言丧失的教育材料的先决条件。