Collaborative Research: Multimedia Database of Ixil Mayan Narratives

一个令人悲哀的事实是，一种语言的濒危往往也意味着一个民族的濒危。 伊克西尔语就是如此，这是一种玛雅语言，只有危地马拉北方高地的整个社区都在讲。 剩下的约65，000名讲Ixil语的人是1980年代危地马拉内战期间对Ixil人进行种族灭绝袭击的幸存者。该项目不仅将记录Ixil语言，还将记录Ixil人生存的重要社会背景。 这一文件项目的产品将是一个基于网络的多媒体数据库，其中包含Ixil对话、叙述和口述历史，其中包含叙述的文本版本沿着语音和视频文件。 不同的程序设计特点将使数据库可以以几种格式访问，包括：1）技术版本，其中包含对文本的形态和句法分析，供语言学家、人类学家、历史学家和其他对Ixil语言的学术研究感兴趣的人使用; 2）一个面向母语人士、教师和Ixil学习者的版本，作为Ixil社区儿童和成人识字和历史课程的基础是有用的; 3）叙述中使用的单词字典。 由Jule Gomez de Garcia博士，Melissa Axelrod博士和研究生Maria Luz Garcia组成的研究小组将收集Nebaj，El Quiche，危地马拉和周边社区的叙述。 Ixil妇女合作社的成员将协助转录和分析叙述和对话材料。 除了为Ixil社区提供文档外，该产品还将增加对Ixil对话和话语结构的理解，并为玛雅语言和文化的学生提供丰富的数据库。 这些信息也将有助于语言理论的各个方面，这些理论涉及对语言结构和行为的范围和参数的理解，因为它们反映了人类的认知功能。这项研究的实际好处是让大学生和土著社区成员参与制定和实践记录濒危语言的方法。

It is a sad truth that the endangerment of a language often also implies the endangerment of a population. This is true in the case of Ixil, a Mayan language spoken by entire communities only in the highlands of northern Guatemala. The remaining approximately 65,000 speakers of Ixil are the survivors of a genocidal attack upon the Ixil people that took place in the 1980s during the Guatemalan civil war. This project will serve to document not only the Ixil language but also the important social context of the survival of the Ixil people. The product of this documentation project will be a web-based, multimedia database of Ixil conversations, narratives, and oral histories containing text versions of the narratives along with voice and video files. Different programming features will render the database accessible in several formats including: 1) a technical version containing morphological and syntactic analysis of the texts intended for linguists, anthropologists, historians and others interested in the scholarly examination of the Ixil language; 2) a version intended for native speakers, teachers, and learners of Ixil, useful as the basis for curriculum for the Ixil communities' literacy and history classes for children and adults; and 3) a dictionary of the words used in the narratives. A research team consisting of Dr. Jule Gomez de Garcia, Dr. Melissa Axelrod, and graduate student Maria Luz Garcia will gather the narratives in Nebaj, El Quiche, Guatemala, and surrounding communities. Members of an Ixil women's cooperative will assist in the transcription and analysis of the narrative and conversational materials. In addition to providing documentation for the Ixil community, this product will increase understanding of the conversation and discourse structures of Ixil and provide a rich database for students of Mayan languages and cultures in general. This information will also contribute to aspects of linguistic theory dealing with an understanding of the range and parameters of linguistic structures and behaviors as they reflect human cognitive functions. The practical benefits from this research are the inclusion of university students and members of indigenous communities in the development and practice of methodologies for documenting endangered languages.