The Language of Bardi (BCJ) Precontact Narratives

关于澳大利亚土著语言的详细的语言田野调查直到20世纪60年代才真正开始。为数不多的早期来源之一是美国人格哈特·莱夫斯的手稿收藏，他于1928年前往澳大利亚，花了大约18个月的时间对六种语言进行语言学研究。其中一种是巴迪语，现在澳大利亚西北部大约有25名老年人说巴迪语。Laves的Bardi记录非同寻常。它们写于欧洲定居点的全面影响在澳大利亚西北部造成广泛语言损失之前，记录了自那以来发生了显着变化的语言和文化。尽管文本清晰易读，语言表达准确，但如果没有出色的视力和巴迪的良好知识，这些材料很难阅读。这个由NSF资助的项目将汇集一个由语言学家和Bardi社区成员组成的团队，在克莱尔·鲍恩博士的指导下，对文本进行研究，制作一个带注释的版本。语言学家将把文本数字化，进行文字处理，并根据莱夫斯的笔记和鲍恩博士的语言知识提供粗略的翻译。然后，他们将与说巴尔迪语的人合作，完善翻译，讨论巴尔迪语的语法，并确定故事的上下文。其结果将是一本有翻译、注释和讨论的文本书。这是一个重要的项目，无论是对巴尔迪人、语言学家，还是更广泛的科学来说，这都是一个语言和文化上的重要项目。在语言上，Laves文本代表了Bardi最早的准确记录材料，初步工作表明，在过去的一百年里，这种语言发生了微妙但无数的变化。我们对像这样的小型语言社区的变异和变化知之甚少，在澳大利亚，Bardi材料提供了一个难得的机会来获得关于语言变化的准确的纵向信息。这反过来又允许研究具有非常复杂屈折变化的语言的变化，这在语言学中研究得很少，而且具有广泛的相关性。在文化上，课文是非常重要的。它们提供了接触前的传统法律、神话和日常社交活动的信息，是对一种不再实行的生活方式的非常详细的记录。这些知识中的大部分仍然由巴尔迪社区中最年长的人持有，但还没有被记录下来，在Laves材料中描述和解释这些事件的工作是研究接触前文化的绝佳机会。最后，文本本身是巴尔迪人自己学习语言和文化的重要资源，这些材料的归还是非常重要的。这些材料可能会在未来的语言振兴计划中占据突出地位。由于世界上有如此多的语言遗产处于危险之中，这个项目提供了一个模型，说明早期材料如何被用来造福当地社区和科学。

Detailed linguistic fieldwork on the Indigenous languages of Australia did not begin in earnest until the 1960s. One of the few earlier sources is the manuscript collection of Gerhardt Laves, an American who went to Australia in 1928 and spent approximately 18 months doing linguistic research on six languages. One of them, Bardi, is now spoken by approximately 25 elderly people in northwestern Australia. Laves' Bardi records are extraordinary. They were written at a time before the full impact of European settlement had caused extensive language loss in Australia's North-West and record a language and culture which has since changed significantly. Although the texts are legible and the language accurately represented, the materials are very difficult to read without excellent eyesight and a good knowledge of Bardi. This NSF-funded project will bring together a team of linguists and Bardi community members to work on the texts to produce an annotated edition, under the direction of Dr Claire Bowern. The linguists will digitize the texts, word process them, and provide rough translations on the basis of Laves' notes and the Dr Bowern's knowledge of the language. They will then work with Bardi speakers to refine the translations, discuss the grammar of the Bardi language, and work out the context of the stories. The result will be a book of the texts, with translations, annotations, and discussion.This is an important project, linguistically and culturally, for Bardi people, linguists, and for science more generally. Linguistically, the Laves texts represent the earliest accurately recorded materials for Bardi, and preliminary work indicates that there have been subtle but numerous changes in the language over the last hundred years. We know little about variation and change in small linguistic communities like this, and within Australia the Bardi materials provide a rare opportunity to get accurate longitudinal information about language change. This in turn allows the study of change in languages with very complex inflection, which is both understudied and of wide relevance in linguistics. Culturally, the texts are very important. They provide information about pre-contact traditional law, mythology and everyday social interaction, and are a very detailed record of a way of life no longer practiced. Most of this knowledge is still held by the oldest people in the Bardi community but has not been written down, and work on describing and explicating the events in the Laves materials is a wonderful opportunity to study pre-contact culture. Finally, the texts themselves are an important language learning and cultural resource for Bardi people themselves, and repatriation of these materials is very important. The materials will likely figure prominently in future language revitalization programs. With so much of the world's linguistic heritage in danger, this project provides a model of how early materials may be used to benefit both local communities and science.