Navajo (NAV) Language Academy Workshop and Research

大约有80，000到100，000人以纳瓦霍语为母语，纳瓦霍语是北美最大的母语社区。但这种语言一般不会传给最年轻的一代。 纳瓦霍语言学院是纳瓦霍社区内外数十名语言学家和教育工作者的合作，致力于促进纳瓦霍语的文献和使用。 在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，西奥多·弗纳德、埃拉托·帕金斯和艾琳·塞伦特曼将在学院举办一个合作研讨会，让语言教师和语言学家在工作中相互支持。他们将录像和转录纳瓦霍人在各种社会环境中使用语言的话题对话。这些对话将有助于编写纳瓦霍语用户指南。研讨会将包括动词的结构，语用学研究，如何教动词形式的学生，以及在语言学的高级主题课程。来自纳瓦霍族内外的语言学家将能够对纳瓦霍语法和语言用法进行分析。该项目支持的语言教师和语言学家之间的合作将有助于社区加强纳瓦霍语的使用并保持其丰富的语言和文学传统。鉴于纳瓦霍语动词形态的复杂性，语言教师可以从更清楚地了解语法的运作中受益匪浅。 对于语言学家来说，这次研讨会将提供纳瓦霍语使用的数据和见解，正式语言学可以直接反馈到语言教学中。 纳瓦霍语使用者指南以及随附的录像带和录音带将满足学术界和母语使用者的需要。

With roughly 80,000 to 100,000 native speakers, Navajo is the largest native speech community in North America. But the language is generally not being passed on to the youngest generation. The Navajo Language Academy, a collaboration of dozens of linguists and educators from within and outside the Navajo community, is dedicated to furthering the documentation and use of Navajo. With National Science Foundation support, Theodore Fernald, Ellavina Perkins and Irene Silentman will run a collaborative workshop at the Academy to allow language teachers and linguists to support each other in their work. They will videotape and transcribe Navajo conversations on topics of language use in various social settings. These conversations will contribute to the development of a User's Guide to Navajo. The workshop will include courses on the structure of the verb, the study of pragmatics, how to teach verb forms to students, and a course in advanced topics in linguistics. Linguists from inside and outside the Navajo Nation will then be able to carry out analyses of Navajo grammar and language usage.The collaboration between language teachers and linguists that this project supports will aid community efforts to strengthen the use of Navajo and maintain its rich linguistic and literary tradition. Given the complexity of verbal morphology in Navajo, the language teachers can benefit greatly from a clearer understanding of the workings of grammar. For the linguists, this workshop will provide data and insights into the use of Navajo, and formal linguistics can directly feed back into language teaching. The User's Guide to Navajo, and the accompanying videotapes and transcriptions, will serve the needs of both the scholarly and native speaker communities.