Navajo (NAV) Language Academy Workshop and Documentation

“这项奖励是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。”在国家科学基金会的支持下，Theodore Fernald和Irene Silentman将对美国西南部的一种濒危语言纳瓦霍语进行为期两年、多方面的研究。他们将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。他们将录制和抄写纳瓦霍人在各种社会环境中使用语言的对话。这些对话将有助于纳瓦霍语用户指南的发展。工作坊将包括音韵学、动词结构、如何向学生教授动词形式，以及语言学高级主题课程。研讨会将允许语言学家（包括纳瓦霍族内部和外部的）对纳瓦霍语法和语言用法进行分析。语言教师将有机会更清楚地了解纳瓦霍语的语法，特别是在复杂的词法领域。语言学家将有机会利用他们的专业知识为语言教学服务。大约有8万到10万人以纳瓦霍语为母语，是北美最大的母语社区。但这种语言通常不会传给最年轻的一代。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努力加强纳瓦霍语的使用，并保持其丰富的语言和文学传统。《用户指南》对第二语言学习者和语言学家都是无价之宝。这些录像带和抄本将成为语言学家测试语法现象分析的资源，并进一步描述纳瓦霍语如何适应人类语言的范围。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."With National Science Foundation support, Theodore Fernald and Irene Silentman will conduct a two-year, multi-faceted project on Navajo, an endangered language of the southwestern United States. They will run a collaborative workshop 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 phonology, the structure of the verb, how to teach verb forms to students, and a course in advanced topics in linguistics. The workshop will allow linguists (both from inside and outside the Navajo Nation) to carry out analyses of Navajo grammar and language usage. The language teachers will have the opportunity to gain a clearer understanding of the workings of Navajo grammar, particularly in the complex area of verbal morphology. The linguists will have the opportunity to use their expertise in the service of language teaching. 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 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. The User's Guide will be invaluable to second language learners as well as to linguists. The videotapes and transcription will be a resource for linguists to test analyses of grammatical phenomena and to further describe how Navajo fits into the spectrum of human languages.