RAPID: Muniche Rapid Documention Project

穆尼切语快速记录项目该项目将记录穆尼切语，一种几乎灭绝的秘鲁亚马逊语言。由于剩下的演讲者年龄较大，最多只有几年的时间来记录这种语言，这促使了这个快速的基于团队的语言记录项目。穆尼切语目前被认为是一种语言孤立的语言(一种与任何其他语言没有明显联系的语言)，这使得对这种语言的记录尤为重要，因为孤立通常是深层语言历史中语言分化的结果。一个由五位语言学家组成的研究小组将与最后一批讲这种语言的人密切合作，收集一个数据库，其中包括：1)涵盖所有核心语义域的1500个词根，以及相关的例句；2)所有主要语法结构类型的例句；以及3)一系列对话，例证了一系列日常交际互动。此外，还将对所有例句和对话进行录音。所产生的材料将以文字和音频词典以及对话集的形式提供给其他语言学家和穆尼切社区成员。该项目还将编写该语言的教学语法，供社区语言增强班使用。研究小组随后将使用这些材料来准备这种语言的技术语言描述，与词典和录音一起，将作为这种语言的持久记录，供穆尼切人、语言学家、人类学家和历史学家使用。我们的物种目前正经历着语言多样性的迅速而严重的丧失。濒危语言的记录对使用这些语言的社区和语言学家都很重要。对于这些社区来说，这类文件提供了与他们的历史的联系，并经常在重新评价以前被压制的文化身份方面发挥重要作用。Muniche快速文献项目将向社区提供广泛的教学和参考材料，这些材料将用于社区正在开办的语言增强班。对于语言学家来说，记录人类语言多样性是至关重要的：1)重建语言史，这往往会影响我们对文化史的理解；2)作为形成关于人类语言教师的社会和认知基础的适当广泛的理论的经验基础。特别是在Muniche案中，该项目所产生的数据和材料将有助于语言学家了解南美洲的语言历史，包括该地区各语言之间的遗传关系，以及各语言由于长期接触而相互影响的方式。有人提出，穆尼切是横跨大陆的阿拉瓦克语系的一员，如果这是真的，将对我们对亚马逊史前的理解产生重要影响。特别是，Arawak人被确定为主要的新热带种植者之一--木乃克人的家养人，如果Muniche是这个家族的远亲成员，则对Arawak人在亚马逊地区的扩张将产生重大影响。该项目收集的数据将使我们能够评估这一假设。此外，有人指出，由于长期的社会交往和多种语言使用，亚马逊语表现出相当程度的基本语法相似。评估这一假设需要来自所有主要地理分区的语言数据，而穆尼切语是历史上重要的华拉加河流域为数不多的幸存语言之一。因此，对Muniche的记录将有助于这一努力，以了解地球上语言学研究最少的地区之一的大规模语言模式。

Muniche Rapid Documentation ProjectThis project will document Muniche, an almost extinct language of Peruvian Amazonia. Due to the advanced age of the remaining speakers, at best a few years remain to document this language, motivating this rapid team-based linguistic documentation project. Muniche is currently considered a linguistic isolate (a language with no demonstrated connections to any other language), making documentation of this language especially important, since isolates are generally the consequence of linguistic differentiation in the deep linguistic past. Working closely with the last speakers of this language, a research team of five linguists will collect a database of : 1) 1500 lexical roots covering all core semantic domains, with associated example sentences; 2) examples of all major grammatical construction types; and 3) a collection of dialogues exemplifying a range of everyday communicative interactions. Additionally, audio recordings will be made of all example sentences and dialogues. The resulting materials will be made available both to other linguists and to Muniche community members in the form of textual and audio dictionaries and dialogue collections. The project will also prepare a pedagogical grammar of the language which will be used in community language enrichment classes. The research team will subsequently employ these materials to prepare a technical linguistic description of this language that, in conjunction with the dictionaries and recordings, will serve as a durable record of this language for the Muniche people, linguists, anthropologists, and historians. Our species is currently experiencing a rapid and drastic loss of linguistic diversity. Documentation of endangered languages is important both to the communities in which they are spoken and to linguists. For the communities, documentation of this sort provides a tie to their history, and often plays an important role in revalorization of formerly suppressed cultural identities. The Muniche Rapid Documentation Project will provide extensive pedagogical and reference materials to the community, which will be used in language enrichment classes being started in the community. For linguists, documentation of human linguistic diversity is crucial: 1) in reconstructing linguistic history, which often has consequences for our understanding of cultural history, 2) as the empirical basis for forming suitably broad theories about the social and cognitive bases of the human language faculty. In the Muniche case in particular, the data and materials that will result from this project will contribute to linguists' understanding of the linguistic history of South America, including the genetic relationships between the languages of the region and the ways in which languages have mutually influenced each other due to prolonged contact. It has been suggested that Muniche is a member of the continent-spanning Arawak language family, which if true, would have important consequences for our understanding of Amazonian prehistory. In particular, the Arawak peoples have been identified as the domesicators of manioc, one of the major Neotropical cultigens, and if Muniche is a distant member of this family, the implications for the Arawak expansion in Amazonia would be significant. The data collected by this project will allow us to evaluate this hypothesis. In addition, it has been suggested that Amazonian languages exhibit a considerable degree of basic grammatical similarity due to prolonged social interaction and multilingualism. Evaluating this hypothesis requires linguistic data from all major geographical subregions, and Muniche is one of the few surviving language of the historically important Huallaga River valley. Documentation of Muniche will thus contribute to this effort to understand large-scale linguistic patterns in one of the linguitically least-studied areas on Earth.