Collaborative Research: Recording Toponyms to Document the Endangered Hopi Language [hop]

在美国国家科学基金会记录濒危语言项目的资助下，亚利桑那大学和美国自然历史博物馆与霍皮部落合作，记录地名（地名），作为记录濒临灭绝的霍皮语的一种手段。虽然大多数50岁以上的霍皮人都把霍皮语作为他们的第一语言来学习，并且仍然很流利，但今天只有不到5%的19岁以下的霍皮人说这种语言。随着年长者的离世，地名的知识和它们所蕴含的文化习俗正在消失。该项目将使用数字音频和视频文件制作一个地名词典，以保存霍皮族母语人士的发音。这些地名将使用霍皮部落开发的标准正字法进行转录。关于每个地名的文化、社会、历史和地理信息将被记录在地理信息系统数据库中。在这个项目中记录的地名构成了一个强有力的、未被充分研究的语言领域。在霍皮人的话语中，涉及文化和历史秩序的重要思想和过程被本地化，在景观中被纪念，并被地名索引。事件发生在特定的地方：对事件的理解嵌入在地名中，所以要完整地记录霍皮人的语言和历史，就需要对这些地方的知识和地名的理解。该项目的工作假设是，霍皮人有一个关于地点和地名的系统理论，但没有得到学术理解所必需的学术关注。该研究项目将阐明霍皮人地名的基础理论，以创建一个知识体系，可以与其他土著社区的地名系统进行比较。虽然在过去的125年里，霍皮人一直是大量民族志研究的主题，但相对而言，很少有工作记录其形态学、音韵学、词源学、意义和地名的使用。该项目记录的信息将为霍皮文化传播、道德指导以及文化景观与身份之间的象征性联系提供重要的语言和人类学信息。这一信息对于理解乌托-阿兹特克语系的发展非常重要。记录地名也将为部落语言保护计划和保留地课程开发提供重要信息，从而有助于在霍皮族青年中传播霍皮族语言和文化知识。保存有关霍皮人地名的知识将增加公众对霍皮人历史的了解，因为它与西南部的地理有关。

With funding from the NSF Documenting Endangered Language Program, the University of Arizona and the American Museum of Natural History are collaborating with the Hopi Tribe to record toponyms (place names) as a means of documenting the endangered Hopi language. While most Hopis over the age of fifty learned Hopi as their first language, and remain fluent, today less that 5% of Hopis younger than nineteen speak the language. As senior speakers pass away, knowledge of toponyms and the cultural practices they encode is being lost. The project will produce a lexicon of toponyms using digital audio and video files to preserve the sounds of the names vocalized by native speakers of Hopi. These place names will be transcribed using a standard orthography developed by the Hopi Tribe. Cultural, social, historical, and geographical information about each place name will be documented in a geographic information systems database. The toponyms to be documented during this project constitute a potent and understudied linguistic domain. In Hopi discourse, important ideas and processes involving cultural and historical order are localized, commemorated in the landscape, and indexed by place names. Events happened at particular places: an understanding of events is embedded in place names, so knowledge of those places and an understanding of place-names are needed to fully document Hopi language and history. The working hypothesis for the project is that the Hopi have a systematic theory of place and place-naming that has not received the scholarly attention necessary for scholarly comprehension. This research project will articulate a grounded theory of Hopi toponyms to create a body of knowledge can be compared to systems of place-naming in other indigenous communities. Although Hopi has been the subject of substantial ethnographic research over the last 125 years, there has been relatively little work that documents the morphology, phonology, etymology, meaning, and use of toponyms. The information documented by this project will provide significant linguistic and anthropological information about Hopi cultural transmission, moral instruction, and symbolic links between cultural landscapes and identity. This information is important for understanding the development of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Documenting place names will also provide important information for future use in tribal language preservation programs and reservation curriculum development, thus helping to disseminate Hopi linguistic and cultural knowledge among Hopi youth. Preserving knowledge about Hopi place names will increase public understanding of Hopi history as it relates to the geography of the Southwest.