Plains Indian Sign Language DEL Project: Summer 2010 Meeting and Workshops

平原印第安人手语（PISL）文献研讨会，2010年夏季在NSF DEL项目的支持下，共同的pi和手语语言学家Jeffrey Davis博士（田纳西大学）和Melanie McKay-Cody（奇卡莫加切罗基/乔克托族，威廉伍兹大学）正在进行50多年来第一次实地考察，重点关注平原印第安人手语（PISL）的语言结构。根据2009年最近的实地调查，联合pi已经确定了20多名PISL签字人，包括妇女和聋人部落成员，来自北夏延族、克罗族、黑脚族、阿西尼博因族和曼丹-希达察族。这表明PISL继续在平原部落群体中使用，并且仍然作为部落间的通用手语。国际手语的正式语言文献和描述已经姗姗来迟，本次研讨会将介绍有关国际手语的语言性质和结构、手语-口语接触的结果以及人类语言在手语和口语形式下的传递的最新发现和见解。研讨会将于2010年8月在北夏安保留区举行；并且，将涉及来自几个部落团体和大学的参与者。在蒙大拿州立大学、比林斯、小大角国家纪念碑和钝刀纪念学院的人员的合作下，它将被广泛宣传，预计会有更多的PISL签名者被识别出来。研讨会将展示和传播国际语言使用、词汇和语法方面的最新发现。它将首次将手语语言学家、聋人和美国印第安人聚集在一起，对他们进行语言学、现场方法和语言文档技术（例如ELAN）方面的培训。与本地签字人合作，合作pi使用ELAN对PISL进行转录/润色和翻译；识别词汇语法类别；并进行比较句法分析。这些发现将提交给同行评议的语言学研究期刊，有助于编写带有语法描述的PISL词典，并整合到项目网站/美国印第安手语文献资料的在线数字档案中，以便尽可能广泛的受众能够访问它们。

Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL) Documentation Workshop, Summer 2010With support of the NSF DEL program, co-PIs and sign language linguists Dr. Jeffrey Davis (University of Tennessee) and Melanie McKay-Cody (Chickamauga Cherokee/Choctaw, William Woods University) are conducting the first fieldwork in over 50 years to focus on the linguistic structure of Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL). Based on recent fieldwork in 2009, the co-PIs have identified more than two-dozen PISL signers, including women and deaf tribal members, from among the Northern Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, Assiniboine, and Mandan-Hidatsa. This demonstrates that PISL continues to be used within Plains tribal groups and still functions as an intertribal signed lingua franca. Formal linguistic documentation and description of PISL has been long overdue, and this workshop will present the latest findings and insights about the linguistic nature and structure of PISL, the outcomes of signed language-spoken language contact, and the conveyance of human language in signed and spoken modalities. The workshop will be held on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, August 2010; and, will involve participants from several tribal groups and colleges. In collaboration with personnel from Montana State University, Billings, Little Bighorn National Monument, and Dull Knife Memorial College, it will be widely publicized and it is anticipated that more PISL signers will be identified. The workshop will showcase and disseminate recent findings about PISL usage, lexicon, and grammar. For the first time, it will bring together sign language linguists and Deaf and American Indian individuals to train them in linguistics, field methods, and language documentation technologies (e.g. ELAN). Working with Native signers, the co-PIs are transcribing/glossing and translating PISL using ELAN; identifying lexical-grammatical categories; and, conducting comparative syntactic analyses. These findings will be submitted to peer-reviewed linguistic research journals, contribute to the compilation of a PISL dictionary with grammatical descriptions, and integrated into the project website/online digital archive of American Indian sign language documentary materials, so that the broadest possible audiences will have access to them.