Collaborative Research: Oklahoma Breath of Life Workshop and Documentation Project

根据《国家地理》杂志的《持久的声音：拯救消失的语言》，俄克拉荷马州是世界上语言热点之一：一个语言多样性很高的地方，但那里的语言严重濒危，几乎没有文献记载。虽然俄克拉何马州是美国本土语言多样性最高的州，但所有39种语言都濒临灭绝。2010年，俄克拉何马大学的萨姆·诺布尔俄克拉何马自然历史博物馆举办了一个成功的“生命之息：不再沉默研讨会”试点项目。BOL研讨会将来自不再有流利说话者的社区的参与者与语言学家配对，语言学家在语言分析和方法方面指导他们。该课程是一个理想的介绍档案材料的使用和语言调查和文件的性质。讲习班还促进语言学家和社区成员之间的长期互动，促进语言学家和社区成员的语言技能和文献工作的自然发展和进步。这个协作提案有三个主要目标。首先，它试图在2012年5月计划并实施为期六天的两级（初级和二年级）俄克拉何马州生命之息。这将加强与三个社区（奥塞奇、奥托和纳奇兹）之间最初的师徒关系，并为另外七个社区提供支持。像这样的合作导致了语法、词典、教材和新演讲者的诞生。第二，OKBOL讲习班将利用现有的存档材料为这十种语言开发语言数据库。语言档案中的数据比最初的收集者能够分析或发表的要多得多。这项拨款将使遗产社区和研究人员可以使用和访问休眠文本、语法启发和单词列表。第三，在语言学和语言更新教学的早期阶段独特地引入数据库，将用于巩固和测试语言复兴努力与创造新的语言文献之间的联系。通过利用语言学作为一门经验科学的优势，并使用最新的数字工具，该项目有可能改变语言记录科学，以及语言学家的培训方式。这项赠款所支持的活动将为以下假设提供一个试验场：恢复语言的培训确实会产生对未得到充分研究的、据称已消失的语言的新的语言文献；以及在恢复语言的项目中可以实现人文和科学目标的假设。最后，像这样的美洲原住民语言回收项目有助于为所有公民提供美国历史文献的重要组成部分。

According to National Geographic's Enduring Voices: Saving Disappearing Languages, Oklahoma is one of the linguistic hotspots in the world: a place with high language diversity but where the languages are severely endangered and have very little documentation. Although Oklahoma has the highest Native language diversity in the US, all of the thirty-nine languages are endangered. A successful pilot Breath of Life: Silent No More Workshop (BOL) was held at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma in 2010. BOL workshops pair participants from communities that no longer have any fluent speakers with a linguist who mentors them in linguistic analysis and methodology. The curriculum is an ideal introduction to the use of archival materials and to the nature of linguistic investigation and documentation. The workshops also foster long-term interaction between linguists and community members, and for the natural development and progression of language skills and documentary work for both the linguists and the community members. This collaborative proposal has three main goals. First, it seeks to plan and conduct a six-day, two-tiered (beginner and second year levels) Oklahoma Breath of Life in May 2012. This will reinforce the original mentor-mentee partnerships with three communities (Osage, Otoe, and Natchez) and provide for seven more. Partnerships like these lead to the production of grammars, dictionaries, teaching materials, and documented new speakers. Secondly, the OKBOL Workshop will develop language databases for these ten languages from existing archived materials. There is so much more data in linguistic archives than the original collectors were ever able to analyze or publish. This grant will make dormant texts, grammatical elicitations, and word lists usable and accessible to heritage communities and researchers. Third, the unique introduction of databasing in early stages of linguistics and language renewal teaching will be used to solidify and test the connection between language revitalization efforts and the creation of new linguistic documentation. By drawing on the strength of linguistics as an empirical science and using the latest digital tools, this project has the potential to transform the science of documenting languages, as well as how linguists are trained.The activities supported by this grant will provide a testing ground for the hypothesis that language revitalization training does result in new language documentation of understudied, supposedly lost languages, as well as the hypothesis that both humanistic and scientific goals can be met in a language revitalization project. Finally, Native American language reclamation projects like this one help to provide an important part of the historical documentation of the United States for all its citizens.