Procedures for the Rapid Documentation of Language Acquisition in an Endangered Language Context

我们目前对人类在很少提示或有意识学习的情况下习得一门语言的基本能力的理解，主要是基于具有强大语音社区的大型语言。研究表明，说话者社区提供了丰富的语言环境，在这种环境中，语言被用于各种社会功能，为儿童习得语言提供了必要的输入。然而，关于濒危语言是如何习得的研究却很少。从声音、短语和句子的复杂性来看，当缺乏健全和多样化的输入时，习得的顺序是什么？孩子们会犯哪些类型的系统性错误，这些错误是否反映了一个正在进行的内部规则支配的语法系统？濒危语言的数据对于回答这些问题至关重要，必须立即收集这些证据，因为很少有小语种仍在发生代际传播。堪萨斯大学的Clifton Pye将与一个国际团队合作，记录北帕姆语的获得情况。北帕姆语是墨西哥圣路易斯波托西州约5000人使用的一种欧托曼语。在七个主要的北帕姆村庄中，只有两个村庄的孩子说北帕姆语，即使在这些社区，学龄儿童也经常在家里使用西班牙语。Pye和他的团队将与Pame助手一起转录和翻译Pame儿童的语言，并将使用一种原型程序来快速记录濒危语言的习得情况。该项目将包括对堪萨斯大学的研究生和本科生进行语言文件编制和数据存档方法方面的培训。收集的所有数据将通过拉丁美洲土著语言档案提供。

Our current understanding of the fundamental human ability to acquire a language with little prompting or conscious learning is based primarily on large languages with robust speech communities. Research has shown that a speaker community providing a rich speech environment where language is used for a variety of social functions provides the input necessary for a child to acquire a language. However, there is little research on how endangered languages are acquired. What is the order of acquisition, in terms of complexity of sounds, phrases, and sentences, when there is lack of robust and varied input? What types of systematic errors do children make and are these errors reflective of an ongoing internal rule-governed grammatical system? Data from endangered languages are crucial in answering these questions and this evidence must be gathered immediately since there are few small languages where intergenerational transmission is still occurring.Clifton Pye of the University of Kansas will work with an international team to document the acquisition of Northern Pame, an Otomanguean language spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Children only speak Northern Pame in two of the seven principal Northern Pame villages, and even in these communities school-age children frequently use Spanish at home. Pye and his team, working with Pame assistants to transcribe and translate Pame child speech, will use a prototype procedure for the rapid documentation of the acquisition of endangered languages. The project will include the training of graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Kansas in language documentation and data archiving methodology. All the data collected will be accessible through the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.