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

我们目前对人类在几乎没有提示或有意识学习的情况下获得语言的基本能力的理解主要基于具有强大语音社区的大型语言。 研究表明，一个说话者群体提供了一个丰富的语言环境，语言被用于各种社会功能，为儿童获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。 当缺乏强有力的、多样化的输入时，根据声音、短语和句子的复杂性，习得的顺序是什么？ 儿童会犯什么类型的系统性错误？这些错误是否反映了一个持续的内部规则支配的语法系统？ 来自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，因为很少有小语言仍在发生代际传播。堪萨斯大学的克利夫顿·派伊将与一个国际团队合作，记录北方帕梅语的习得情况，这是墨西哥圣刘易斯波托西州约5,000人使用的一种奥托曼吉语。在帕梅北方的七个主要村庄中，只有两个村庄的儿童说北方帕梅语，即使在这些社区，学龄儿童在家里也经常使用西班牙语。Pye和他的团队与Pame助手合作，转录和翻译Pame儿童语音，将使用一种原型程序来快速记录濒危语言的习得。 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归档方法方面的培训。 所有收集的数据都可通过拉丁美洲土著语言档案查阅。

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.