Creating a lexical database for Tututni, Coquille and Galice, three Native American languages of Oregon

为俄勒冈州的三种美洲原住民语言 Tututni、Coquille 和 Galice 创建词汇数据库

• 批准号: 1562859
• 负责人: Janne Underriner
• 金额: $ 24.73万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-01 至 2019-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1562859&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Creating; lexical; database; Tututni; Coquille

Just like biologists have methods to investigate the relationships between species, linguists have methods that allow them to determine the relationships between languages. Linguists do this by comparing a set of languages along various dimensions, such as words or language structures that may have a common origin. Documentation of a language plays a key role in how scholars reconstruct the family relationships between languages, but when the documentation exists in archives, in "analog" forms, like handwritten field notes or cassette recordings, this creates challenges in doing reconstruction of family relationships. This project will address this challenge focusing on three underdocumented languages, whose archival materials have received little attention in the linguistic literature. The research team will digitize materials, and then process and analyze them by creating a database of the three languages. This research infrastructure will create digital access to the materials and will create a lexicon of use to both linguistic science and to learners. Tututni, Coquille and Galice, the focus of this project, are three severely endangered Native American languages of the Oregon Coast. Broader impacts include the dissemination of the lexicon to Native communities and the scholarly community, and the education and training of three budding Native social scientists, broadening participation in the linguistics by underrepresented groups. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The Athabaskan language family includes many languages and has an expansive geographic distribution, ranging from Alaska and the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada and to the southwest including Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma. Southwest Oregon Athabaskan language communities were extremely fragmented following the forced relocation of members to reservations during the 1850s-60s, termination of tribes in the 1950s and boarding school language policies. However, Tututni, Coquille and Galice have extensive documentation, most of which neither easily accessible nor linguistically analyzed, a gap in the scientific understanding of an important branch of Athabaskan languages. By digitizing and databasing this archival documentation, this project will increase the linguistic understanding of relationships in the Athabaskan family. Methods include the linguistic analysis of verbs, notoriously complex in this language family, and transcription of legacy recordings. These materials, collected between the 1880s and 1980s, will be analyzed and synthesized into a single database. Scientific hypotheses can be tested against the large bodies of research to yield new discoveries and explanations for Athabaskan languages and their family relationships, especially those of the Pacific Coast branch. Results will also promote language use in Oregon Athabaskan communities and advance education of diverse groups, as these Native citizen scientists engage with the lexicon and the disseminated resources in a host of initiatives, including language and cultural revitalization.

就像生物学家有方法研究物种之间的关系一样，语言学家也有方法确定语言之间的关系。 语言学家通过比较一组语言沿着不同的维度来做到这一点，比如可能有共同起源的单词或语言结构。 语言文献在学者如何重建语言之间的家庭关系中起着关键作用，但当文献以“模拟”形式存在于档案中时，如手写的田野笔记或录音带录音，这就给重建家庭关系带来了挑战。 本项目将解决这一挑战，重点是三种文献不足的语言，其档案材料在语言学文献中很少受到关注。研究小组将收集材料，然后通过创建三种语言的数据库来处理和分析它们。 这一研究基础设施将创造数字访问的材料，并将创建一个词汇使用语言科学和学习者。 Tututni，科奎尔和Galice，这个项目的重点，是三个严重濒危的美洲土著语言的俄勒冈州海岸。更广泛的影响包括向土著社区和学术界传播词汇，教育和培训三位崭露头角的土著社会科学家，扩大代表性不足的群体对语言学的参与。美国国会于1990年通过的《美洲原住民语言法》承认了美洲原住民语言的独特地位和重要性。 阿萨巴斯卡语系包括许多语言，地理分布广泛，从阿拉斯加和加拿大的育空地区和西北地区到西南部，包括亚利桑那州，德克萨斯州和俄克拉荷马州。俄勒冈州西南部的阿萨巴斯卡语言社区在19世纪50年代至60年代被迫搬迁到保留地，1950年代部落终止和寄宿学校语言政策之后非常分散。然而，Tututni，科奎尔和Galice有大量的文献，其中大部分既不容易获得，也不容易进行语言学分析，这是对阿萨巴斯卡语言的一个重要分支的科学理解的差距。通过将这些档案文件数字化和数据化，该项目将增加对阿萨巴斯卡家庭关系的语言理解。方法包括动词的语言分析，在这个语系中是出了名的复杂，以及遗产录音的转录。 这些材料收集于19世纪80年代至20世纪80年代之间，将被分析和合成到一个数据库中。科学假说可以通过大量的研究来检验，从而为阿萨巴斯卡语言及其家族关系，特别是太平洋沿岸分支的语言及其家族关系，带来新的发现和解释。结果还将促进语言的使用在俄勒冈州阿萨巴斯卡社区和推进不同群体的教育，因为这些土著公民科学家从事词汇和传播的资源在一系列的举措，包括语言和文化振兴。