Documenting Language, Ecology and the Aquatic Environment in Kala, an endangered Oceanic language

调查特定区域的生物多样性对于了解该区域的物种和生态系统，以及物种之间及其与生态系统的相互作用是至关重要的。当地土著人民的传统生态知识可以加强这种调查。土著语言编码了知识系统，因此，对语言的记录在了解该地区的植物、动物和其他生物方面发挥着关键作用。该项目将同时记录濒危语言社区的语言和传统生态知识。该社区的生活方式近乎自给自足，其特点是适应了沿海环境，并对河流有着深厚的历史、经济和文化依恋。通过语言文献研究水环境将增加三个领域的科学知识：语言本身、该地区的水生态系统以及语言与生物多样性的关系。这个项目迫在眉睫，因为濒危语言在基本词汇和语言结构之前就失去了动植物分类等领域的知识。更广泛的影响包括在线百科全书、博物馆展览以及研究生的国际研究和培训机会。NSF国际科学与工程办公室正在为与该项目相关的国际活动提供支持。伯尼斯·P·毕晓普博物馆的肯尼斯·朗根内克与夏威夷大学和不列颠哥伦比亚大学的语言学家和人类学家共同领导了一个国际合作项目，共同记录卡拉语，这是一种来自南岛语系海洋分支的濒危语言，居住在巴布亚新几内亚的六个沿海村庄的大约2000人说这种语言。巴布亚新几内亚是一个面积与加利福尼亚州差不多的国家，拥有850多种语言，其中许多语言的记录不足，在巨大的发展压力下只有少量人口使用。巴布亚新几内亚特殊的生物多样性也受到威胁。通过对河岸或其他水生栖息地附近的卡拉知识专家进行的口头叙述进行主题记录，该小组将记录特定氏族与河流的历史关系、地名起源、物种描述、对资源利用做法的描述以及对与这些环境相关的信仰的描述。该项目将扩大现有的Kala-Tok Pisin-English词典，开发一部包含Kala和英语词条的在线环境百科全书，并编写该语言的粗略语法。数字化数据将由夏威夷大学数字语言档案馆Kaipuleohone存档，主教博物馆的互动展览将与公众分享项目成果。该项目将产生对依赖于语言相关材料(人类学、生物学、历史学、地理学)的其他学科具有学术兴趣的数据，同时增加我们对Kala的科学知识。

Investigating the biological diversity of a specific region is essential to understand its species and ecosystems, and how species interact with each other and with their ecosystems. The traditional ecological knowledge of the people indigenous to that locale can enhance such investigations. Indigenous languages encode knowledge systems, so documentation of the language plays a key role in understanding of the region's plants, animals and other organisms. This project will simultaneously document both the language and the traditional ecological knowledge of an endangered language community. The community, which lives a near-subsistence lifestyle, is characterized by their adaptation to the coastal environment and their deep historical, economic and cultural attachment to rivers. Investigating the aquatic environment through language documentation will increase scientific knowledge in three areas: the language itself, the region's aquatic ecosystems, and the relationship of language to biological diversity. This project is urgent because endangered languages lose knowledge of domains like plant and animal classification much earlier than basic vocabulary and language structure. Broader impacts include an online encyclopedia, a museum exhibit and international research and training opportunities for a graduate student. The NSF Office of International Science and Engineering is providing support for international activities associated with this project.Kenneth Longenecker of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum leads an international collaboration with linguists and anthropologists at the University of Hawai'i and the University of British Columbia, teaming up to document the Kala language, a threatened language from the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family, spoken by about 2000 people living in six coastal villages in Papua New Guinea. A country roughly the size of California, Papua New Guinea is home to more than 850 languages, many of which are under-documented and spoken by small populations under intense development pressures. The exceptional biological diversity of Papua New Guinea is also under threat. By thematically documenting oral narratives conducted with Kala knowledge experts along river banks or near other aquatic habitats, the team will document accounts of historic relationships of specific clans to rivers, place name origins, species descriptions, descriptions of resource-use practices, and descriptions of beliefs associated with these environments. The project will result in expansions to an existing Kala-Tok Pisin-English dictionary, the development of an online environmental encyclopedia with entries in Kala and English, and a sketch grammar of the language. Digitized data will be archived by Kaipuleohone, the University of Hawai'i Digital Language Archive, and an interactive exhibit at Bishop Museum will share project results with the public. The project will generate data of scholarly interest to other disciplines that depend on language-related material (anthropology, biology, history, geography), while increasing our scientific knowledge of Kala.