Documentation and Data Management Workshop to Address Language Endangerment in Multilingual Contexts

语言是人类最显著的特征之一。然而，一场全球性的危机正在逼近，世界上前所未有的语言数量预计将在本世纪末之前消失。当没有流利的第一语言使用者时，语言就会沉寂下来，这将为理解人类思维能力提供一个独特的入口。此外，语言的消失将使人们无法深入了解使用这些语言的地方的当地知识，以及使用这些语言的人的人类历史和史前历史。由于使用多种语言的内部压力，世界上六七千种语言中有近三分之一受到威胁。多语是指一个社区或个人使用两种或两种以上的语言。为了应对语言濒危的挑战，语言学家们试图在这些语言消失之前对它们进行丰富的多媒体记录。然而，在许多普遍使用多种语言的地方，由于基础设施和培训不足，这些语言的记录不足。本次研讨会将提供在这些环境中记录语言的培训。这样的培训是必要的，原因有三个。首先，它将填补很少或没有文档的语言的学术空白。其次，对这些语言的记录将增加对多语言使用与语言濒危之间相互作用的科学理解。第三，它为科学家提供了一个机会，为创造受威胁的人类语言的记录做出贡献。该项目的更广泛影响包括促进新的国际合作，在不同语言地区培养新一代语言文献工作者，以及为研究生和初级研究人员提供国际研究经验的机会。本次研讨会将集中讨论分布在不同多语言环境中的濒危非洲语言。这次讲习班的目的是通过转让技能和培训西非和美国的研究生和初级研究人员掌握最先进的语言文件和数据管理技术来处理这种情况。讲习班将在加纳温内巴的教育大学举行，工作人员将由来自美国、欧洲和非洲的文献语言学国际专家组成。参与者将有机会接触濒危语言文献研究人员的国际网络。本课程将语言文档的理论和技术与实际实践相结合。教师和学生将与五名讲阿尼米尔语的人一起动手收集数据，以创建该语言的第一份文件。阿尼米尔语是加纳-多哥边境地区一种高度濒危的语言。Animere的音频和视频文件将被保存在马克斯普朗克心理语言学研究所已建立的非洲语言和口头资源档案馆（ALORA）和佛罗里达大学语言档案馆（TUFLA），这是一个新的语言档案馆，以便研究人员和公众广泛访问。

Language is among the most salient human characteristics. However, a global crisis is looming, with an unprecedented number of the world's languages estimated to disappear before century's end. As languages fall silent when there are no remaining fluent first language speakers, they will take with them a unique entry into understanding the capabilities of the human mind. In addition, the loss of languages will end the opportunity to gain insight into local knowledge of the places where they were spoken, as well as the human history and prehistory of those who spoke them. Nearly one third of the world's six to seven thousand languages are threatened due to the internal pressures of multilingualism. Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by a community or by an individual. Linguists have responded to the challenge of language endangerment by attempting to undertake rich multimedia documentation of such languages before they disappear. However, in many places where multilingualism is common, the languages are under-documented because of insufficient infrastructure and training. This workshop will offer training for documenting languages in these contexts. Such training is necessary for three important reasons. First, it will fill the scholarly gaps for languages with little or no documentation. Second, documentation of these languages will increase the scientific understanding of the interaction between multilingualism and language endangerment. Third, it offers scientists the opportunity to contribute to the creation of a record of threatened human languages. Broader impacts in this project include the facilitation of new international collaborations, the training of a new generation of language documenters in a diverse linguistic region, and opportunities for international research experience for graduate students and junior researchers.This workshop will convene with its focus on endangered African languages, which are distributed over diverse multilingual environments. This workshop aims to address this situation through the transfer of skills and the training of West African and American graduate students and junior researchers in state-of-the-art techniques of language documentation and data management. The workshop, which will be held at the University of Education in Winneba, Ghana, will be staffed by an international cohort of experts in documentary linguistics from the United States, Europe and Africa. Participants will have access to an international network of researchers in endangered language documentation. This workshop integrates theory and technique with actual practice in language documentation. Instructors and students will be involved in hands-on data collection with five speakers of Animere, a highly endangered language spoken in the Ghana-Togo border area, to create a first documentation of the language. Audio and video documentation of Animere will be archived at the established Archive of Language and Oral Resources of Africa (ALORA) housed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, and at the University of Florida's Language Archive (TUFLA), a new language archive, in order to make it widely accessible to researchers and the public.