Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting Sociolinguistic Variation in Diné bizaad (Navajo), a Native American Language

以往的语言学研究已经明确表明，一个不变的言语社区是一种理想化。事实上，语言变异是语言文献的重要组成部分。 这种变化经常带有社会意义，往往低于意识水平。这个项目记录并分析了在美国土著语言的使用者的当前使用中发现的变化。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。 地区、世代和社会文化多样性都是特定语言多样性的因素，但这种语言的语言差异很少有记录。这些文档将构成CoPI撰写的博士论文中分析的核心材料。 更广泛的影响包括对变异的录音和描述，对语言规划和教学材料的开发具有价值，以及在阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯的阿拉斯加土著语言档案馆和当地纳瓦霍民族历史保护部公开提供录音和录音的存款。由于人们已经对Diné bizaad（纳瓦霍语）的语音模式和单词结构有了很多了解，而且由于使用者相对较多，这种语言是研究土著语言变异的一个引人注目的候选者。CoPI是加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的一名博士生，他将对来自不同地区、不同年龄和不同语言背景的参与者进行访谈，包括单词列表、个人叙述和人种学背景问题。研究人员将与Diné bizaad演讲者团队合作，转录和翻译话语数据，以供公共存档和深入分析。这些数据将作为分析特定语言变体的基础，以及它们如何与地区、世代和Diné bizaad用法等社会因素相关联。通过对连接语音的分析，该项目将调查形态，句法和话语层面的变化，并对目标语音/音位变量进行声学分析，为正在进行的声音变化或社会语言学条件变化提供证据。特别令人感兴趣的是说话者如何使用Diné动词形态，这是出了名的复杂。基于小型土著社区的社会语言学研究相对较少，尽管现有的研究表明，这些社区提供了关于具有社会意义的变异模式的见解。此外，本研究将有助于科学地理解语言变化的内部和外部动机的变化在多个层次的语言结构。它还将揭示阿萨巴斯卡语系内的变异，该语系在形态学和音韵学理论中占有重要地位，其中包括美国西南部的成员，像阿帕契语，以及沿着太平洋海岸，阿拉斯加和加拿大的语言。

Previous linguistic research has definitively demonstrated that an unvarying speech community is an idealization. In fact, linguistic variation is an important component of the documentation of a language. That variation frequently carries social meaning, often below the level of consciousness. This project documents and analyzes such variation as found in speakers' current usage of a Native American language. 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. Regional, generational, and sociocultural diversity are all factors in the diversity of a given language, but very little linguistic variation has been documented for this language. The documentation will form the core material analyzed in a doctoral dissertation produced by the CoPI. Broader impacts include recordings and descriptions of variation, of value for language planning and the development of pedagogical materials, and a publicly available deposit of the recordings and transcriptions at the Alaska Native Language Archive at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and locally at the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department. Because much is already known about the sound patterns and word structure of Diné bizaad (Navajo), and due to the relatively large number of speakers, the language is a compelling candidate for a study of indigenous language variation. The CoPI, a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will record interviews including word lists, personal narratives, and ethnographic background questions with participants from different regions, of different ages, and with different linguistic backgrounds. The researcher will collaborate with a team of Diné bizaad speakers to transcribe and translate the discourse data for public archiving and in-depth analysis. These data will serve as the basis for an analysis of specific linguistic variants and how they correlate with social factors such as region, generation, and Diné bizaad usage. Through analysis of connected speech, this project will investigate morphological, syntactic, and discourse-level variation, and an acoustic analysis of targeted phonetic/phonological variables will provide evidence for ongoing sound change or sociolinguistically conditioned variation. Of particular interest is how speakers variably use Diné verbal morphology, which is famously complex. Sociolinguistic studies based on small indigenous communities are relatively rare, though extant studies suggest that such communities offer insights about socially meaningful patterns of variation. Further, this study will contribute to scientific understanding of language change by analyzing internally and externally motivated change at multiple levels of linguistic structure. It will also shed light on variation within the Athabaskan language family, which has figured importantly in theories of morphology and phonology, and which includes members in the Southwestern U.S., like Apache, as well as languages along the Pacific Coast, in Alaska, and in Canada.