EAGER: Collaborative Approach to the Documentation of Endangered Languages in Linguistically Diverse Locales

EAGER：在语言多样的地区记录濒危语言的协作方法

• 批准号: 1747801
• 负责人: Peter Cole
• 金额: $ 20.93万
• 依托单位: University of Delaware
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-09-01 至 2022-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1747801&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Collaborative; Approach; Documentation; Endangered

There are an estimated 7,000 languages in the world, and half of those not expected to survive into the next century. One challenge this presents is the urgent need to document languages in places where local people are shifting to national or other languages. Another challenge is finding sufficient number of trained documenters, especially in places that have many local and regional languages. As a result, there are many languages that have not been documented and whose survival is threatened. This constitutes a serious potential problem for the scientific study of the range of variation found in human language. This project will capitalize on a region where many young, educated people are taking a greater interest in their local and regional languages, and have the potential to play a major role in documenting these languages. It will increase the human resources side of this documentation bottleneck by partnering local citizen scientists who are not professional linguists or documenters of language with graduate linguistics students. Investing in the human capital takes the risk that this approach is depending on continued interest after the project in documenting these endangered languages. If this investment is successful, it could have a major impact on scientific knowledge for an area with 10% of the world's languages. Broader impacts include international research and training for graduate students, increased attention to endangered local languages, and the training of citizen scientists who participate in the production of knowledge. This project, led by a team of linguists from the University of Delaware and partner linguists in Indonesia and Japan will test out a new way to increase the involvement of young Indonesians in the documentation of their languages by creating teams of Indonesians (who are native speakers of these endangered languages) and American graduate students who hope to specialize in language documentation. Aside from the national language, Indonesian, linguists have only just begun the task of documenting Indonesian languages (recording an annotated sample and describing the language). Indonesia is estimated to have 719 or more languages, and east Indonesia is particularly rich with undocumented languages. The American and Indonesian members of the teams differ in terms of their strengths in the skills relevant to language documentation, the Indonesians having much stronger language skills and an understanding of the cultural context, and the Americans having greater technical training in linguistics and language documentation. By combining Americans and Indonesians in teams, it is hoped that the team will combine the strengths of the two groups, and, thus, will be much more successful in language documentation than either group could be individually. The project will provide field experiences in East Indonesia for two groups of American/Indonesian teams in two successive years. If this methodology does in fact seriously increase productivity and quality of documentation, it may constitute a new model for language documentation that can be applied with success to other parts of the world. Project materials will be archived at PARADISEC.

据估计，世界上有7,000种语言，其中一半预计不会存在到下一个世纪。这带来的一个挑战是，迫切需要在当地人转向使用民族语言或其他语言的地方记录语言。 另一个挑战是找到足够数量的训练有素的文件编制人员，特别是在有许多地方和区域语言的地方。 因此，有许多语言没有被记录在案，其生存受到威胁。 这对人类语言变异范围的科学研究构成了一个严重的潜在问题。该项目将利用一个地区，那里有许多受过教育的年轻人对当地和区域语言有更大的兴趣，并有可能在记录这些语言方面发挥重要作用。 它将增加这一文献瓶颈的人力资源方面，使不是专业语言学家或语言文献学家的当地公民科学家与语言学研究生结成伙伴关系。 投资于人力资本的风险在于，这种方法取决于项目结束后对记录这些濒危语言的持续兴趣。如果这项投资成功，它可能会对一个拥有世界10%语言的地区的科学知识产生重大影响。更广泛的影响包括研究生的国际研究和培训，对濒危地方语言的更多关注，以及参与知识生产的公民科学家的培训。该项目由来自特拉华州大学的语言学家团队以及印度尼西亚和日本的语言学家合作伙伴领导，将通过创建由希望专门从事语言文献工作的马来西亚人（这些濒危语言的母语者）和美国研究生组成的团队，测试一种新的方法，以增加年轻马来西亚人参与其语言文献工作。除了国语印度尼西亚语之外，语言学家们才刚刚开始记录印度尼西亚语言的任务（记录注释样本并描述语言）。 印度尼西亚估计有719种或更多的语言，印度尼西亚东部特别丰富，有许多未登记的语言。小组中的美国人和印度尼西亚人在语言文献相关技能方面的优势各不相同，印度尼西亚人的语言技能和对文化背景的理解要强得多，而美国人在语言学和语言文献方面的技术培训更高。通过将美国人和马来西亚人组成团队，希望这个团队将联合收割机结合两个群体的优势，从而在语言文献方面比任何一个群体都更成功。该项目将连续两年为两组美国/印度尼西亚团队提供印度尼西亚东部的实地经验。 如果这一方法确实能大大提高文件的生产率和质量，它可能成为语文文件编制的新模式，可成功地应用于世界其他地区。项目材料将在PARADISEC存档。