EAGER: Training and Text Collection as a Vehicle for Recruiting and Retaining Endangered Language Fieldworkers

据估计，世界上有7000种语言，语言学家预计，到本世纪末，其中至少一半的语言将消失。因此，一个关键的智力挑战是在3000种受威胁的语言停止使用之前记录语言和相关的科学知识。本项目通过对本科生研究经历（REU）风格模型的探索性修改来解决这一挑战，该模型主要针对正在或即将开始语言学研究生学习的学生。关注早期职业语言学家的目的是塑造他们的研究轨迹，并产生持续的长期研究成果，因为项目参与者在他们的研究生和研究生职业生涯中取得进步，并反过来培训其他人。该项目有可能增加美国语言学专家的数量，专注于文献不足和濒危语言，通过保持美国机构在濒危语言科学研究的前沿，提高技术能力，为国家利益服务。该项目将在实地工作方法和语言文件编制方面征聘和培训学士学位以上的语言学家。它还将招募一名博士后研究人员参与该项目。其次，该项目还将为多种未被充分记录和濒危的语言提供文献，通过对多种濒危语言的文本存档，直接推进科学知识的发展。这些文本将为研究人员提供大量相互关联的自然语音语料库，这将有助于揭示语言的语法特性，特别是那些句子结构（语法）和发音（音系）界面的语言，这已经从跨语言研究中显示出相当的复杂性。更广泛的影响包括培训和指导来自代表性不足群体的语言学家，促进国际合作，为早期职业（学士学位后和博士后）学者提供国际研究和实地考察经验。该项目由加州大学洛杉矶分校和纽约城市大学研究生中心的两名教员领导，将培养一批从事非洲语言研究的初级语言学家，并通过在加纳实地研究经验的机制，与非洲社区建立新的合作关系，从而产生实际的、高质量的语言文献。第一阶段将针对对非洲语言感兴趣的“早期职业”研究生和未来研究生，利用2018年合作语言研究所（CoLang 2018）对学生进行语言文档技术方面的培训。第二阶段将进行实践培训，参与者将直接与加纳四个濒危语言社区的成员一起工作，目标是北广语或加纳-多哥山地语。整个项目团队将与演讲者一对一合作，记录、转录、翻译和分析一系列文本，这些文本将来自许多类型，如民间故事、个人回忆、家族史和儿童故事。这些努力将在词汇、形态、句法和音系特性方面增加现有的目标语言文献，因为这些语言通常文献不足，甚至没有记录。叙述涉及语境中的言语，并且可能表现出语法-语音界面效应，以及其他感兴趣的语法结构。此外，这些文件将是重要的文化和历史资料的永久记录，在各个领域具有广泛的适用性，并作为今后语文工作的基础。

There are an estimated 7,000 languages in the world and linguists anticipate at least half of those will go silent by the end of the current century. A key intellectual challenge is thus documenting the language and associated scientific knowledge before the 3,000 threatened languages cease to be spoken. This project addresses the challenge using an exploratory modification of a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)-style model focused on students at or near the onset of graduate study in linguistics. The focus on early-career linguists is intended to shape their research trajectories and produce continuing long-term research results as the project participants advance in their graduate and post-graduate careers and in turn train others. The project has the potential to increase the number of linguistic specialists in the United States focusing on underdocumented and endangered languages, an increase in technical capacity serving the national interest by keeping U.S. institutions at the forefront of scientific research on endangered languages. The project will recruit and train post-baccalaureate linguists in fieldwork methodology and language documentation. It will also enlist a postdoctoral researcher into the project. Second, the project will also result in documentation for multiple underdocumented and endangered languages, directly advancing scientific knowledge via the archived collection of texts from multiple endangered languages. These texts will provide researchers with a large corpus of connected natural speech, which will help to reveal grammatical properties of the languages, especially those where sentence structure (syntax) and pronunciation (phonology) interface, which has been shown from cross-linguistic investigations to display considerable complexity. Broader impacts include the training and mentoring of linguists from underrepresented groups, the fostering of international collaborations, and international research and fieldwork experience for early-career (post-baccalaureate and post-doctoral) scholars. Led by two faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, this project will develop a pipeline of junior scholar linguists working on African languages and new collaborations with African communities through the mechanism of in situ field research experiences in Ghana, resulting in actual, quality language documentation. The first phase will target "early career" graduate and prospective graduate students with interests in African languages, leveraging the 2018 Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang 2018) to train students in the technical aspects of language documentation. This will be followed in the second phase by hands-on training in which the participants will work directly with members of four endangered language communities in Ghana, targeting the North Guang or Ghana-Togo Mountain languages. The entire project team will work one-on-one with speakers and record, transcribe, translate and analyze a collection of texts, which will come from a number of genres, such as folktales, personal reminiscences, family histories, and children's stories. These efforts will augment the existing literature on the targeted languages in terms of their lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological properties, as these languages are generally underdocumented, or even undocumented. Narratives involve speech in context, and are likely to show syntax-phonology interface effects, as well as other grammatical structures of interest. Moreover, the documentation will be a permanent record of important cultural and historical information, having broad applicability across fields and serving as the basis for future work on the languages.