Linguistic and Documentation Training for Long Island Algonquian to Support Native American Community Language Researchers

1990年的《美洲原住民语言法案》将承认美洲原住民语言的独特地位和重要性制定为国家政策。目前，长岛（ALI）和附近的新英格兰南部大陆的土著阿尔冈琴语的文献来源是支离破碎的，极具挑战性，需要仍然相当缺乏深入的语言学专业知识，才能使它们真正适用于学者和教师。该项目由一位土著社区成员（Unkechaug）博士研究员、知名社区语言活动人士和一位经验丰富的阿尔冈琴语语言学家共同设计，将通过研讨会使阿尔冈琴语分析和文档的核心工具真正触手可及。阿尔冈昆语的语言结构是出了名的复杂，例如，动词与主语和宾语都一致（与英语相比，英语只显示主谓一致），并且进一步依赖于该一致系统中主语和宾语的活力层次。项目活动将采用较少技术性的方法，结合语言学研究和语言振兴，开发一个经过充分分析和注释的ALI材料数据库。更广泛的影响包括增加土著美国人对语言科学的参与，并支持社区语言振兴。此外，这项研究成果将完全公开，支持相关阿尔冈琴人团体的工作以及与当地K-12系统的现有合作，即使它使ALI社区参与者将这项（及相关）研究作为一项长期的社区努力向前推进。该数据库将为参与的Unkechaug、Shinnecock、Montaukett和Mohegan社区提供长期、可持续的语言研究基础设施。它还将为通用（和阿尔冈琴语特定的）语言数字文档和数据分析的基础设施以及其他仍然无法使用当前形式的ALI材料的领域做出重大贡献。12个月的讲习班将提供有关档案和语言数据管理、语音学/音韵学、形态句法/形态语义学、历史重建和其他注释档案文件的相关语言技能方面的非技术性但严格的培训，所有这些都将作为开发初步ALI数据库的实际工作。对参与者的入职、项目中期和离职访谈以及培训演示和内容本身的分析，提供了一套关于该研究人员培训方法的结果和整体有效性的最终报告和建议。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The 1990 Native American Languages Act enacted into national policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. Currently, the documentary sources for the indigenous Algonquian languages of Long Island (ALI) and the nearby Southern New England mainland are fragmented and highly challenging, demanding still quite scarce in-depth linguistic expertise to make them of real practical use to scholars and teachers. Collaboratively designed by an indigenous community-member (Unkechaug) Ph.D. researcher, established community language activists, and an experienced Algonquianist linguist, this project will use workshops to make the core tools of Algonquian language analysis and documentation genuinely accessible. Algonquian linguistic structure is notoriously complex, for example, verbs that agree with both subjects and objects (as compared to English, which only displays subject-verb agreement), and further depends on a hierarchy of animacy in subjects and objects in that agreement system. Using a less technical approach, and integrating linguistic research and language revitalization, project activities will develop a richly analyzed and annotated database of ALI materials. Broader impacts include increased participation in the language sciences by Native Americans and support for community language revitalization. Moreover, this research product will be entirely public, supporting work by related Algonquian groups and an existing collaboration with the local K-12 system, even as it sets up the ALI community participants to carry this (and related) research forward as a long-term community effort.This database developed in this award will generate long-term, sustainable linguistic research infrastructure for the participating Unkechaug, Shinnecock, Montaukett, and Mohegan communities. It will also contribute substantially to the infrastructure of general (and Algonquian-specific) linguistic digital documentation and data analysis, and other fields still unable to use current-form ALI materials. Twelve monthly workshops will offer detechnicalized but rigorous training in the relevant essentials of archival and linguistic data-management, phonetics/phonology, morphosyntax/morphosemantics, historical reconstruction, and other relevant linguistic skills for annotating archival documents, all applied as hands-on work developing the preliminary ALI database. Analysis of entry, mid-project, and exit interviews with participants, and of the training presentation and content itself, provides a final set of reports and recommendations regarding the outcomes and overall effectiveness of this researcher training methodology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.