Strengthening Capacity in Dynamic Language Infrastructure for Tribal Nations

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One important dimension of carrying out scientific investigation is having the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) needed to carry out these activities, that is, infrastructure. Diversity of scientific investigators is another important investigation. As scientists have included women or people of color, different research questions, assumptions or epistemological frameworks increased fundamental knowledge about a host of fields, ranging from biology to medicine to engineering. This award will enable a conference, and associated meetings, to provide training opportunities and establish partnerships between members of Native American groups and linguists with grant experience in order to help increase submissions and successful awards in the language sciences for projects led by Native American principal investigators, especially those based at Native American institutions. In doing so, it will strengthen capacity in language infrastructure for tribal nations, as well as diversify the pool of investigators (and the research questions and epistemologies) to advance fundamental knowledge in the language sciences. Project activities will broaden participation of Native Americans in linguistics, as well as build economic and scientific opportunities for Native Americans.Native American languages have led to significant intellectual contributions in our understanding of what language is, its systematicity, and the diversity of human language in all areas of linguistic theory. Beyond that, they have provided crucial information to other sciences, such as archaeology, where language data is placed alongside other kinds of data in order to reconstruct human prehistory, and cultural anthropology. The nature of the project is such that it will lead to the creation of proposals focused on questions largely shaped by Native Americans. The insights of such PIs about their languages and cultures are likely to lead them to focus on important research on topics that have been neglected by outside scholars and, thereby, expand the range of scientific advances that can be supported by research on Native American languages. This will allow Native American theories of language to inform linguistic theory in much the same way that data from Native American languages has, which has transformative potential for the study of language.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.