Phonological Analysis of Indigenous Languages of Eastern Bolivia

这项NSF的拨款将资助PI的工作，记录和分析玻利维亚东部低地土著语言的声音模式。这个地区，也被称为亚马逊，是一个丰富多样的民族地区，超过25个不同的土著群体一直在努力保持他们祖先的语言的日常使用。为此，近年来在玻利维亚开展了国际支持的双语教育项目，其中部分儿童将接受西班牙语（地理上占主导地位的语言）和部分社区传统印第安语的教育。这些项目的领导者们试图让北美和欧洲的语言学家作为顾问参与正在进行的努力，以创造语言学上的知识材料（如语法、字典、读本），这些材料可以用来用土著语言教育儿童。作为我们作为顾问工作的交换，该项目的PI和其他语言学家正在获得研究各种土著语言的机会，以造福北美学术界。由于玻利维亚东部的大多数语言迄今尚未得到充分的研究，作为这个项目的一部分将要获得的详细资料预计将有助于语言学家从结构的角度了解人类语言是什么样的；世界不同地区使用的语言之间存在的异同；这些信息可能会告诉我们语言系统的认知基础。在刚刚描述的正在进行的研究中，PI的角色与她作为音位学家的经验有关，音位学家分析人类语言中声音结构的各个方面，从使用的辅音和元音的基本清单，到在运行的语音中施加在它们身上的重音和语调轮廓。国家科学基金会授予的资金将用于支付前往玻利维亚进行研究和数据采集的相关费用；购买分析这些语言发音结构所需的设备；聘请北卡罗莱纳大学的一名研究生协助进行分析（该学生培训的一个有价值的方面）；参加学术会议以展示这项工作的成果；并协助准备在学术期刊和公众更容易接触到的杂志上发表的作品，如《科学》。

This NSF grant will fund the PI's work in documenting and analyzing the sound patterns of indigenous languages of Bolivia's eastern lowland. This region, also called Amazonia, is a rich and ethnically diverse area where more than twenty-five distinct indigenous groups engage in an ongoing struggle to preserve the routine, every-day use of their ancestral languages. To this end, recent years have witnessed internationally-supported efforts to develop bilingual education programs in Bolivia in which children will be educated partly in Spanish (the geographically dominant language) and partly in the traditional indian language of their communities. Leaders of such programs have sought to involve North American and European linguists as consultants in ongoing efforts to create linguistically informed materials (such as, grammars, dictionaries, readers) that can be used to educate children in indigenous languages. In exchange for our labor as consultants, the PI for this project and other linguists are gaining the opportunity to study a variety of indigenous languages for purposes that benefit the North American scholarly community. As most languages of eastern Bolivia are understudied to date, the detailed information to be acquired as part of this project is expected to contribute to linguists' understanding of what human languages are like from a structural point of view; the similarities and differences that exist between languages spoken in diverse regions of the world; and what this information might tell us about the cognitive underpinnings of our linguistic systems. The PI's role in the ongoing research just described is tied to her experience as a phonologist--a linguist who analyzes aspects of sound structure in human languages, from the basic inventories of consonants and vowels used, to the stress and intonation contours imposed upon them in running speech. The funds awarded by NSF will be used to cover costs associated with travel to Bolivia for stu dy and data acquisition; to purchase equipment needed to analyze sound structures in these languages; to employ a graduate student at the University of North Carolina to assist in this analysis (a valuable aspect of that student's training); for travel to scholarly conferences at which the results of this work may be presented; and to assist in preparing work for publication in scholarly journals and in magazines more accessible to the general public, such as Science.