The Chadic Languages of Yobe State, Nigeria

在国家科学基金会的支持下，尼日利亚迈杜古里大学的Russell G.Scheh博士和他的同事Alhaji Maina Gimba博士将花三年时间记录尼日利亚约贝州的五种语言。这些是博尔语、卡雷卡雷语、恩加莫语、巴德语和恩吉兹姆语，都是查迪语系的主要语言。这些语言中没有一种在完整的语法或词典中得到全面的描述，也没有任何一种语言被说话者以书面形式使用。Scheh博士和Gimba博士将培训以母语为母语的团队收集数据并用他们自己的语言转录。这些团队将从建立现有的词汇数据库和文本集合开始。目前的数据库范围从Ngamo的700-800个单词到Bole的3000多个单词。研究人员将致力于开发每种语言数千个条目的相对较大的词典。目前的课本强调民间故事。研究人员将收集新的文本，包括口述历史、对风俗和传统的描述、诗歌和歌曲以及个人叙事。新文本的来源之一将是被认为在各个领域特别有知识或技能的人的音频和视频记录的转录。该项目的目标之一将是刺激说话者用他们的母语写作。为此，该项目将向已经懂豪萨语(尼日利亚北部的通用语言)的人，特别是中学生，征集书面文本。随着文本集合的增加，它们将在当地出版，这样人们就可以在印刷品中看到自己。最终，该项目将以纸质和电子形式(光盘和可搜索的网络数据库)为每种语言编制相当大的词典，并为尼日利亚境外的受众编制供当地分发的文本集，以及纸质和电子形式的译文。同样重要的是，一个超越项目持续时间的长期成果应该是继续以书面形式对语言进行自我记录。首先，它强调词汇中编码的语言结构。这包括由动词构成名词的派生过程，使动词成为被动动词，或创造表示施事或工具的名词的派生过程；表示性别、数字、时态或确定性的屈折过程；复合创造整体意义无法从部分预测的单词组合的过程。其次，该项目对一组相关语言的记录揭示了语言历史。这些语言的词汇告诉我们，例如，哪些单词可以被重构为原始祖先语言共享的单词，单词在个别语言中的含义可能发生了怎样的变化，以及哪些单词是从其他语言中吸收的。第三，词汇也是民族生态的宝库。它包括植物、动物和自然物体的名称，以及为环境中的事物构造名称的方法(复合、单词派生等)。最后，词汇代表了文化的方方面面，包括来自各种手工艺、职业、传统和社会组织的词汇。这些文集对于研究历史和文化变迁尤为重要。所有这些问题都需要详细的文件记录和文化原住民的意见，本项目将提供这些资料和意见。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Russell G. Schuh and his colleague Dr. Alhaji Maina Gimba of the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, will spend three years documenting five languages of Yobe State, Nigeria. These are Bole, Karekare, Ngamo, Bade, and Ngizim, all major languages of the Chadic family. None of these languages has yet been described comprehensively in full grammars or dictionaries; nor is any used in written form by its speakers. Drs. Schuh and Gimba will train teams of native speakers to collect and transcribe data in their own languages. The teams will begin by building on existing lexical databases and collections of texts. Databases currently range from 700-800 words for Ngamo to over 3000 words for Bole. Researchers will work toward relatively large dictionaries of several thousand items per language. Texts currently emphasize folktales. Researchers will collect new texts, including oral history, descriptions of customs and traditions, poetry and song, and personal narrative. One source of new texts will be transcription of audio and video recordings of people recognized as being particularly knowledgable or skilled in various domains. One goal of the project will be to stimulate speakers to write in their native languages. To this end, the project will solicit texts in written form from people already literate in Hausa (the lingua franca of Northern Nigeria), particularly secondary school students. As collections of texts increase, they will be published locally so that people can see themselves in print. Ultimately the project will produce sizable dictionaries for each language in both paper and electronic form (CD and searchable web databases) and collections of texts both for local distribution and, with translations, in both paper and electronic form for an audience outside Nigeria. Not least, a long-term outcome, extending beyond the duration of the project, should be continued self-documentation of the languages in written form.This language documentation project is significant in four ways. First, it emphasizes linguistic structure that is encoded in the lexicon. This includes derivational processes that make nouns from verbs, make verbs passive, or create nouns indicating agent or instrument; inflectional processes that indicate gender, number, tense, or (in)definiteness; compounding creating word combinations whose overall meaning is not predictable from the parts. Second, the project's documenting of a group of related languages reveals language history. The lexicons of these languages tell us, for example, which words can be reconstructed as having been shared by the original ancestor language, how words may have shifted in meaning in individual languages, and which words have been adopted from other languages. Third, the lexicon is also a repository of ethnoecology. It includes names for flora, fauna, and natural objects, and means of constructing names for things in the environment (compounding, word derivation, etc.). Finally, the lexicon represents all aspects of culture, including words from the entire range of crafts, occupations, traditions, and social organization. The text collections are especially critical to the study of historical and cultural changes. All these issues require detailed documentation and input from natives of the culture, which this project will provide.