Collaborative Research: Multimedia Database of Ixil Mayan Narratives

一个可悲的事实是，一种语言的濒危往往也意味着一个民族的濒危。Ixil是一种玛雅语言，只在危地马拉北部高地的整个社区使用。剩下的大约65,000名说Ixil语的人是1980年代危地马拉内战期间对Ixil人进行种族灭绝袭击的幸存者。这个项目不仅将记录Ixil语言，还将记录Ixil人生存的重要社会背景。该文档项目的产品将是一个基于网络的Ixil对话、叙述和口述历史的多媒体数据库，其中包含叙述的文本版本以及语音和视频文件。不同的编程特性将使数据库以几种格式可访问，包括：1)技术版本包含文本的形态学和句法分析，供语言学家、人类学家、历史学家和其他对Ixil语言的学术研究感兴趣的人使用；2)面向以Ixil为母语的人、教师和学习者的版本，作为Ixil社区儿童和成人识字和历史课程的基础；3)一本关于叙事中使用的单词的字典。一个由Jule Gomez de Garcia博士、Melissa Axelrod博士和研究生Maria Luz Garcia组成的研究小组将在危地马拉的Nebaj、El Quiche和周边社区收集这些故事。Ixil妇女合作社的成员将协助抄写和分析叙述和对话材料。除了为Ixil社区提供文档外，该产品还将增加对Ixil会话和话语结构的理解，并为研究玛雅语言和文化的学生提供丰富的数据库。这些信息也将有助于语言学理论的各个方面，以理解语言结构和行为的范围和参数，因为它们反映了人类的认知功能。这项研究的实际好处是将大学生和土著社区成员纳入濒危语言记录方法的开发和实践中。

It is a sad truth that the endangerment of a language often also implies the endangerment of a population. This is true in the case of Ixil, a Mayan language spoken by entire communities only in the highlands of northern Guatemala. The remaining approximately 65,000 speakers of Ixil are the survivors of a genocidal attack upon the Ixil people that took place in the 1980s during the Guatemalan civil war. This project will serve to document not only the Ixil language but also the important social context of the survival of the Ixil people. The product of this documentation project will be a web-based, multimedia database of Ixil conversations, narratives, and oral histories containing text versions of the narratives along with voice and video files. Different programming features will render the database accessible in several formats including: 1) a technical version containing morphological and syntactic analysis of the texts intended for linguists, anthropologists, historians and others interested in the scholarly examination of the Ixil language; 2) a version intended for native speakers, teachers, and learners of Ixil, useful as the basis for curriculum for the Ixil communities' literacy and history classes for children and adults; and 3) a dictionary of the words used in the narratives. A research team consisting of Dr. Jule Gomez de Garcia, Dr. Melissa Axelrod, and graduate student Maria Luz Garcia will gather the narratives in Nebaj, El Quiche, Guatemala, and surrounding communities. Members of an Ixil women's cooperative will assist in the transcription and analysis of the narrative and conversational materials. In addition to providing documentation for the Ixil community, this product will increase understanding of the conversation and discourse structures of Ixil and provide a rich database for students of Mayan languages and cultures in general. This information will also contribute to aspects of linguistic theory dealing with an understanding of the range and parameters of linguistic structures and behaviors as they reflect human cognitive functions. The practical benefits from this research are the inclusion of university students and members of indigenous communities in the development and practice of methodologies for documenting endangered languages.