Documentation of Walman, Poko-Rawo, Sreenge and Yeri [ISO 639 van; rwa; lsr; yev]

世界上大约六分之一的语言在巴布亚新几内亚和印度尼西亚的巴布亚省使用，巴布亚省占新几内亚岛西部的三分之一。在巴布亚新几内亚的许多地区，以英语为基础的克里奥尔语正在取代乡村语言，因为跨地区接触的增加增加了对共同语言的需求。因此，许多语言正濒临灭绝，但新几内亚的大多数语言都没有被完全描述过。Lea Brown博士和Matthew Dryer博士（布法罗大学）将继续完成对Walman （Torricelli的一种语言）的详细描述，继续他们对Poko-Rawo （Sko的一种语言）的研究，最终目标是产生一种语言的简短描述，并开始研究另外两种Torricelli语言，Sreenge和Yeri。对于所有这些语言，文档将包括语法描述、词典和材料存档，包括数字音频格式的文本。托里拆利语系有48种语言，是世界上第17大语系，但却是文献记载最少的语系之一：这些语言中只有一种有专著长度的描述。这个项目将再生产两部，并开始制作第三部。除了在语言灭绝之前记录它们之外，记录一个缺乏记录的家族的语言可以帮助我们理解人类语言的可能性。布朗博士和德雷尔博士对沃尔曼的研究已经记录了一个非常不寻常的特性：用于连接两个名词短语（如“the man and the woman”）的and是一个动词，第一个连词为主语，第二个连词为宾语。除了记录这些语言之外，Brown博士和Dryer博士还将开发这些语言的正字法，并与社区合作，获得政府对这些正字法的批准，从而使社区能够用乡村语言开设小学。

Approximately one sixth of the languages of the world are spoken in Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian province of Papua, which constitutes the western third of the island of New Guinea. In many areas of Papua New Guinea, the English-based creole Tok Pisin is replacing the village languages as greater contact across areas has increased the need for a common language. As a result, many languages are becoming endangered, yet most of the languages of New Guinea are completely undescribed. Dr. Lea Brown and Dr. Matthew Dryer (University at Buffalo) will continue and complete a detailed description of Walman (a Torricelli language), continue their work on Poko-Rawo (a Sko language), with the ultimate goal of producing a short description of the language, and begin work on two other Torricelli languages, Sreenge and Yeri. For all these languages, documentation will include a grammatical description, a dictionary, and archiving their materials, including texts in digital audio format. The Torricelli family, with 48 languages, is the seventeenth largest language family in the world, but one of the least documented: only one of these languages has a monograph-length description. This project will produce two more, and begin work on a third. Apart from documenting languages before they become extinct, documenting languages in a poorly documented family can contribute to our understanding of what is possible in human language. Dr. Brown's and Dr. Dryer's research on Walman has already documented one very unusual property: the word for 'and' used to conjoin two noun phrases (as in 'the man and the woman') is a verb, with the first conjunct as subject, the second as object. In addition to documenting these languages, Dr. Brown and Dr. Dryer will be developing orthographies for these languages and working with the communities to obtain government approval of these orthographies that will make it possible for the communities to have elementary schools conducted in the village languages.