Collaborative Research: Recording Toponyms to Document the Endangered Hopi Language [hop]

在国家科学基金会记录濒危语言方案的资助下，亚利桑那大学和美国自然历史博物馆正在与霍皮部落合作记录地名（地名），作为记录濒危霍皮语的一种手段。虽然大多数超过50岁的霍皮人学习霍皮语作为他们的第一语言，并保持流利，但今天只有不到5%的霍皮人在19岁以下说这种语言。随着资深发言人的去世，地名知识及其所代表的文化习俗正在消失。该项目将利用数字音频和视频文件制作地名词典，以保存霍皮族土著人发音的地名。这些地名将使用霍皮部落制定的标准正字法转录。每个地名的文化、社会、历史和地理信息将记录在地理信息系统数据库中。在本项目期间将记录的地名是一个强有力但研究不足的语言领域。在霍皮语中，涉及文化和历史秩序的重要思想和过程被本地化，在景观中纪念，并通过地名索引。事件发生在特定的地方：对事件的理解是嵌入在地名中的，所以需要对这些地方的知识和对地名的理解来充分记录霍皮语和历史。该项目的工作假设是，霍皮人有一个系统的地方和地方命名理论，但没有得到学术理解所必需的学术关注。这一研究项目将阐明霍皮地名的基础理论，以建立一套可与其他土著社区地名系统相比较的知识体系。虽然霍皮族在过去的125年里一直是大量民族志研究的主题，但相对较少的工作记录了形态学，语音学，词源学，意义和地名的使用。该项目记录的信息将提供有关霍皮文化传播、道德教育以及文化景观和身份之间的象征联系的重要语言学和人类学信息。这些信息对于了解Uto-Aztecan语系的发展非常重要。记录地名还将为今后部落语言保护方案和保留地课程开发提供重要信息，从而有助于在霍皮青年中传播霍皮语言和文化知识。保存有关霍皮地名的知识将增加公众对霍皮历史的了解，因为它与西南部的地理有关。

With funding from the NSF Documenting Endangered Language Program, the University of Arizona and the American Museum of Natural History are collaborating with the Hopi Tribe to record toponyms (place names) as a means of documenting the endangered Hopi language. While most Hopis over the age of fifty learned Hopi as their first language, and remain fluent, today less that 5% of Hopis younger than nineteen speak the language. As senior speakers pass away, knowledge of toponyms and the cultural practices they encode is being lost. The project will produce a lexicon of toponyms using digital audio and video files to preserve the sounds of the names vocalized by native speakers of Hopi. These place names will be transcribed using a standard orthography developed by the Hopi Tribe. Cultural, social, historical, and geographical information about each place name will be documented in a geographic information systems database. The toponyms to be documented during this project constitute a potent and understudied linguistic domain. In Hopi discourse, important ideas and processes involving cultural and historical order are localized, commemorated in the landscape, and indexed by place names. Events happened at particular places: an understanding of events is embedded in place names, so knowledge of those places and an understanding of place-names are needed to fully document Hopi language and history. The working hypothesis for the project is that the Hopi have a systematic theory of place and place-naming that has not received the scholarly attention necessary for scholarly comprehension. This research project will articulate a grounded theory of Hopi toponyms to create a body of knowledge can be compared to systems of place-naming in other indigenous communities. Although Hopi has been the subject of substantial ethnographic research over the last 125 years, there has been relatively little work that documents the morphology, phonology, etymology, meaning, and use of toponyms. The information documented by this project will provide significant linguistic and anthropological information about Hopi cultural transmission, moral instruction, and symbolic links between cultural landscapes and identity. This information is important for understanding the development of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Documenting place names will also provide important information for future use in tribal language preservation programs and reservation curriculum development, thus helping to disseminate Hopi linguistic and cultural knowledge among Hopi youth. Preserving knowledge about Hopi place names will increase public understanding of Hopi history as it relates to the geography of the Southwest.