Understanding spatial determiners, complex predicates, and case marking through traditional narratives in endangered languages

记录濒危语言计划的主要目标是创建彻底的可访问的视听文件和描述濒临灭绝的语言。它旨在在信息永久丢失之前捕捉每种语言的语言特征，打开一扇了解人类思维能力以及语言独特的文化，地理和社会环境的窗口。目前的项目有助于通过彻底记录两个相邻的相关语言，Matngele和MalakMalak，在偏远的北方澳大利亚。Lenore格勒诺布尔和多萝西娅霍夫曼，经验丰富的语言文献学家从芝加哥大学，将创建一个注释数据库，其中将包括土著历史和个人的叙述，自然对话，并从有针对性的启发数据。 他们将创建一个丰富的语料库，用于调查一系列的语法特征，特别是空间限定词，复杂的谓语顺序，和语法代理人和病人的形态标记。 澳大利亚土著语言的历史叙事深深植根于景观和环境特征。 在这些叙述中，景观特征是语法的固有元素，并在大量使用指示和空间限定词、覆盖词和后缀中表达。叙事的结构是由空间顺序和情节边界的运动描述决定的。 MalakMalak和Matngele叙述和其他自发的语音样本也是可选的作格/绝对格标记句法结构的优秀数据来源，该句法结构受韵律，信息结构和话语环境的影响。类似地，人们发现关于复杂谓词的信息，其顺序不是固定的，而是潜在地由信息结构决定的。也有少量的可选名量词，其使用受到话语限制。 最后，Malak-Malak和Matngele两个部落长期以来一直在文化和语言上保持密切接触。独特的讲故事技巧和双语能力在这个环境中提供了在高度多样化的多语言和多文化环境中语言和文学接触的独特见解。通过让演讲者、当地学校和不再积极使用语言的成年人参与进来，拟议的项目可能能够鼓励两种语言的复兴进程。 可从伦敦大学的濒危语言档案馆和太平洋和区域濒危文化数字资源档案馆查阅该项目的文件材料。

The primary goal of the Documenting Endangered Languages program is to create thorough accessible audio-visual documentation and description of languages dangerously close to extinction. It aims to capture, before the information is permanently lost, the linguistic features of each language, opening a window into the capabilities of the human mind, as well as the language's unique cultural, geographic, and social setting. The current project contributes to this goal by thoroughly documenting two neighboring related languages, Matngele and MalakMalak, spoken in remote northern Australia.Lenore Grenoble and Dorothea Hoffman, experienced language documenters from the University of Chicago, will create an annotated database which will include indigenous historical and personal narratives, natural conversation, and data from targeted elicitation. They will create a rich corpus useful in investigating a range of grammatical features, especially spatial determiners, complex predicate ordering, and morphological marking of grammatical agents and patients. Historical narratives from the indigenous languages of Australia are deeply rooted in landscape and environmental features. In these narratives, landscape features are inherent elements of the grammar and are expressed in substantial uses of deictic and spatial determiners, coverbs, and suffixes. The very structure of the narratives is determined by spatial ordering and the use of motion descriptions at episode boundaries. MalakMalak and Matngele narratives and other spontaneous speech samples are also excellent sources of data for optional ergative/absolutive case-marking syntactic structure that is governed by prosody, information structure, and discourse environment. Similarly, one finds information on complex predicates whose ordering is not fixed but also potentially determined by information structure. There are also a small number of optional noun classifiers whose usage is subject to discourse constraints. Finally, the two tribes of MalakMalak and Matngele have been in close cultural and linguistic contact for a long time. Unique storytelling techniques and bilingualism in this setting offer exceptional insight into language and literary contact in a highly diverse multilingual and multicultural setting.By involving, speakers, local schools, and adults no longer actively speaking the languages, the proposed project may be able to encourage revitalization processes of both languages. Documentary materials from this project will be accessible from the Endangered Languages Archive at the University of London and at the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures.