Collaborative Research: Training the next generation of Navajo language scientists

美国国会于1990年通过了《美洲原住民语言法案》，将承认美洲原住民语言的独特地位和重要性制定为政策。纳瓦霍语（也被称为din<e:1>语）比任何其他美国本土语言都有更多的使用者。这是密码讲话者的语言，他们是美国海军陆战队员，在第二次世界大战中开发并使用了一种从未被破解的密码。尽管有强大的传统，但现在很少有纳瓦霍儿童学习说这种语言，这意味着它在几代人之内就有消失的危险。语法的复杂性，是什么促成了代码？美国的安全问题使得在学校学习这门语言变得困难。该项目将从语言文献和语言分析方面培训下一代纳瓦霍族语言科学家，扩大美洲原住民对社会科学的参与。更广泛的影响还包括与语言教师合作，将纳瓦霍语法分析应用于语言教学，这将使K-12纳瓦霍课堂上的学生受益。该项目还将提高纳瓦霍技术大学（NTU）和纳瓦霍语言学院（NLA）这两个参与组织的能力。纳瓦霍技术大学是一所部落学院，提供多种教育学位，包括土著文化、语言和领导硕士学位，纳瓦霍语言学院是一家致力于纳瓦霍语科学研究的非营利性教育机构。自1997年以来一直在进行的夏季讲习班将侧重于将科学研究原则应用于纳瓦霍语，并发现其语法基础的规则和原则。该项目由NLA的语言学家Theodore Fernald博士和南大的文化人类学家Wesley Thomas博士共同指导，每年将对部落大学生、语言学学生和纳瓦霍族教师进行语言文献和分析方面的培训。学习必要的语言学、转录和注释技能将使参与的学生和语言教师能够为纳瓦霍语双语数字文本语料库创建材料，并分析示例。参与者和其他研究人员将使用语料库对语言数据进行假设，并使用语言学家使用的科学方法对语料库进行测试。语料库及其录音将可在线访问，为研究人员、教师和语言学习者提供资源。南洋理工大学的学生将在整个学年中进行语料库的分析和工作。这项计划研究的一个独特优势是，由于两代纳瓦霍语使用者都接受过语言学研究生课程的培训，学习如何从事他们语言的科学研究，并获得语言学和相关领域的博士学位，语言学家认为这种类型的场景可以对语言结构进行更深入、更丰富的研究。这些夏季研讨会提供了一个独特的场所，研究和教学纳瓦霍和迪尼（阿萨巴斯坎）语言学。专业评估人员将制定并实施评估计划，以衡量NLA和NTU课程的成功。美国国家科学基金会部落学院和大学计划（TCUP）为部落学院参与该项目提供支持。

The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The Navajo language (also called Diné) has more speakers than any other language indigenous to the United States. This is the language of the Code Talkers, United States Marines who developed and employed a code in World War II that was never broken. Despite strong traditions, very few Navajo children are now learning to speak the language which means that it is at great risk of vanishing within a few generations. The complexity of the grammar, which contributed to the code?s security, makes the language difficult to learn in schools. This project will train the next generation of Navajo Nation language scientists from in language documentation and linguistic analysis, broadening participation by Native Americans in the social sciences. Broader impacts also include working with language teachers on applying the analysis of Navajo grammar to language teaching, which will benefit students in K-12 Navajo classrooms. The project will also enhance the capacity of the two participating organizations, Navajo Technical University (NTU), a tribal college that offers a variety of educational degrees up to a master's degree in Diné Culture, Language and Leadership and the Navajo Language Academy (NLA), a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the scientific study of Navajo. Summer workshops, ongoing since 1997, will focus on applying principles of scientific research to the Navajo language and discovering the rules and principles that underlie its grammar. Co-directed by linguist Dr. Theodore Fernald from the NLA and cultural anthropologist Dr. Wesley Thomas from NTU, the project will train tribal college students, linguistics students, and Navajo Nation teachers in language documentation and analysis annually. Learning the necessary linguistics, transcription and annotation skills will enable participating students and language teachers to create materials for a bilingual Navajo digital text corpus with analyzed examples. Participants and other researchers will use the corpus to develop hypotheses about language data and to test those hypotheses against the corpus using the scientific methods employed by linguists. The corpus and its recordings will be accessible on-line to provide resources for researchers, teachers, and language learners. NTU students will engage in analysis and work with the corpus throughout the year. A unique advantage of this planned research is that it is possible because of the two generations of Navajo speakers who were trained in linguistics graduate programs on how to engage in the scientific study of their language, earning doctorates in linguistics and related fields, the type of scenario that linguists argue enables deeper and richer investigations of a language's structure. These summer workshops offer a unique venue for research and teaching Navajo and Dene (Athabaskan) linguistics. A professional evaluator will develop and implement an assessment plan to gauge the success of NLA and NTU programs. The NSF Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP)is providing support for tribal college participation in this project.