Planning Grant: Tohono O'odham Language Center

该项目支持在亚利桑那州赛尔斯的Tohono O‘odham社区学院(TOCC)发展一个语言中心的为期一年的规划拨款。这笔规划拨款将为企业发展中心(TEA)提供一个跳板，这是一个由国家科学基金会部落学院和大学伙伴计划提供的项目。该项目符合美国国会1990年通过的《美洲原住民语言法》的目标，该法案将承认美国原住民语言的独特地位和重要性纳入政策。该中心将为Tohono O‘odham Nation提供关于Tohono O’odham语言的信息交换中心，Tohono O‘odham语言是亚利桑那州和墨西哥边境两侧使用的一种濒危土著语言。该中心将为整个说话界的教师和学生提供支持，并为那些寻求教授或学习这种语言的人和/或那些对Tohono O‘odham有研究兴趣的人提供一个继续记录和开发材料资源的网站。更广泛的影响还包括加强一个部落国家的经济活动的潜力，以及扩大美洲原住民的参与，他们在包括语言学在内的所有科学领域的代表性都很低。建成后，Tohono O‘odham语言中心将为所有与解决Tohono O’odham语言濒危状态有关的智力活动提供一个中心。这包括通过培训语言记录、语言数据管理、语言存档以及适合社区在语言文件和语言教学中使用的语言处理技术，培养TOCC学生和整个社区的语言工作者的能力。在获得支持这些活动所需的适当学术资源和档案材料方面也有学术价值。这类中心将以语言和与语言有关的活动为核心，但也将是社区网络和媒体推广中心。更广泛的影响将波及所有级别的部落学院系统、整个Tohono O‘odham社区及其相关部落、整个亚利桑那州和北美各地的其他土著社区。亚利桑那州大学和州立学院、部落政府和其他负责确保土著语言未来的实体中的其他利益攸关方将注意和感受到集中语言工作以改善所有人的影响。这样的中心确实具有变革性，其愿景非常适合创建一种可复制的模式，配备最先进的设备和方法。从规划阶段开始，随着研究团队收集和分享有关字面上的建设和将被纳入的越来越多的资源的信息，将会有广泛的宣传。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project supports a one-year planning grant to develop a Language Center at Tohono O'odham Community College (TOCC) in Sells Arizona. This planning grant will provide a springboard toward a larger grant for an Enterprise Advancement Center (TEA), a program offered by the Tribal Colleges and University Partnership Program at the National Science Foundation. This project is consistent with the goals of the Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, which enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. This center would serve the Tohono O'odham Nation as a clearing house for information about the Tohono O'odham language, an endangered Indigenous language spoken on both sides of the Arizona / Mexico border. The center will provide a support for teachers and students throughout the speaking community and a site for continued documentation and development of material resources for those seeking to teach or learn the language and / or for those with research interests related to the Tohono O'odham. Broader impacts also include the potential to enhance economic activity for a tribal nation, and to broaden participation for Native Americans, who are underrepresented in all the sciences, including linguistics.When completed, the Tohono O'odham Language Center will provide a hub for all intellectual activity related to addressing the endangered status of the Tohono O'odham language. This includes building the capacity of students at TOCC and language workers throughout the community through training in language recording, language data management, language archiving, and in language-processing technology appropriate for community use in both language documentation and language teaching. There is also intellectual merit in the securing of appropriate academic resources and archival materials needed to support these activities. A center of this type will have language and language-related activities at its core, but will also be a center for community networking and media outreach. The broader impacts will ripple throughout the tribal college system at all levels, throughout the Tohono O'odham community and its related tribes, throughout other Indigenous communities in Arizona and around North America. Other stakeholders within Arizona Universities and state colleges, in tribal government and other entities charged with ensuring a future for Indigenous languages, will notice and feel the effects of centralizing language work for the betterment of all. Such a center is truly transformative and the vision is very much geared toward creating a replicable model, complete with state-of-the-art equipment and methods. There will be wide-ranging publicity from the planning stages onward as the research team gathers and shares information about the literal construction and the growing list of resources that will be included.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.