legacy materials

[Susan Penfield]

All,
Natasha makes some great points here -- among them is the fact that there is
a real
disconnect between communities who want and need linguists and linguists who
want
to work at the community level, but are often frustrated by the powers that
be at the institution they
work for.

More education is needed at the community level about what / who
can best serve their needs --understanding the difference between
theoretical linguists, descriptive
linguists, field linguists (who wear many hats) and applied linguists.
Further, how to find a linguist
who is familar with the language, or related languages -- and how to get a
good reference for a good linguist.

And, there needs to be more general support for revitalization activities
among funding agencies and institutions
alike. We all understand, I think, that documentation activities are more
well defined and exacting -- more easy
to report on and quantify. However, communities are crying out for more
support of revitalization -- both those with
'dormant' languages, those with still active languages. They need support
for teachers, materials development,
money to hire the appropriate linguist, etc...and this type of funding is
hard to come by in the amounts usually
needed. Wish I had a solution; all I can do is offer this observation: Seems
like, with more documentation projects
under way these days, that agencies should logically follow with funds to
help spin this work into materials for
revitalization....perhaps wishful thinking on my part...


Susan


On 10/28/07, Natasha L Warner <nwarner at u.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've been out of town and am just now picking up on this interesting
> discussion about analysis of existing (archival) data vs. new data
> collection.
>
> I agree with the things Bill said _if_ the language still has fluent
> speakers, which is the situation he was addressing.  (I especially
> agree about all the problems with archival data itself that he listed,
> since I work with it!)  However, if we look at the bigger picture of
> archival data vs./and new data collection across languages, there is
> another issue.  I work on revitalization of a dormant California language,
> Mutsun, through archival data.  There hasn't been a fluent speaker since
> 1930, but the community has been working on revitalization since 1996, and
> is making good but slow progress.
>
> For Mutusn, we desparately needed funding in order to enter thousands of
> pages of Harrington microfilm data into a database and analyze it, in
> order to make a good dictionary and teaching materials.  We've been told
> by various funding agencies that they won't fund revitalization, they'll
> only fund new data collection from living speakers.  I see a couple of
> reasons for this:  1) the idea that you have to get the data from living
> speakers while they're alive, so that's a higher priority, whereas
> existing archival data won't change, and 2) the emphasis of the field of
> linguistics on getting data to answer theoretical questions, more than to
> help the community increase use of their language. (Analysis of archival
> data might be funded for theoretical purposes, but not to run community
> language-learning workshops or to write a textbook.)
>
> I understand the motivation on point 1 (higher priority if speakers are
> elderly), but work on archival data can't just be done later, either.
> The reason is that the community, right now, has motivation, people who
> have gained skills to work on language, and just plain momentum.  It's
> cruel to tell them "Sorry, you're low priority because your language is
> already dead [we say "dormant"]), please come back in 20-30 years, because
> then maybe everybody else's language will be in as bad a shape as yours,
> and we can afford to give you the money then."  I completely understand
> that resouces for both documentation and revitalization are very, very
> limited, and one has to make choices.  However, from the position of
> applying for grants to get the data out of Harrington into usable form,
> being told that the language is dead and therefore unfundable has been
> extremely frustrating.
>
> As for the second point above, about collecting data for linguistic theory
> vs. collecting or analyzing data for the community's benefit, I really do
> believe that one gets both benefits (data for theory and for community
> use) out of analyzing a large set of archival materials, if there isn't
> any source of new data available for the language.  But many granting
> agencies just have "documentation"  as the scope of their funding mission.
> I also understand that granting agencies define what they're interested in
> funding, and of course they have every right to do so.  Again, it's just
> frustrating.
>
> By the way, we did eventually get funding to analyze the Harrington data:
> from the NEH's Preservation and Access program, which tries to make
> materials of cultural or historical importance more accessible.  Putting
> handwritten microfilmed unanalyzed field data into a database makes it
> accessible.  The grant program isn't specific to language at all.
>
> So my overall point is that in addition to considering priorities within
> one language, we should also look at how resources and energy get
> allocated across languages.  The archival analysis vs. new data decision
> is different if we look across languages, unless we're willing to tell all
> the dormant language communities to just forget about it and stop trying.
>
> Oh, one more thing:  Bill, you mention there being no shortage of
> linguists willing to work on archival data analysis.  I agree that there
> are probably more out there who would be interested in taking projects on,
> but given that revitalization work frequently is not valued by one's
> department and not counted as linguistic work toward tenure, and that many
> tribes can't afford to just hire themselves a full-time linguist, I'm not
> so sure there are so many who really would like to take on the full scope
> of a revitalization project.  If one follows it through, from digging up
> the old sources through creating a database, producing a dictionary,
> writing a textbook and other materials, collaborating with the community
> (if one isn't community oneself) on all parts of the work, getting
> funding, and figuring out with the community how to get fluency and spread
> fluency through the community, it's a lifetime project.  I don't know many
> linguists who are so interested in taking on a language to do this, while
> trying to maintain the part of their careers they get hired by a
> department for as well.  I do think there are lots more who would like to
> help out with parts of the work, though.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Natasha
>
>
> *******************************************************************************
> Natasha Warner
> Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University of Arizona
> PO Box 210028
> Tucson, AZ 85721-0028
> U.S.A.
>
> Until August 2008:
> Visiting Researcher
> Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
> PO Box 310
> 6500 AH Nijmegen
> the Netherlands
>



-- 
____________________________________________________________
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language
and Literacy (CERCLL)
Department of English (Primary)
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)
Department of Language,Reading and Culture
Department of Linguistics
The Southwest Center (Research)
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836


"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

                                                          Wade Davis...(on a
Starbucks cup...)
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