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--></style><title>Endangered Language Fund Grants for
2002</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Times" size="+2" color="#000000">Twelve ELF Grants
Awarded in 2002<br>
The Endangered Language Fund is pleased to announce its grants for
2002. There were some coincidences in the number this year.
We had 50 applications, 25 from U. S. institutions and 25 from
others. We were able to fund 12 in total, and half were from U.
S. institutions. As you will see, much of the work (even for the
U. S.-based proposals) happens to be outside the U. S. this year.
The rich and relatively undescribed Amazonian area received some
deserved attention. Five proposals deal with South American
languages, while four are based in North America. The others
bring in Europe, Asia (Siberia) and the Pacific (Papua New Guinea).
Once again, it was a difficult task to select such a small number from
such an impressive pool of proposals. It is only thanks to the
generosity of our members that we are able to offer these grants at
all. So, thanks to all of you who have donated; please visit our
website for more information on joining the ELF
(http://www.ling.yale.edu/~elf/join.html).<br>
<br>
Valerio Luciani Ascencio (Kawki) - Preservation of the Kawki
language. Luciani is the youngest fluent speaker of Kawki, a
Jaqui language of Peru. Luciani spoke Kawki until he went to
school, where he was forced to switch to Spanish. "This
seemed very strange to me and I felt very sad because I did not use my
own language. Thus, little by little, I was forgetting it, and I
liked Spanish," Luciani writes. Today, he is teaching about
40 children in Cachuy. His ELF grant will purchase supplies and
printing for the materials that he uses in these classes. The
material will help, but the largest contribution will continue to come
form Luciani's own efforts.<br>
<br>
Susan Doty (Creek Tribe) - Muskogee Creek language traditional
song preservation. The songs used in Creek Indian churches are
part of a strong tradition, but these days, the songbooks are getting
smaller and smaller. The more complicated, meaningful songs are
being lost to simpler, repetitive tunes that are easier to learn. Doty
will use her ELF grant to visit as many churches in Oklahoma as
possible, recording songs in a clear, strong voice so that the words
are easier to learn.<br>
<br>
Thomas McIlwraith, Regina Louie, Angela Dennis and Sally Havard (Iskut
First Nations) - Talking to the animals: Tahltan-language animal
stories and forms of address. Tahltan is a critically endangered
Athapaskan language spoken by fewer than one hundred adults in British
Columbia. The texts that will be collected in this project will
serve linguistic, ethnolinguistic and pedagogical goals, supporting
the existing efforts in the schools and bring more awareness to the
community at large.<br>
<br>
Maximilian Viatori (U. California, Davis) - A practical Zapara
phonology and morphology. Zapara is spoken in the rainforest
province of Pastaza in eastern Ecuador. There are currently
three fluent speakers of Zapara and several others who remember songs
and words, but cannot converse in the language. Viatori will help
determine possible genetic relationships and provide materials for the
reintroduction of Zapara into the curriculum of schools in five
communities.<br>
<br>
Rosalind Williams (Splatsin Tribe) -- Creation of Secwepenc
Wordlist 2002. The Splatsin are one of the seventeen tribes that
make up the Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation in British Columbia.
There are sixteen remaining speakers fluent in the eastern dialect of
this Salishan language, and there are four nearly fluent learners of
the language (including Williams) who have been mentored by the
elders. Their current word lists were found to have been
documented for a single meaning or situation. Williams will help
fill in the gaps and will record the fluent speakers saying the words
as well.<br>
<br>
Naomi Nagy (U. New Hampshire) - Preserving Faetar in the school.
Faetar, a variant of the Francoprovençal, is a language spoken in
two small, mountaintop villages in southern Italy: Faeto and Celle St.
Vito. Because of a small migration from eastern France to
southern Italy about 600 years ago, Francoprovençal survives as
Faetar. Nagy will help develop an orthography to allow Faetar to
gain a foothold in the schools and help keep it alive within the
community.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="+2" color="#000000"><br>
Chris Beier and Lev Michael (U. Texas, Austin) - Iquito language
documentation project. The last remaining Iquito community is
San Antonio in the Amazon Basin of Peru. Recently, the community
has developed a serious interest in starting a language revitalization
project. In cooperation with Cabeceras, a US-based group
dedicated to providing resources to indigenous Amazonian communities
in defending their health, well-being, and autonomy, Beier and Michael
have devised a revitalization program. They will simultaneously
document the language and train the speakers themselves as linguists,
allowing work to continue at a scale not possible for outsiders.<br>
<br>
Gessiane Lobato Picanço (U. British Columbia) - Documentation of
Kuruaya, a moribund language of Brazil. Kuruaya, a language of
the Munduruku family of Tupi stock, has only five elderly speakers
remaining, and they no longer use Kuruaya in their daily lives.
Since the description of the language is so sketchy, basic work with
word lists, texts and paradigms will be undertaken first. Copies
of all material will be made available to the Kuruaya people , local
institutions and other collaborators.<br>
<br>
Nikolai Vakhtin (European U. at St. Petersburg) - Siberian Yupik
Eskimo conversation book. When Yupik Eskimo was introduced into
the Siberian school curriculum in the 1930s, all the children spoke it
as their mother tongue and had only to learn how to write and read
it. After 60 years of demographic, social and economic pressure,
formal education, and residential schooling, the situation has changed
drastically. Now, school-age children speaker almost only
Russian and learn their ethnic language at school as a foreign
language from teachers who themselves often do not know the language
very well. The language situation is somewhat better on the U.S.
side of the Bering Strait, where most children on St. Lawrence Island
now speak the language. With the lifting of the Iron Curtain, it
is now possible for Yupiks to visit their relatives on either side.
Ironically, the only common language now is Yupik, even though the
Russians speak it haltingly or only listen to it. This
unexpected promotion of Yupic to the status of an international
language contributes considerably to its prestige and has spurred the
Siberian Yupiks to learn it better. Vakhtin proposes to take
material from his 30 years of work on the language to make booklets
for those who are traveling to the U.S. and are now in need of a
"Berlitz" for Yupik.<br>
<br>
Pamela Bunte and Nikole Lobb (California State U., Long Beach) - Using
San Juan Southern Paiute narratives in a language revitalization
program. The San Juan Paiute tribe, the easternmonst of ten
Southern Paiute tribes, is located in Arizona and Utah on the Navajo
reservation, with about 30 of the 300 tribal members being fluent
speakers; only one child (a four-year-old) is learning it. The
tribe set up a language revitalization program that will include short
immersion camps. Southern Paiute traditional narratives are
culturally important as they express Paiute world view and traditional
lifeways. Bunte plans to record on videotape both the telling of
some of these stories and some dramatizations using puppets, both for
use in the immersion camps.<br>
<br>
Connie Dickinson (U. Oregon) - Tsafiki dictionary project.
Tsafiki (Colorado) is spoken by about 2000 Tsachila living on seven
communes situated at the western base of the Andes near the city of
Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador. While the language is
not in imminent danger and children are still learning it, the
Tsachila are under tremendous pressure from the dominant Spanish
culture, and their way of life is undergoing rapid change. Work
on a dictionary has begun with the help of PIKITSA, an indigenous
institution dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the
Tsachila (Colorados) language and culture. The communities are
looking forward to having a dictionary to use in their fight to
maintain their language.<br>
<br>
Doug Marmion (Australian National U.) - Wutung language maintenance
and literacy development. Wutung is a small coastal village in
the far north-west of Papua New Guinea, lying immediately adjacent to
the border with Indonesia. Sandaun Province is an area of great
linguistic diversity, being home to approximately 110 languages in
eight genetically distinct families, along with three isolates.
Of these languages, none has yet been described in detail, although
there are partial descriptions of perhaps half a dozen. Marmion
will collect as many texts as feasible, including those that deal with
traditional culture, which is also threatened. Texts will be
selected to be made into books to be printed in Australia and sent
back for use in the school and by the general community.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="+2" color="#000000"><br>
The Endangered Language Fund<br>
Dept. of Linguistics, Yale University<br>
P. O. Box 208366<br>
New Haven, CT 06520-8366</font><br>
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<div>Doug Whalen (whalen@haskins.yale.edu)<br>
Haskins Laboratories<br>
270 Crown St.<br>
New Haven, CT 06511<br>
203-865-6163, ext. 234<br>
FAX: 203-865-8963<br>
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/</div>
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