ELL: Re: technologies for Endangered Languages

[Patrick E. Marlow]

This is a first posting, so I will introduce myself:

Patrick Marlow, Assistant Professor, Alaska Native Language Center,
University of Alaska Fairbanks. My primary duties here are Native language
teacher training and Athabaskan language research. We have a couple
on-going projects directed at bilingual teacher's aides and certified
Native teachers in rural Alaska schools.

I just want to applaud both David Nash and Nick Ostler.

David Nash wrote:
>I think the key point from Nick Ostler's earlier posting (Wed, 24 Feb
>1999 14:53:29 +0000) which has not been responded to is:
>  And will people learn a language from a multimedia
>  environment that simulates the community, if they won't learn
>  it from the real community?

Exactly! It worrys me that many people seem to hold up computer-based
teaching tools as the saviour of endangered languages. We all know that
languages die because they cease to have a sphere of use. We also know that
this loss is due to a complex set of social pressures (both internal and
external). How can we honestly believe that computer-generated learning
environments and Machine Translation can hope to do what the community has
decided not to do--teach the language to the children.

I admit that there are undoubtedly cases in which a language may be
"endangered", and yet have thousands of speakers (including children) still
speaking the language. In such cases, computer generated teaching
environments might help by helping to boost prestige and thereby stemming
the tide of language abandonment. But from an Alaskan point of view these
languages are not truely endangered, not yet.

Alaskan Athabaskan languages are truely on the brink. Speakers range from
30+, 40+, 50+, and worse. Speach communities may number no more than 8-12,
or as high as 300. All dependent on the specific language and village and
how you define speech community.

Is it realistic or even ethical to say to these communities: Work with me
on this project and your children will learn your language in school from a
computer. Or are we only giving false hope and an easy way out. It is
already too common here in AK that parents pass the responsibility for
teaching the language on to the school, as if ANY school based program
could replace the original speech community!

We all know that for a language to come back from the brink, it must be
given a role in the community by the community. It takes a conscious
decision. I may be wrong, but I find it difficult to believe that Machine
Translation can hope to foster such a role, especially among traditional
peoples.

Of course the other side of the coin is the value of such research to
linguistics in general and to minority/endangered language documentation
and materials production. But that is a DIFFERENT issue from language
revitalization/maintenance, which necessarily revolves around maintaining a
speech community. Just because we have the language data fed into a
computer, or taught in school, or written down in a dictionary/grammar does
NOT mean the language is no longer endanagered, only that it is archived in
a specific way.

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Patrick E. Marlow
Assistant Professor
Alaska Native Language Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
PO Box 757680
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7680
(907) 474-7446
ffpem at aurora.alaska.edu
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