Federal Agencies Partner to Document Endangered Languages (fwd)

Sat May 7 21:33:45 UTC 2005

Federal Agencies Partner to Document Endangered Languages

Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH) announced the recipients of 13 fellowships and
26 institutional grants as part of the agencies' joint Documenting
Endangered Languages (DEL) project—a new, multi-year effort to
digitally archive at-risk languages before they become extinct. Experts
estimate that almost half of the world's 6000-7000 existing languages
are endangered. The DEL awards, totaling $4.4 million, will support the
digital documentation of more than 70 of them.

i-Newswire, 2005-05-06 - "Endangered languages are an irreplaceable
source of linguistic and cognitive information," according to NSF
Director Arden L. Bement, Jr. "Modern cyberinfrastructure tools enable
us to investigate these phenomena more exactly and more
comprehensively."

The DEL grants support a variety of researchers and reflect efforts to
document dying languages around the globe. For example, the Museum of
the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, N.C. was awarded a grant to translate
and digitize 19th-century Cherokee language materials from the
Smithsonian Institution. Scientists at Cornell and Northern Arizona
Universities will gather ultrasound and airflow data to determine just
how the "click" sounds of South Africa's N/u language are produced.
Only 13 fluent N/u speakers remain.  Kristine Stenzel from the
University of Colorado will document and analyze Piratapuyo--an Amazon
language that uses an extremely rare word order: Object-Verb-Subject.

Researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks will digitize 1,000
Yup'ik audio recordings for storage at the Arctic Region Supercomputing
Center and assess the feasibility of creating a Northern Indigenous
Languages Archive for the region's 200 endangered languages. Three DEL
fellowship awardees will independently document several endangered
Austronesian languages--including ones spoken in Taiwan, the
Philippines and on Easter Island. On Easter Island, use of Rapa Nui
declined from 77 percent to 7.5 percent among elementary school
children over a 20-year period.

"This is a rescue mission to save endangered languages," says NEH
Chairman Bruce Cole of the DEL program. "Language is the DNA of a
culture, and it is the vehicle for the traditions, customs, stories,
history, and beliefs of a people. A lost language is a lost culture.
Fortunately, with the aid of modern technology and these federal funds,
linguistic scholars can document and record these languages before they
become extinct."

A complete listing of this year's awards follows.

Institutional grants:

Jonathan Amith, Gettysburg College, Guerrero Nahuatl Language
Documentation and Lexicon Enrichment Project $299,917 ( NSF )

Melissa Axelrod, University of New Mexico, Nambe Tewa Language
Revitalization Project: Production of an Electronic Archive, $203,840 (
NSF )

Lyle Campbell, University of Utah, Xinkan, Pipil and Mocho': Bringing
Three Endangered Language Documentation Projects to Completion,
$374,932 ( NSF )

Peter Cole, University of Delaware, Traditional Jambi Malay, $185,585 (
NSF )

Lise Dobrin, University of Virginia, Arapesh Grammar and Digital
Language Archive, $225,000 ( NEH )

Barbara Duncan, Cherokee Museum, Smithsonian Cherokee Language Materials
and Language revitalization, $166,274 ( NEH )

Keri Edwards, Sealaska Heritage, Continuing Tlingit Language
Documentation, $266,224 ( NSF )

Zygmunt Frajzyngier, University of Colorado, Grammars of Mandara and
Giziga, $239,999 ( NSF )

Jule Garcia, California State University, San Marcos, Multimedia
Database of Ixil Mayan Narratives, $160,000 ( NSF )

John Goldsmith, University of Chicago, Digital Preservation of
Meso-American Linguistic Archives, $141,516 ( NEH )

Heidi Harley, University of Arizona, The Morphosyntax of Verbs in
Arizona Yaqui, $159,992 ( NSF )

Charles Hofling, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Comparative
and Historical Yukatekan Maya, $101,971 ( NSF )

Gary Holton, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Developing a Northern
Indigenous Languages Archive: Yup'ik Pilot Project, $39,186 ( NSF )

Thomas Hudak, Arizona State University, Documentation and
Archival-Digitization of Tai Linguistic Data, $69,456 ( NSF )

Larry Hyman, University of California Berkeley, Documentation and
Description of the Badiaranke Language, $17,767 ( NEH )

Richard Littlebear, Dull Knife Memorial College, Northern Cheyenne
Endangered Language Project, $100,000 ( NSF )

Daniel Miller, Ironbound Films, Inc., Vanishing Voices, $502,730 ( NSF )

Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen, Cornell University, Collaborative Research:
Descriptive and Theoretical Studies of N|u, $14,452 ( NSF )

Susan Penfield, University of Arizona, Mohave and Chemehuevi Language
Documentation Project, $200,000 ( NSF )

Margaret Reynolds, Linguistic Society of America, Archiving Endangered
Languages: Communication Among Competing Approaches and Education in
Best Practices, $25,000 ( NSF )

Bonny Sands, Northern Arizona University, Collaborative Research:
Descriptive and Theoretical Studies of N|u  $6,970

Joel Sherzer, University of Texas at Austin, DELAMAN 3: The Third Annual
Meeting of the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network,
$15,950

Kathy Sikorski, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Pedagogical Grammar of
Gwich'in, $103,947 ( NSF )

Siri Tuttle, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Lower Tanana Dictionary and
Literacy, $109,772 ( NSF )

Gregory Ward, Linguistic Society of America, Challenge Grant: Ensuring
the Teaching of Research Skills for the Documentation and
Revitalization of Endangered Languages ( Kenneth Hale Memorial Chair ),
$40,000 ( NEH, NSF )

Natasha Warner, University of Arizona, Database of Mutsun, an Extinct
California American-Indian Language, $168,261 ( NEH )

Fellowships:

Luis Barragan, Documenting Mountain Pima Traditional Narratives

Phillip Cash Cash, A Filmic Language Documentation of Nez Perce and
Sahaptin

Erin Debenport, Documenting Southern Tiwa at Sandia Pueblo, New Mexico

Adrienne Dwyer, University of Kansas, Language Contact and Variation: A
Discourse-based Grammar of Monguor

Andrei Filtchenko, Rice University, Documentation of the Endangered
Eastern Khanty Dialects

Nicholas Hopkins, Digitizing and Archiving of Mesoamerican Language
Data,

Miki Makihara, CUNY Queens College, Easter Island Linguistic Heritage
Project: Creating a Digital Archive for Rapa Nui Oral and Video
Histories

Anthony Mattina, Colville-Okanagan Dictionary, Reference Grammar, Texts

Justin McBride, Kaw Nation, Kaw Language Documentation Project

Robert L. Rankin, University of Kansas, Kaw Language Documentation
Project

Laura Robinson, Linguistic Documentation of Eastern Cagayan Agta

Paula Rogers, The Documentation of Saaroa

Kristine Stenzel, Documentation of Piratapuyo ( Eastern Tukanoan )

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Nicole Mahoney, NSF ( 703 ) 292-5321 nmahoney at nsf.gov
Noel Milan, National Endowment for the Humanities ( 202 ) 606-8439
nmilan at neh.gov

Program Contacts
James Herbert, NSF ( 703 ) 292-8600 jherbert at nsf.gov

The National Science Foundation ( NSF ) is an independent federal agency
that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of
science and engineering, with an annual budget of nearly $5.47 billion.
NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000
universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000
competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding
awards. The NSF also awards over $200 million in professional and
service contracts yearly.

Receive official NSF news electronically through the e-mail delivery and
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Useful NSF Web Sites:
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Press Release Date 2005-05-06