NSF, NEH boost efforts to make digital records of dying languages (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

NSF, NEH boost efforts to make digital records of dying languages
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/nsf-nnb071006.php

More than half of 7,000 current languages at risk of disappearing

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science
Foundation (NSF) today announced the awarding of 12 fellowships and 22
institutional grants in the two agencies' partnership on Documenting
Endangered Languages (DEL). This is the second round of their
multi-year campaign to preserve records of languages threatened with
extinction. Experts estimate that more than half of the approximately
7,000 currently used human languages are headed for oblivion in this
century. These new DEL awards, totaling $5 million, will support
digital documentation work on more than 60 such languages.

No more than 20 speakers of Washo, a Native American language, remain,
for example. They are elderly and scattered in several townships near
the Nev.-Calif. border. There is little by way of a dictionary or
grammar for the language. A new DEL grant will enable field workers
from the University of Chicago and the Washo community itself to carry
out comprehensive multimedia documentation of interviews with these
last speakers. Seventeen endangered languages of Africa, the country
recently highlighted by UNESCO as having the highest concentration of
disappearing languages, will be documented under six other DEL awards.

"The immense diversity of linguistic data presents a unique opportunity
to understand many aspects of human cognition," noted NSF Director
Arden L. Bement, Jr. "I am pleased that researchers are responding with
urgency, as well as with precision and thoroughness."

"Not only is this a time of great potential loss," said NEH Chairman
Bruce L. Cole, "it is also a moment for enormous potential gain. In
this modern age of computers and our growing technological
capabilities, we can preserve, assemble, analyze, and understand
unprecedented riches of linguistic and cultural information."

As part of the International Polar Year initiative, NSF is investing in
the documentation and preservation of endangered languages in the
Arctic, where approximately 70 percent of the spoken indigenous
languages are highly endangered. Three projects covering six languages
in Russia and Alaska will receive over $800,000 in DEL grants. Sealaska
Heritage Institute will videotape 30 hours of narrative in Northern
Haida, a language of Alaska and British Columbia that has only 14
remaining speakers. The first writing systems will be devised for two
of the five endangered Eurasian languages to be documented by a new DEL
project directed by Alexander Nakhimovsky of Colgate University.

One new DEL grant to the University of Texas at Austin will enable the
Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) to
digitize and archive eight major collections of materials from
prominent researchers on indigenous languages of Mexico, Costa Rica,
Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. A DEL fellowship will support Jeffrey
Davis of the University of Tennessee in digitizing, translating, and
assessing 19th century materials in the once widely used Plains Indian
Sign Language that are housed at the Smithsonian Institution.

Already in June, 2006, a DEL grant to the University of Arizona is
enabling Ofelia Zepeda and Susan Penfield to offer an intensive
four-week course in language documentation and grant proposal
preparation at the 27th American Indian Language Development Institute
(AILDI). The goal is to increase the participation of tribal members in
language documentation efforts. A DEL fellowship will allow Ellavina
Perkins, a native speaker of Navajo, to complete a reference grammar of
Navajo sentence structure; her project will involve teachers and
community members in the summer workshops of the Navajo Language
Academy. Another DEL grant will support a project directed by Jimm G.
Goodtracks, one of only a half-dozen remaining semi-fluent speakers, to
preserve and document the Baxoje Jiwere Nyut'chi dialects of the
indigenous language of the Ioway ~ Otoe-Missouria. Two DEL fellowships
will allow Anton and David Treuer, members of the Leech Lake Band of
Chippewa, to document four different variants of the southwestern
dialect of Chippewa (Ojibwe) in Wisc. and Minn.; the language is still
spoken only by elders, and some communities have fewer than five
remaining speakers.

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A complete listing of this year's awards follows. (The number of awards
and the amounts shown could still change slightly.)

Fellowships ($40,000 each, unless otherwise noted. Awarded by NEH):

Linda Cumberland, independent scholar, "Assiniboine Texts"; Jeffrey
Davis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, "Preservation of Plains
Indian Sign Language: Developing a Digital Archive at the Smithsonian";
Willem de Reuse, University of North Texas, Denton, "A Searchable
Digital Archive of Western Apache Language Texts"; Scott Farrar,
independent scholar, Tucson, Ariz., "The Documentation and Preservation
of Western Beboid languages of Cameroon"; Jeff Good, independent
scholar, Leipzig, Germany, ($24,000), "The Documentation and
Preservation of Western Beboid Languages of Cameroon"; Gary Holton,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, "Documentation of Western Pantar, an
Endangered Language of Pantar Island, Indonesia"; Steve Marlett,
independent scholar, Tucson, Ariz., "Seri Reference Grammar and
Workshops"; Todd McDaniels, independent scholar, Williamsville, N.Y.,
"Linguistic Characteristics of the Comanche Language"; Deogratias
Ngonyani, Michigan State University, East Lansing, "Documenting
Kikisi"; Ellavina Perkins, independent scholar, Flagstaff, Ariz.,
"Navajo Language Investigations"; Anton Truer, Bemidji State
University, Bemidji, Minn., "Chippewa Grammar Project for Southwestern
Chippewa Dialect"; and David Truer, University of Minnesota, Twin
Cities, "Chippewa Grammar Project for Southwestern Chippewa Dialect."
Institutional Grants (provided by NSF, unless otherwise indicated):

Akinbiyi Akinlabi, Rutgers University, "Documenting Defaka and Nkoroo,"
$300,000 (NSF); Megan Biesele, independent investigator, "Documenting
the Khomani and Ju/hoan Languages," $40,000 (NSF) Jrgen Bohnemeyer &
Carolyn O'Meara, SUNY Buffalo, "Doctoral dissertation: Seri Landscape
Classification," $11,702 (NSF); Christopher Collins, New York
University, "Grammar of N|u," $13,229 (NSF); Scott Delancey, University
of Oregon, "Tsafiki Documentation Project: Descriptive Grammar and
Electronic Database," $207,890 (NSF); Donna Ellithorpe, Northeast
Historic Film, "Audio Visual Documentation of Passamaquoddy," $350,000
(NSF); Jimm Goodtracks, Iowa Tribe, "Ioway Otoe-Missouria Dictionary
Project," $225,000 (NSF); Veronica Grondona, Eastern Michigan
University, "Wich: Documentation, Transcription and Training," $226,000
(NEH); Jeffrey Heath, University of Michigan, "Dogon languages of Mali,"
$209,961 (NSF); John Keegan, independent investigator, "MBay CD
Project," $34,973 (NSF); Jordan Lachler, Sealaska Heritage, "Narratives
and Conversations in Tlingit, Northern Haida and Tsimshian,"
$240,000(NSF); Monica Macaulay, University of Wisconsin, "Completion of
Three Menominee Dictionaries," $300,000 (NSF). Alexander Nakhimovsky,
Colgate University, "Five Languages of Eurasia: Field Work, Analysis
and Digital Archiving," $402,126 (NSF); John Nichols, University of
Minnesota, "Chippewa Dictionary and Archive," $300,000 (NSF); Clifton
Pye, University of Kansas, "Documenting Mayan Language Acquisition,"
$314,999 (NSF); David Rood, University of Colorado, "Documenting Lakota
Conversation," $350,000 (NSF); Ronald Schaefer, Southern Illinois
University, "Documenting Edo North Languages and Oral Narratives,"
$175,000 (NEH); Russell Schuh, UCLA, "Lexicon, Linguistic Structure,
and Verbal Arts in Chadic Languages of Northeastern Nigeria," $125,003
(NSF); Joel Sherzer, University of Texas at Austin, "Archiving
Significant Collections of Endangered Languages," $350,000 (NEH); Siri
Tuttle, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, "Ahtna Texts," $147,000 (NSF);
Alan Yu, University of Chicago, "Documentation of the Washo Language,"
$159,336 (NSF); Ofelia Zepeda, University of Arizona, "Increasing
Competitive Research among Tribal Communities for Documenting
Endangered Languages," $142,504 (NSF).