Documenting Endangered Languages

This sample narrative conforms to a past set of guidelines. Project Summary Intellectual Merit The proposed project will produce video and audio documentation of two highly endangered indigenous languages, Mohave and Chemehuevi. Both languages are still used on the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) Reservation where a formal survey, conducted by the tribal library in 2002, revealed just 42 speakers of Mohave and 5-7 speakers of Chemehuevi, all over the age of 60. Work on the syntax of both languages was conducted in the 1970s; some work with phonology and electronic documentation of lexical items was begun in 2003. There has been no documentation of naturally-occurring conversation and earlier audio recordings are technically inadequate for high fidelity archiving. This project actively involves tribal members in data collection by training them in elicitation procedures using video and audio equipment. The project team will consist of two tribal members from each group (Mohave and Chemehuevi), the PI who has over 35 years of experience in the CRIT community, and two doctoral-level graduate students (one in phonetics and documentation; the other in syntax and pedagogy). The team goals are 1) to carry out video and audio documentation of conversational practices and recorded narrative in both languages, 2) to provide training for tribal members in technology-based documentation of their languages and descriptive linguistics while engaged in fieldwork both on-site and on-line, 3) to use collected materials for constructing language lessons in support of the tribes' goal of language revitalization, 4) to construct text, audio and video databases and, 5) to work with tribal members to construct a standard set of protocols for indigenous communities regarding issues of the public access and use of digital archives and databases. Broader Impact The project results will increase the general understanding of the process and value of video documentation for endangered languages, add substantially more linguistic data for Mohave and Chemehuevi, evaluate the use of technology for on-line fieldwork, and generate guidelines for indigenous communities regarding the public use of digital databases and archives. This project builds on previous work which generated a handbook for tribal members on the development of multimedia language lessons. Technology-Enhanced Language Revitalization (Penfield, et al. 2004) is available in PDF format online and is now the text for a course at the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) which enrolls students from many different tribes. The current project will result in the development …