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Documenting Endangered Languages

Documenting Endangered Languages A Partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. DEL Initiative. Partnership launched in 2004 in recognition of the need to document the rapid loss of languages.

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Documenting Endangered Languages

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  1. Documenting Endangered Languages A Partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation

  2. DEL Initiative • Partnership launched in 2004 in recognition of the need to document the rapid loss of languages. • Estimates are that half of the world’s 6,000 to 7,000 languages will go extinct in the next 50-100 years.

  3. What is lost? • Language Diversity • Cultural Knowledge • Knowledge about Natural Systems • Community Identity In forming DEL, the two agencies acknowledged that endangered languages represent a vast repository of human knowledge about the natural world and cultural traditions.

  4. Strategies • Documentation • Revitalization

  5. What do linguists do? • Fieldwork to collect information • Analysis (morphology, syntax, phonology) • Products: dictionary, grammar, and texts • Standards development

  6. NEH-NSF Partnership Through a competitive, peer review process, the agencies provide at least $3 million annually in DEL awards. Awards may be: • Fellowships for individuals of up to 12 months • Grants for institutions of up to 3 years

  7. Activities Funded by DEL • Fieldwork to record in digital audio and video format • Preparation of lexicons, grammars, texts, and databases • Digitization and preservation of previously collected materials • Training native speakers in descriptive linguistics • Development of standards and databases

  8. Ixil Maya (Nejab) Project Jule Gómez de García - California State University

  9. DEL 2005-2011 195 grants and 64 fellowships awarded totaling over $30.2 million Projects cover 194 languages from 44 countries 112 of these languages are spoken in 17 countries that are members of the OAS

  10. DEL Awards - Latin America

  11. Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) University of Texas, Austin Project Director: Joel F. Sherzer AILLA is a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America. Access to archive resources is free of charge. http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/welcome.html

  12. Chatino Documentation Teaching Chatino Anthony Woodbury and Chatino speakers

  13. Nahuatl Documentation Anthology of texts Documentary Film Botanical Field Guides Jonathan Amith (Gettysburg College) recording Nahuatl speech and filming cultural practices.

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