Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen / Documentation of Endangered Languages

Bewilligungen / Grants 2008

 
Einarbeitung in die Dokumentationslinguistik am Beispiel des Minderico: "An Endangered Language in Portugal"

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

Das Vorhaben wurde am 18.07.2008 von München nach Regensburg umgesetzt.

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Annette Endruschat is funded to specialize in documentary linguistics by documenting the language and culture of the town of Minde, in the centre of Portugal with a population of 3380. Minderico is only spoken in Minde and not in any of the adjacent villages. It has to be regarded as highly endangered, because the number of (active) speakers of Minderico has decreased considerably to only a few hundred in the last three decades. In the recent past Minderico has become more and more restricted to the use in informal situations and Portuguese has developed into the main language of communication throughout the Minde region. There are also a few passive speakers who are able to understand Minderico but who do not use it actively anymore. With this project, it is intended to emphasize that there are also unknown endangered languages in Europe and that the Iberian region is not as homogeneous as the language policy of Portugal would like us to believe. Moreover, this project expects to give an impulse to the documentation of the linguistic and cultural richness in the Romance world, an area widely neglected in Romance studies. That is why this project is based on an intensive cooperation between Romance linguistics and general linguistics and typology.

Universität Regensburg
Philos. Fakultät IV: Sprach- und Literaturwissen.
Institut für Romanistik
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Annette Endruschat
Universitätsstraße 31
93053 Regensburg
Tel.: 0941 943 3378
Homepage: http://www.philologos.de/philologoi/ade/index.html

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Establishing sustainable local structures for the documentation of endangered languages in Indonesian Papua: Documenting Woi

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

Linguistically, the island of New Guinea is the most diverse region on the planet. The western part of the island politically belongs to the Republic of Indonesia. A majority of the approximately 270 languages spoken in this area are endangered. The project proposed here is designed to realize an exemplary documentation of Woi, one of the highly endangered Austronesian languages of the area. Woi is spoken primarily at the western tip of the island of Yapen, north of the mainland. Woi and neighboring groups practice a very unique indigenous form of conflict resolution including ritualized dialogues and the performance of symbolic bamboo crashes, called hesoku, which will form the major cultural focus of the documentation. Furthermore, the project includes a strong capacity- and institution building component for sustainable language documentation work in the region. The anchoring point for this component is a regional language documentation center at the linguistics department of the Universitas Negeri Papua (UNIPA) sketched by co-applicant Sawaki and a local language documentation center which will be set up in the small capital of the island Yapen, Serui.

Universität Münster
Fachbereich Philologie
Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Himmelmann

Universitas Negeri Papua, Manokwari
Fakultas Sastra
English and Linguistics
Yusuf Willem Sawaki
INDONESIEN

Universität Münster
Fachbereich Philologie
Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Dr. Alexander Loch

Ansprechpartner:
Universität Münster
Fachbereich Philologie
Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Himmelmann
Aegidiistraße 5
48143 Münster
Tel.: 0251 83-24491
Fax: 0251 83-29878
Homepage: www.uni-muenster.de/Sprachwiss/Forschen/Projekte/index.html

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Aché Documentation Project (ADOP)

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

The project intends to document the indigenous language Ache, today spoken by 250 to 300 people of an indigenous population with 1,300 members in eastern Paraguay. Because of the high frequency of Spanish, Guarani and Brazilian Portuguese languages in eastern Paraguay, the#Z#
six Ache communities are exposed to a complex sociolinguistic condition. The number of fluent speakers is very low, and the drastic language shift by younger Ache generations puts the language in a precarious state of survival. The community members, leaders, elders and school teachers emphasize the urgency of documentation, as this can support language maintenance strategies by the Ache themselves. In the proposed three years, the project will establish a comprehensive multi-media archive documenting the Ache language, its internal variations, speech events, and related aspects of Ache culture. The actual research will be conducted by the linguist Eva-Maria Roessler and the social anthropologist Jan David Hauck under the supervision of the two applicants Gippert and Drude.

Universität Frankfurt am Main
Fachbereich Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften
Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft,
Phonetik und Slavische Philologie
Prof. Dr. Jost Gippert
Postfach 11 19 32
60054 Frankfurt am Main
Tel.: 069 798-25054
Fax: 069 798-22873
Homepage: titus.uni-frankfurt.de/personal/gippertj.htm

Universität Frankfurt am Main
Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft,
Phonetik und Slavische Philologie
Dr. Sebastian Drude
Postfach 11 19 32
60054 Frankfurt am Main
Tel.: 069 798-25054
Fax: 069 798-22873
Homepage: titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexd.htm

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Tongues of the Semang, Phase II: documenting endangered languages and human-forest relationships among foragers of the Malay Peninsula

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

The project spearheads the documentation of the highly endangered Aslian (Mon-Khmer, Austroasiatic) languages and indigenous knowledge of the "Negrito" Semang foragers of the Malay Peninsula. Inhabiting the rapidly shrinking equatorial rainforest, the Semang represent some of the last human societies to pursue a hunting-gathering existence in this environment. They preserve unique knowledge about the forest and how to make a sustainable livelihood from it. This close relationship with the forest is manifest in their languages, which display a huge lexicon relating to the environment, its life forms and uses, adapted to strategies of subsistence.The first phase of the project involved a survey of the Semang communities and their languages, a primary documentation of the language Lanoh with about 350 speakers and an in-depth documentation of ethnobiological knowledge, especially among the Jahai. In the extension period the project aims at a deepened documentation of the Jahai with about 1000 speakers, a primary documentation of the language Menriq with about 150 speakers and a framework for cross-linguistic relationships of language and knowledge in the Aslian setting across this project and the neighbouring DobeS project of Dr. Nicole Kruspe (Melbourne) on the documentation of Semoq Beri and Batek.

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition
Dr. Niclas Henric Burenhult, Ph.D.
Postfach 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 24 3521-270
Fax: +31 24 3521-213
Homepage: www.mpi.nl/Members/NiclasBurenhult

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition
Director
Prof. Dr. Stephen C. Levinson
Postfach 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 24 3521-276
Fax: +31 24 3521-213
Homepage: www.mpi.nl/Members/StephenLevinson

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The documentation of Baure, a language of the Bolivian Amazonia

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre  6 Monate

Baure is a seriously endangered South Arawak language spoken in the Bolivian Amazonia. The language has to be captured exactly now, as its accelerated progress of decay can presumably not be stopped any more. All languages of this language family of Bolivia are either moribund or (seriously) endangered and will have disappeared in the coming decades. Baure is seriously endangered as the language has not been transferred to younger generations for the last decades and it is not used as a general means of communication any longer, having been replaced by Spanish. The project team (the linguist Dr. Swintha Danielsen, the social anthropologist Franziska Riedel and another PhD student of linguistics) will record and analyze all dialects of the Baure language, including Carmelito and Joaquiniano. In addition, the characteristics of the Baure ethnic identity will be described. In the final phase of the project, a workshop for Arawak languages of Bolivian Amazonia will bring together Moxo and Baure speakers and focus on the shared history, the comparability and the future of these genetically related languages.

Universität Leipzig
Philologische Fakultät
Institut für Linguistik
Professur für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Balthasar Bickel
Beethovenstraße 15
04107 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341 97-37610
Fax: 0341 97-37609
Homepage: www.uni-leipzig.de/~bickel

Universität Leipzig
Fakultät für Geschichte, Kunst- und Orientwissenschaften
Institut für Ethnologie
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Andreas Brockmann
Schillerstraße 6
04109 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341 97-37220
Fax: 0341 97-37229
Homepage: www.uni-leipzig.de/~ethno/

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The documentation of Yurakaré (extension proposal)

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

Yurakare is an indigenous language of the central Bolivian foothill area, spoken at the eastern fringes of the Amazonian rainforest. Yurakare seems to be an isolate. With an estimated 2500 speakers, scattered over an area of the size of Belgium, and the younger generations not actively speaking the language anymore, its prospects are not very good. The project started in June 2006. In the almost 18 months that it has been running, the foundations for a high-quality, rich, and versatile database of the Yurakare language and culture have been laid. In the extension period the aim is to add features to the database, and to embed the data and the database into the Yurakare, Bolivian, and scientific communities. As to the first point, the most important addition is a LEXUS dictionary which in many ways will function as the heart of the database. By combining linguistic and ethnographic information, and connecting it directly to the primary data, the dictionary will provide background information needed not only to interpret and contextualize the material in the database, but also to enable researchers, speakers, developers of educational material, or other interested parties to efficiently work with these data.

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language & Cognition
Dr. Erik van Gijn
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language & Cognition
Dr. Vincent Hirtzel
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language & Cognition
Sonja Gipper
NIEDERLANDE

Ansprechpartner:
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language & Cognition
Dr. Erik van Gijn
Postfach PB 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 24 3521-566
Fax: +31 24 3521-213
Homepage: www.mpi.nl/Members/RikvanGijn

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Documentation of the dialectal and cultural diversity among Evens in Siberia

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

This project focusses on the interdisciplinary documentation of the language and culture of three different Even communities. Even is a Northern Tungusic language spoken over a vast area of northeastern Siberia, from the Lena-Jana watershed in the west to Kamchatka in the east. Traditionally, Evens are nomadic hunters and reindeer pastoralists. Reindeer, both domesticated and wild, play an important role in their culture and ethnic self-identification. Reindeer herding, however, has become highly endangered throughout the Russian North, which has had extremely negative effects on the Evens' self-perception and social relations. Therefore the proposed project will not only seek to document the language, but also the state of reindeer herding among the Evens in different regional settings. Due to the fragmentation of the Even communities, several dialects have emerged which are classified into three dialectal groups: Western, Central, and Eastern. These dialects form a continuum with pronounced lack of mutual intelligibility between the extremes. The project aims at documenting three highly endangered variants of Even that currently still have enough fluent speakers to make a comprehensive documentation feasible and that represent the three main dialect groups.

Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre
Anthropologie, Leipzig
Unabhängige Nachwuchsgruppe für Vergleichende Populationslinguistik
Dr. Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf

Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre
Anthropologie, Leipzig
Unabhängige Nachwuchsgruppe für Vergleichende Populationslinguistik
Dr. Dejan Matic

Institute of Indigenous Peoples of the
North, Yakutsk
Direktor
Dr. Vasilij Robbek
RUSSLAND

Ansprechpartner:
Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre
Anthropologie, Leipzig
Unabhängige Nachwuchsgruppe für Vergleichende
Populationslinguistik
Dr. Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341 3550-308
Fax: 0341 3550-333
Homepage: www.eva.mpg.de/cpl/staff/pakendorf/

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Real places and virtual representation - Beaver language documentation

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

The Beaver language documentation project is a collaborative research effort by an international and interdisciplinary team. The work is also closely coordinated with the First Nations that belong to the Beaver people in Canada. Beaver is a highly endangered language that is still spoken in several communities. Speaker age ranges from older than 45 to older than 70. Besides aspiring to a good multimedia documentation and basic description of the hitherto undescribed language, the project follows an integrational approach: the central topic concerns the personal, historical, and mythical conceptualization of places and placenames. Ethnographically these types of narratives tell of traditional hunter-gatherer patterns of subsistence and land use, linguistically the texts provide a wealth of spatial terms that are almost unique to the verb morphology of Athabaskan languages. The extension period will allow to proceed with the transcription of the recordings to gather grammatical information to complement the corpus data in order to make it more accessible for typological and linguistic research and to finish two doctoral theses that cover new ground in the phonetic, phonological and prosodic description of this polysynthetic tonal language.

Universität Köln
Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Institut für Linguistik
Dr. Dagmar Jung
Postfach
50923 Köln
Tel.: 0221 470-1771
Fax: 0221 470-5947
Homepage: www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/beaver

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DobeS-Archive Follow-up II

Bewilligung: 14.04.2008  Laufzeit:  5 Jahre

Das Multimedia-Datenbankprojekt in Nijmegen ist das technische und logistische "Herz" der Förderinitiative. In der 5-jährigen Fortsetzung wird die Arbeit des technischen Teams auch künftig auf den drei Säulen Archivaufbau, Projektunterstützung und Softwareentwicklung ruhen. Was das Archiv betrifft, wird einerseits die Integration der Sprachdaten fortgesetzt. Andererseits werden die Bemühungen um die Verstetigung des Archivs intensiviert, beispielsweise durch Mitarbeit im europäischen CLARIN-Projekt. Was die Projektunterstützung betrifft, geht es um die Ausrichtung der Basis-Trainingskurse für die neuen Dokumentationsteams sowie um Fortgeschrittenenkurse für frühere Teams zur Einarbeitung in die neuen Systemkomponenten. Im Rahmen der Softwareentwicklung soll die Gesamtarchitektur mit der Fertigstellung einer Reihe im Aufbau befindlicher Tools wie LEXUS sowie der Entwicklung einer Reihe neuer Tools vervollständigt werden.

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Peter Wittenburg
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Klein
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition
Director
Prof. Dr. Stephen C. Levinson
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Jacquelijn Ringersma
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Paul Trilsbeek
NIEDERLANDE

Ansprechpartner:
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Peter Wittenburg
Postfach PB 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 24 3521113
Fax: +31 24 3521213
Homepage: www.mpi.nl

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Schriftgröße