Lydia's Provost Fellowship Application (one-page limit)

Linguists face two particularly significant problems when doing research: many languages are spoken in remote locations and many are becoming extinct (i.e., they are no longer being spoken by younger generations, and will eventually not be spoken at all). The first problem makes it difficult to acquire primary source data, as doing so requires that the researcher travel to the remote location where the language is spoken. The second problem makes it crucial that linguistic data be collected efficiently and immediately, before there is permanent loss of the data.[1] I feel that the current models that seek to address these problems are inadequate.

I propose a two-part research project that will result in a proof-of-concept research tool that makes linguistic data, such as video footage, transcriptions, etc., more accessible to researchers. The first part of this proposed project, namely data collection, will be conducted this summer. The second part will be conducted later as part of my senior thesis for the Honors in Multimedia Scholarship and will use the data collected this summer to create a model for a more effective research tool.[2]

For the data collection, I will spend approximately one month living in Alaska in the Bristol Bay region where Central Alaskan Yup’ik is spoken. Central Alaskan Yup’ik is still being learned by children in only 17 of 68 Yup’ik villages, according to the Alaska Native Language Center of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.[3] Although it is not the most critically endangered language spoken in Alaska, it is one which I have access to through family members living in that area.

Using my Sony DCR-HC96 video camera and a high quality lavalier microphone, I will record at least four different native speakers of Yup’ik to gather as much linguistic data as possible from their speech. It is important that there be both audio and video documentation in order to reduce the ambiguity of certain sounds that would otherwise be difficult to distinguish through audio alone.

I will then spend approximately one month back in Los Angeles using the Institute for Multimedia Literacy’s lab to perform post-production work on the recordings. This will involve editing and organizing of the video clips, as well as transcription of the speech using a linguistic annotation program known as ELAN[4], developed by the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen.

This organized and annotated data will not only be useful for my senior thesis project, but will have immediate intrinsic value. There are graduate students at USC with whom I have been in contact who are doing academic research on the Yup’ik language who would benefit greatly from access to this primary source data. I have also contacted the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to find out how they may find this data useful. The Native American Languages Act of 1990 makes clear that the languages of Native Americans have cultural and linguistic value. [5] It also states that preservation of these languages is crucial. The data I collect this summer will be a lasting and accessible record of Central Alaskan Yup’ik that will aid in the preservation of one of the United States’ diverse indigenous languages and will eventually seed my proof-of-concept research tool.

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[1]See the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Indigenous Language Initiative http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/mitili/language%20loss.html for a brief outline of facts and figures

[2] See Institute for Multimedia Literacy homepage, http://iml.usc.edu/, for more information on the program

[3] http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/langs/cy.html

[4] EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (ELAN), see http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/December2007/techreviews/berez.html for more information on the program

[5] See http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jWCRAWFORD/nala.htm