Africa's Endangered Languages: Documentary and Theoretical Approaches

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

The state of language endangerment in sub-Saharan Africa is distinct from much of the rest of the world, typified by threatened languages distributed across several geographically distinct regions of the continent and internal pressures rather than external factors driving endangerment. As such, African language endangerment has great potential to provide fresh perspectives on and valuable new insights into the questions of how and why languages erode. Furthermore, Africa's endangered languages pose several unique challenges to documentation efforts. Insufficient infrastructure, scarcity of resources, incomplete and/or inaccurate information, and a general absence of public awareness (locally and internationally), for example, provide serious hurdles for the documentation and maintenance of threatened languages in most regions. However, because the threat level of language endangerment in Africa has been characterized as low, research on and funding opportunities for endangered African languages are often perceived as less urgent. Consequently, a disproportionate amount of funding and research is devoted to the study of endangered African languages than any other linguistically threatened region in the world. This grant supports a special conference workshop entitled "Africa's Endangered Languages: Documentary and Theoretical Approaches," to be held at the University of Kansas in conjunction with the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. The workshop seeks to stimulate and enhance the visibility of endangered African language research in the hopes of reversing this trend and bringing the unique insights and perspectives afforded by African language endangerment to bear on the fields of language documentation and endangered language research. The workshop will emphasize the synergistic relationship between documentation and linguistic theory in endangered African language research. Thus, it will serve a crucial role in catalyzing a deeper and more collaborative relationship between documentary and theoretical linguists for the purpose of growing, maintaining, and sustaining research efforts to document and preserve Africa's endangered languages.