Procedures for the Rapid Documentation of Language Acquisition in an Endangered Language Context

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

Our current understanding of the fundamental human ability to acquire a language with little prompting or conscious learning is based primarily on large languages with robust speech communities. Research has shown that a speaker community providing a rich speech environment where language is used for a variety of social functions provides the input necessary for a child to acquire a language. However, there is little research on how endangered languages are acquired. What is the order of acquisition, in terms of complexity of sounds, phrases, and sentences, when there is lack of robust and varied input? What types of systematic errors do children make and are these errors reflective of an ongoing internal rule-governed grammatical system? Data from endangered languages are crucial in answering these questions and this evidence must be gathered immediately since there are few small languages where intergenerational transmission is still occurring. Clifton Pye of the University of Kansas will work with an international team to document the acquisition of Northern Pame, an Otomanguean language spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Children only speak Northern Pame in two of the seven principal Northern Pame villages, and even in these communities school-age children frequently use Spanish at home. Pye and his team, working with Pame assistants to transcribe and translate Pame child speech, will use a prototype procedure for the rapid documentation of the acquisition of endangered languages. The project will include the training of graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Kansas in language documentation and data archiving methodology. All the data collected will be accessible through the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.