Collaborative Research: Training the next generation of Navajo language scientists

Navajo Language Academy, Inc., Flagstaff AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The Navajo language (also called Diné) has more speakers than any other language indigenous to the United States. This is the language of the Code Talkers, United States Marines who developed and employed a code in World War II that was never broken. Despite strong traditions, very few Navajo children are now learning to speak the language which means that it is at great risk of vanishing within a few generations. The complexity of the grammar, which contributed to the code's security, makes the language difficult to learn in schools. This project will train the next generation of Navajo Nation language scientists from in language documentation and linguistic analysis, broadening participation by Native Americans in the social sciences. Broader impacts also include working with language teachers on applying the analysis of Navajo grammar to language teaching, which will benefit students in K-12 Navajo classrooms. The project will also enhance the capacity of the two participating organizations, Navajo Technical University (NTU), a tribal college that offers a variety of educational degrees up to a master's degree in Diné Culture, Language and Leadership and the Navajo Language Academy (NLA), a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the scientific study of Navajo. Summer workshops, ongoing since 1997, will focus on applying principles of scientific research to the Navajo language and discovering the rules and principles that underlie its grammar. Co-directed by linguist Dr. Theodore Fernald from the NLA and cultural anthropologist Dr. Wesley Thomas from NTU, the project will train tribal college students, linguistics students, and Navajo Nation teachers in language documentation and analysis annually. Learning the necessary linguistics, transcription and annotation skills will enable participating students and language teachers to create materials for a bilingual Navajo digital text corpus with analyzed examples. Participants and other researchers will use the corpus to develop hypotheses about language data and to test those hypotheses against the corpus using the scientific methods employed by linguists. The corpus and its recordings will be accessible on-line to provide resources for researchers, teachers, and language learners. NTU students will engage in analysis and work with the corpus throughout the year. A unique advantage of this planned research is that it is possible because of the two generations of Navajo speakers who were trained in linguistics graduate programs on how to engage in the scientific study of their language, earning doctorates in linguistics and related fields, the type of scenario that linguists argue enables deeper and richer investigations of a language's structure. These summer workshops offer a unique venue for research and teaching Navajo and Dene (Athabaskan) linguistics. A professional evaluator will develop and implement an assessment plan to gauge the success of NLA and NTU programs. The NSF Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP)is providing support for tribal college participation in this project.