Investigation of Tonogenesis and Consonant Inventories through Language Documentation

University Of North Texas, Denton TX

Investigators

Abstract

One important cornerstone of advancing scientific knowledge about the world's estimated 7,000 languages is the tremendous variation between even the language families represented in that number. This scientific endeavor is threatened by estimates that perhaps as many as half of those languages will not be spoken at the end of this century. This project will document one such language, Mankiyali, a severely endangered Indo-Aryan language, which exhibits a number of features that are of interest to phonologists, typologists, sociolinguists, and historical linguists. For instance, some of the sound correspondences observed in the preliminary comparative analyses of the available data suggest new analyses in several areas: the transitions into Middle from Old Indo-Aryan voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops, and the development of tone, consonant length (gemination), and complex consonants (affricates). The sound changes are expected to provide a better insight into the development and evolution of Indo-Aryan languages of the northwestern group, and better insight into areas of interest to linguistic theory, such as tonogenesis. The proposed project complements these goals in terms of economic and educational growth. Through an international and cross-cultural collaboration, the project will enhance student and faculty development both in the US and in Pakistan, a key country in a region vital to the US in terms of national security and strategic interests. By fostering ties between Pakistan through a local university, a non-governmental organization (NGO), and the Mankiyali community, and the University of North Texas (UNT), the project will foster binational relationships that can function as a type of "soft" diplomacy. The project also offers research opportunities and participation in training workshops for UNT students, who will benefit from the international exchange, acquire skills in organization building and leadership, and be better prepared as they enter a global STEM workforce. Use of Mankiyali in different domains is rapidly decreasing, and the total number of fluent first language speakers is fewer than 500 individuals, with rapid language shift ongoing. The language represents a contact area where researchers have only scratched the surface in scientific documentation and analyses. Mankiyali is very poorly documented, but the preliminary data suggests it has the potential to significantly advance scientific understanding in several areas, especially in the burgeoning research areas of the connection between voice quality and tone. This collaborative project to document Mankiyali will generate a rich repository of video and audio recordings, essential to providing a record of the language's phonological and other features. Workshops for native speaker consultants, students and personnel will help create infrastructure to develop a research, training and capacity building effort that supports initiatives to document other endangered languages in a region that is characterized by both high linguistic diversity and severe endangerment. Part of the intellectual merit of this project lies in its investigation of specific linguistic, typologically underrepresented features characteristic of Mankiyali itself, especially in the areas of tone and segmental phonology. By recording a variety of genres, a diversity of individual voices will provide information on the social, cultural, and, historical aspects of the community, making this work of value to anthropologists, historians and other disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.