Analyzing Sociolinguistic Variation in Navajo

Palakurthy, Kayla P, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and SBE's Documenting Endangered Languages program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Robert Bayley at the University of California, Davis, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying linguistic variation and change in contemporary Dine Bizaad (Navajo), a Native American language spoken in the present-day American Southwest. A significant legacy of American settler colonialism has been the systematic eradication of North American languages, leading to widespread shifts to English. In response, many communities have undertaken projects to maintain and revitalize their languages, but a challenge for this work is that Indigenous minority languages are thought to become highly variable and to undergo significant changes, as speakers are increasingly exposed to English. While the linguistic and social factors contributing to variation and change in English are well understood, little research has focused on variation in Indigenous minority languages, and questions remain about how local social dynamics influence the spread of linguistic variation among speakers, and whether changes in Indigenous minority languages are fundamentally different from changes observed in other contexts. Results from the empirical examination of these questions will inform scientific theories and may be applied in Indigenous minority language teaching at a time of pivotal change. This project will focus on targeted studies of linguistic features in recently recorded interviews and conversations with bilingual Dine Bizaad-English speakers. Specifically, researchers will analyze variation and change in the Dine vowels, the classificatory verb system, and lexical tone in order to produce descriptive and quantitative analyses that reveal social patterns and assess evidence for change in topics known to be challenging for language learners. Analyses will address the role of sociocultural factors such as region, gender, prestige, and style in an under-described sociolinguistic context, as well as the role of bilingualism in the origin and spread of changes. Of particular interest is the way that younger speakers are introducing and interpreting variation in newer varieties of Dine Bizaad. Furthermore, these studies will test predictions about the types of changes that occur in Indigenous minority languages. Overall, this research will inform theories of language variation and change and expand the relevance of sociolinguistic approaches beyond the often-studied larger global languages. 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.