According to some estimates, over 200 West African languages are currently identified as being severely endangered. Most of the Ijoid languages, a branch of the Niger-Congo family found in the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, are in danger of disappearing. The aim of this project is to document in detail, following currently established best practice, two severely endangered languages of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Defaka and Nkoroo. Population estimates for one of these languages, Defaka, range from 1,000 or fewer (Crozier & Blench 1992) to as few as 200 (Blench 2007), indicating rapid depletion in the last decade and calling for urgent attention.
From a scholarly perspective, the great merit of this project is the documentation and analysis of two complex endangered languages, which will contribute to our understanding of the nature and history of the Ijoid subgroup of Niger-Congo. Both Africanist linguistics and linguistic theory in general stand to benefit from the new knowledge that will be gained. The broader impact of the project will be manifested in several ways. First, by gathering large quantities of texts and lexical data, which will be archived in a lasting medium, we will be preserving Defaka and Nkoroo for the benefit of their speakers, outside linguists, anthropologists, historians and other scholars, and for mankind in general. Second, native speakers of the languages will be trained in documentation techniques, enabling them to play a more active role in the preservation of their language. In addition, American and African graduate students will also trained in documentation techniques. Finally, our project involves the active collaboration of researchers at institutions in four different countries, Rutgers University in the USA, York University in Canada, the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, and the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria, thus fostering international academic cooperation. This award is co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.
