This project seeks to facilitate the participation of students and underrepresented groups in the Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of the Languages of the Americas, to be held at Purdue University, April 3-5 2009. The meeting's general goal is to bring together linguists who are engaged in research on the formal study of the languages of the Americas, to exchange ideas across theories, language families, generations of scholars, and importantly, across the academic and non-academic communities who are involved in language maintenance and revitalization. In particular, this conference will instantiate a Participatory Action Research approach to the articulation of the activities of the conference. This methodological approach is designed to bridge the academic and non-academic communities and to balance out the interests of both communities and the benefits to both out of results obtained. This event will articulate three components: (a) a component devoted to the development of a theoretically mature topic (modality and evidentiality); (b) a component devoted to data gathering designed to foster new theoretical venues of research; and (c) a component designed to showcase the use of linguistic knowledge by tribal centers of knowledge and its integration in the sciences and education curricula.
One of the biggest challenges in our current system of research is to, at the same time, produce research of the highest quality and be able to return the results of our research (that is, to make it relevant) to the community at large, and especially to the community where the research originated. Using a participatory approach in the organization of this event (in addition to using it in the specific research studies of the languages of the Americas) addresses this point directly: not only in facilitating the active participation of a wide range of participants (from students to members of the community) and promoting networking and partnerships with academics, but also in addressing concrete issues of interest to the population where the data come from. In doing this, we strive to slow down the rate of language loss among native communities, to increase the efficiency of language revitalization, and to advance the depth and width of the knowledge on the languages of the Americas.
