This project allows Dr. Gildea and colleagues at the University of Oregon Eugene to conduct new documentary work on under-documented varieties of Kari'nja, an endangered language of Suriname. The researchers propose four activities: (i) bring members of the Aretyry Kari'nja-speaking community (of Suriname) to Oregon to receive training in language documentation and revitalization in the context of an independently-organized linguistic institute, (ii) record speakers of the language in Oregon where there is access to high-quality recording equipment not otherwise accessible to the community, (iii) conduct new documentary work on an under-documented varieties of Kari'nja in collaboration with Kari'nja speakers who received training in Oregon, and (iii) conduct training workshops for Kari'nja communities in Suriname to help them with their documentation efforts. The information uncovered by this project will enhance the scientific understanding of linguistic phenomena like typology of prosodic systems, work classes, and ergativity. The project will also produce high quality documentation of languages and dialects for which information is not easily accessible, and serves as a model for future collaborative documentation projects.
Beyond archived recordings, pedagogical materials, and academic analyses of stress and grammar, this project builds the capacity for future productivity. Those most affected by their language loss, Kari'nja themselves, are already active participants in documentation, description, and revitalizing their ancestral language. This project gives them more tools and training, which they will continue using long after the grant period. This project expands the documentation of Aretyry Kari'nja to other communities within and beyond Suriname's borders, and will permit the Konomerume, Cornelis Kondre, and Kalebas Kreek teams to design their own documentation projects.
Also known as Carib, Kari'nja is a highly endangered language. This project had several goals, all aimed at helping Kari'nja people document, preserve, and revitalize their heritage language. Goals included: Training Kari'nja speakers and learners to conduct their own documentation and description of the language, Recording elder native speakers from Suriname and Guyana, Describing aspects of the language that are not yet well understood, and Contributing to changing the way researchers work with members of minority communities. In 2010, a group of nine Kari'nja speakers and learners traveled from Konomerume, Suriname to Eugene, Oregon to participate in the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) and the Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation (InField) at the University of Oregon. Here, participants learned about technology for documentation, video and audio recording techniques, and language teaching methods, among other things. They also shared their own work on Kari'nja during one of the plenary sessions. Since knowledge worth learning is worth sharing, when they returned home, they taught what they had learned to other members of their community in Suriname. Three of the community members who participated in NILI/InField later put their new knowledge to the test. They had been told that there was a community in Guyana where only Kari'nja was spoken. Since members of the Baramita, Guyana community speak only Kari'nja, outsider academics had not been able to record anyone speaking the language there. This project allowed Kari'nja speakers from Suriname to interview and record Kari'nja speakers in Guyana in a way that had never been tried before. Not only were Kari'nja community members conducting documentation themselves, they were doing so in their heritage language. Concrete products of this project include high-quality recordings made in a controlled environment during NILI/InField, audio and video recordings produced by members of two different Kari’nja-speaking communities, and a working dictionary. Data are now available in support of both local revitalization efforts and the academic description of the language. During NILI/InField, speech community linguists created useable teaching materials from recordings made during this project. In addition to expanding the available documentary corpus in the language, this project has addressed several aspects of the language that are, at present, not well described. Each has broader academic interest as well as direct implications for formal teaching. As for field research methodologies, this project asked, why should outsiders train community members to conduct their own documentation? This project led to the following conclusions: Collaboration is enhanced when community members are able to do for themselves. With training, those most affected by language loss, speakers themselves, become active knowledge builders. The more people involved in development and implementation of projects, the more maximally useful the output. Control of content and output of documentation is shared by major stakeholders. No single entity's research agenda is more important than another. Empowering underrepresented groups is at the heart of this project. This project trained speech community members to conduct their own documentation and description. A majority of the participants are women, and all have had limited access to formal schooling. A further strength of this project, in terms of broader impact, is that it brought communities together in multiple ways. At NILI/InField, participants interacted with academic linguists and members of speech communities from around the world. Each shared their unique knowledge and expertise with the others. Regional trainings expanded documentation activities to the rest of their home region in Suriname, further supporting collaborative work among those communities. This project also provided a context for the first contact between members of the Konomerume Kari’nja community and the virtually undocumented Guyana Kari’nja community in Baramita, one which we hope will lead to a still larger shared community for documentation activities. Through capacity building for speech community linguists, this project empowers the communities to shape and then use documentation materials to meet their own needs and goals. Community members have created and continue to create useable teaching materials from documentary materials that they, themselves, recorded. NILI/InField provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for participants from a broad range of language and academic backgrounds to come together to share knowledge, successes, and challenges. After participating in this intense environment, after learning from and sharing with this worldwide community of linguists and language activists, the Kari’nja participants are experts in their own rights. This project represents the first step in an entirely new way of conducting the business of language documentation. We hope that this evolving model of collaborative linguistic fieldwork will have an indirect impact on the future of social and behavioral science fieldwork. This project is at the forefront of a greater movement to empower members of endangered language communities to play more active roles in research that impacts them.
