With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Douglas Parks and colleagues will conduct three years of continuing linguistic research documenting South Band Pawnee, Skiri Pawnee, and Arikara. These American Indian languages belong to the Caddoan language family that was formerly spoken on the Great Plains from Texas to North Dakota. There are no longer any living fluent speakers of these three languages. Only three or four elderly individuals in each tribe have a partial knowledge of their native language. Most of the linguistic data included in the project were recorded by Dr. Parks between 1965 and 2001. There are three aspects of linguistic documentation in this project: creation of bilingual dictionaries, compilation of analyzed text collections (the latter primarily traditional stories, such as myths and tales), and writing grammars for each of the three languages. These materials are being made available on the World Wide Web as well as in print format. Another major focus of the project is continuing software development begun under a previous NSF grant. That software will facilitate the development of multimedia dictionaries, analyzed text collections, and grammars in a single working environment.
A fundamental contribution of this project, which continues a long tradition in linguistics and anthropology, is the scientific documentation of American Indian languages. Such study contributes to the understanding of linguistic diversity in human speech worldwide and to the understanding of the interrelationships and historical development of American Indian languages in North America. It also preserves a documentary record of rapidly disappearing Native American languages. Since South Band Pawnee, Skiri Pawnee, and Arikara are closely related to one another, comparison among them will offer insights into the development of the Caddoan language family and, more generally, processes of language change. Because these languages share exceptionally complex verb structures, their documentation will provide linguists with a large amount of new data for the theoretical study of language history and structure. Another fundamental contribution of the project is development of software to provide mechanical tools for linguists and other researchers that will facilitate more rapid, more efficient, and more systematic documentation, archiving, and analysis of endangered languages worldwide. The multimedia components, moreover, enable linguists to compile dictionaries and text collections that include sound recordings of the words and stories, so that users can hear native-speaker pronunciation in addition to reading written forms. Finally, the dictionaries, texts, and grammars provide critically needed resources for the three tribes in their efforts to revive and teach their native languages, and to perpetuate their cultures.
