N|uu is a highly endangered Khoisan language spoken by only 10 elderly people in South Africa. The linguistic study of N|uu is extremely important because all other southern Khoisan languages, with the exception of !Xoo, have already died out. With NSF support, Prof. Christopher Collins will complete a preliminary version of the grammar of N|uu. The grammar will be published together with three stories from the oral tradition of the N|uu speakers. The grammar and three stories will be used by Levi Namaseb, of the University of Namibia, in teaching N|uu children how to read, write and speak their language.
The grammar of N|uu will describe syntactic phenomena that exist in very few other languages, and which are of vital interest to theoretical syntacticians and typologists who are interested in understanding the range of syntactic structures found in the world's languages. On a broader level, this project attempts to integrate the goals and methods of theoretical linguistics with the desire to document highly endangered languages, and if possible, help to revitalize them.
