Kumeyaay is a moribund language of the Yuman language family, spoken in Baja, California. Although two Northern dialects of Kumeyaay spoken in the U.S. have previously been described, relatively little systematic linguistic fieldwork or documentation has been done on the Mexican dialect. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Margaret Field (San Diego State University) and colleagues will create a reference grammar and lexicon based on transcripts of audio and video data of naturally-occurring talk, including conversation, oral histories, narratives, descriptions of traditional practices, and explanations concerning local dialect differences. Using discourse data allows us to learn more about how the language and discourse structure works in natural contexts, as opposed to information learned through elicitation of isolated sentences. It will also provide examples of spontaneous interaction to create culturally-appropriate language materials.
This project will result in a reference grammar and Spanish-English-Kumeyaay dictionary for the Baja dialect as well as Spanish-Kumeyaay pedagogical materials. All of the digital data collected will be archived at UT Austin's Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America for academics and tribal communities to access for use in further research and language revitalization efforts as well. This project will also involve the close collaboration of Baja Kumeyaay community through multiple language workshops designed to heighten awareness of the endangered status of the language and methods for its revitalization. Baja Kumeyaay speakers, who greatly outnumber U.S. Kumeyaay speakers, will then be able to teach the language via immersion methodologies, allowing language revitalization efforts across the U.S.-Mexico border to progress in the target language itself.
