Ashéninka Perené is an endangered Arawak language of 5,500 people in southeastern Peru, rapidly losing its vitality due to the intensity of long-standing language contact with Spanish speakers and government policy of integration (acculturation) of indigenous communities into mainstream culture. Ashéninka Perené also falls in the category of undocumented languages since the three necessary subsets of reference materials (grammar, texts, and dictionary) for the language as well as audio and video recordings of Ashéninka Perené speech are non-existent.
At a critical threshold in the language's history, when it needs to be documented before it ceases to have a vital speaker base, a two-year documentation project, necessary both for the future community revitalization and language preservation programs and linguistic research, will be conducted, with support from the National Science Foundation. A linguist working in collaboration with a team of indigenous community consultants will produce a full-scale reference grammar of Ashéninka Perené, a lexical database, and an extensive corpus of audio and video recordings, covering traditional and children's stories, accounts of everyday activities and historical and social events, conversation, and ceremonial speeches. Ashéninka Perené speakers will participate in all stages of the documentation project, gaining skills in using lexicographic software, audio and video recording, and linguistic analysis of the collected data. In addition to producing a thorough permanent record of this endangered language, the materials resulting from this project will benefit both the community of linguistics and the native community. The grammar and the other reference materials will provide a comprehensive documentation of the language for academic researchers of Arawakan languages as well as for linguistic typologists and theoreticians. Further, the products of this research will provide reference materials needed to promote local literacy in both Ashéninka Perené and Spanish and to train bilingual school teachers in the region. Lastly, the broad participation of local speakers in this language documentation project will help create the necessary knowledge and infrastructure to continue the language preservation work after the project is finished.
