The essential elements that constitute the minimal scientific documentation of a language include a reference grammar, a dictionary, and transcribed narratives with translations and linguistic analysis. Dictionaries involve extensive linguistic analysis, and contemporary dictionaries are constructed via electronic databases, which structure a set of data and allow multiple routes to search for information. With the advent of digital dictionary tools, entries include sound files, photographs, grammar information, and entire stories. Dictionaries contain historical knowledge, and even serve as learning tools. This project will expand the existing dictionary and database of an endangered Native American language, Lenape. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. Dictionaries and databases for Native American languages advance knowledge by increasing access to linguistic and cultural materials, especially when disseminated in online and mobile formats. This project will add otherwise inaccessible recordings, stories and historical examples, and it will fund professional audio restoration to improve quality of sound files. Broader impacts include the support of tribal citizens studying their heritage language and the interest of a larger public audience Native American languages, culture and history.
Lenape, the Delaware Indian language, was once spoken over an area of about 20,000 square miles - all of New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and southeastern New York states. The Lenape people were gradually displaced from their homeland in the 1600s and 1700s but the language continued to be spoken, including as the first language of many Oklahoma Lenape born in the early 1900s, but a variety of factors have reduced the language's use. The Lenape Talking Dictionary of the Oklahoma-based Delaware Tribe was among the first online, audio-enhanced dictionaries for a Native American language, thanks to support from the National Science Foundation. The Lenape Talking Dictionary serves as a rich repository of linguistic knowledge of Lenape for tribal members studying their language and history, and for scholars researching the language and its relatives in the Algonquian language family. The dictionary is usable in web and mobile format and includes a wide range of material besides words and accompanying audio files, including a significant number of transcribed and translated sentences and stories, often with audio. Lenape employs highly complex morphological structures in its syntax. Expanding this database to increase the number of recordings, stories and lexical examples will benefit tribal members and linguists who focus on morphology, syntax, Algonquian languages, and other areas. The large compendium of bilingual examples, audio, grammar discussion and lessons increase the accessibility of the morphosyntax of Lenape to a broader public audience and tribal citizens, and to folklorists, anthropologists and historians with interests in Native American history, traditions and culture.
