AIFIS shares our congratulations to a global team of linguists on the recent completion of their project entitled, “Collaborative Approach to the Documentation of Endangered Languages in Linguistically Diverse Locales.” Funded by a grant from the Documenting Endangered Languages Program of the National Science Foundation (DEL) to the University of Delaware, the research team represented collaborators from the University of Delaware, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, and the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), an affiliate of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). The program tested out a new way to increase the involvement of young Indonesians in the documentation of their languages by creating teams of Indonesians (who are native speakers of these endangered languages) and American graduate students who hope to specialize in language documentation.
The project was directed by Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon, from the University of Delaware. It provided an opportunity for American graduate students in linguistics to gain training in linguistic fieldwork and documentary linguistics. Students from the U.S. traveled to East Indonesia (specifically to Nusa Tengarra Timur) for a six week training program that started out in Kupang on West Timor island. The American graduate students were paired with local Indonesian students (undergraduates and recent graduates) who were interested in documenting their own languages. After an intensive six day training program in Kupang, trainees spent three to four weeks in the field on one of the islands of East Nusa Tengarra, before returning to Kupang for a final training session.
The languages documented during these workshops will be archived through the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). Much of the project itself is documented on parallel sites hosted by the University of Delaware and Atma Jaya Catholic University.