Language Documentation and Archives in South America (original) (raw)
Related papers
The World of Music (new series), 2016
For South American indigenous peoples, music making is intimately linked to the idea of “vital breath” as a central means of knowing and experiencing the world—a reason why voices and aerophone ensembles are such emblematic acoustic instruments throughout the continent. Ethnological studies have increasingly recognized and reaffirmed this expressive link between musicality and life, suggesting that for millennia acoustic-musical practices and repertoires have played a key role in engendering indigenous lifeways. However, continuing to live as an indigenous people on the continent today requires more than ever a determined resistance to the expropriation and violence endemic to capitalism’s seemingly relentless invasion of the geographicand existential territories of these peoples. At the core of this resistance we find musical practices. These range from ritual chants and aerophones to other sound formsemployed in the fight to avert annihilation. Formed in this context of political intransigence, our collective project “The Work of Memory through Songs” is a partial response to the request voiced by various indigenous ethnic groups to document and discuss these musical practices.In our view, the urgency and importance of such a project reside in the ways in which it engages with the aesthetic-musical forms of indigenous peoples, recognizing their diverse modes of being and acting in the world, going beyond the merely museological aims of material collection. Assisted by a diverse group of researchers, both indigenous and non-indigenous, the Sound Documentation Project (ProDocson) has been supported since 2011 by the Museu do Índio, a state institution run by the Fundação Nacional do Indio (FUNAI), as a pilot program in documenting and analyzing indigenous sounds. Currently working with six indigenous groups (Tikmũ’ũn,Guarani Kaiowa, Guarani-Mbyá, Enawene Nawe, Baniwa, and Krahô), the project comes on the heels of an extensive program of cultural and linguistic documentation (Programa de Documentação de Línguas e Culturas Indígenas, PROGDOC) already completed by this institution, and aims to attend to the need for more comprehensive policies regarding the documentation of musical-ritual activities.
For South American indigenous peoples, music making is intimately linked to the idea of “vital breath” as a central means of knowing and experiencing the world—a reason why voices and aerophone ensembles are such emblematic acoustic instruments throughout the continent. Ethnological studies have increasingly recognized and reaffirmed this expressive link between musicality and life, suggesting that for millennia acoustic-musical practices and repertoires have played a key role in engendering indigenous lifeways. However, continuing to live as an indigenous people on the continent today requires more than ever a determined resistance to the expropriation and violence endemic to capitalism’s seemingly relentless invasion of the geographic and existential territories of these peoples. At the core of this resistance we find musical practices. These range from ritual chants and aerophones to other sound forms employed in the fight to avert annihilation. Formed in this context of political intransigence, our collective project “The Work of Memory through Songs” is a partial response to the request voiced by various indigenous ethnic groups to document and discuss these musical practices. In our view, the urgency and importance of such a project reside in the ways in which it engages with the aesthetic-musical forms of indigenous peoples, recognizing their diverse modes of being and acting in the world, going beyond the merely museological aims of material collection. Assisted by a diverse group of researchers, both indigenous and non-indigenous, the Sound Documentation Project (ProDocson) has been supported since 2011 by the Museu do Índio, a state institution run by the Fundação Nacional do Indio (FUNAI), as a pilot program in documenting and analyzing indigenous sounds. Currently working with six indigenous groups (Tikmũ’ũn, Guarani Kaiowa, Guarani-Mbyá, Enawene Nawe, Baniwa, and Krahô), the project comes on the heels of an extensive program of cultural and linguistic documentation (Programa de Documentação de Línguas e Culturas Indígenas, PROGDOC) already completed by this institution, and aims to attend to the need for more comprehensive policies regarding the documentation of musical-ritual activities.
Language Documentation in the Americas
Language Documentation & Conservation, 2014
In the last decades, the documentation of endangered languages has advanced greatly in the Americas. In this paper we survey the role that international funding programs have played in advancing documentation in this part of the world, with a particular focus on the growth of documentation in Brazil, and we examine some of the major opportunities and challenges involved in documentation in the Americas, focusing on participatory research models. 0. INTRODUCTION. In the last ten or so years the documentation of endangered languages has advanced greatly in the Americas. The papers in this special section of Language Documentation and Conservation grow out of a session on language documentation in the Americas held at the June 2013 DoBeS Conference “Language Documentation: Past– Present– Future.” This was one of a series of organized sessions on language documentation in various regions of the world. The organizers of each session were asked to focus on what was special about documenta...
Documenting and researching endangered languages: the Pangloss Collection
The Pangloss Collection is a language archive developed since 1994 at the Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO) research group of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientiique (CNRS). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world's languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media iles (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Longterm preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly proitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientiic and speaker communities and to the general public.
Reflections on language documentation in the Southern Cone
2018
Although many indigenous languages of Chile and Argentina have been documented only in the second half of the 20th century by academic anthropologists and linguists, some languages have a comparatively long tradition of descriptive and documentary scholarship conducted by Catholic missionaries. From a present-day perspective, early descriptions and documentations show some shortcomings (viz., they are often fragmentary and biased in several respects), but they nonetheless constitute a trove of valuable resources for later work and ongoing revitalization endeavors. Current documentary work is now more balanced in terms of Himmelmann's (1998) three-parameter typology (i.e., it pays close attention to communicative events of different kinds of modality, spontaneity, and naturalness), employs audio and video recordings, and takes copyright, access, and sustainability issues seriously. It is also more collaborative and empowering vis-a-vis the role played by indigenous collaborators ...
Languages are the centre piece of the cultural diversity of the world yet they are also a vulnerable part of the world’s cultural heritage. Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world, only eight are of wider communication while over 417 languages are endangered (UNESCO). Research shows that half of the languages spoken today are likely to be extinct by the end of this century. In Africa, indigenous languages are highly endangered because the younger generations are no longer learning them. The situation in Latin America where an increasing language loss, shift, endangerment and possible extinction is greatly worrying is not different either. The loss of language is not merely a loss of the language itself but also a loss of entire culture and knowledge of a people. Each language reflects a unique vision of the world along with a complex culture, envisioning the way in which a community sees the world and how they shape their philosophical minds around their cultural heritage. It is therefore important to be aware of the efforts being done to give life to endangered languages and to the institutions giving support to conserve them. While advances in technology have improved the quality and availability of documentation, advances in linguistic typology and linguistic theory in general have had a profound effect on the quality of the language descriptions and preservations done. This paper focuses on the endangered languages of Latin America and their place in the digital archives along with brief review and analysis of vital contents, learning resources and materials made available on language databases. The author introduces several regional electronic language documentation efforts done by INALI, AILLA, CAILLA and OLAC among others and examines how the availability of smart gadgets and free language documentation Apps can make it possible for dwindling indigenous native speakers in Latin America opportunities to document and preserve their threatened languages. Key words: Indigenous Languages, Electronic Preservation, Databases, Archives, Cultural Revitalization, Language Revitalization, Cultural Diversity, Identity, Latin America, Language Endangerment, Language Preservation, Teaching, Learning, Electronic preservation.