| NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 14, 2012 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 26, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1160696 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Colleen M. Fitzgerald
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2012 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $190,394.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $190,394.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
70 WASHINGTON SQ S NEW YORK NY US 10012-1019 (212)998-2121 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
70 Washington Square S New York NY US 10012-1019 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Linguistics, DEL |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
Vlashki/Zheyanski, a severely endangered Balkan Romance language, is spoken in six mountain villages in the Istrian peninsula in Croatia. Speakers in the southern villages call their language Vlashki, while those in a village further north call it Zheyanski. At a point when Vlashki/Zheyanski appears to be no more than a few decades away from losing most of its fluent speakers, this project seeks to achieve a comprehensive documentation of the language by creating an annotated digital linguistic corpus of audio and video recordings and older written texts and a bidirectional trilingual dictionary (Vlashki/Zheyanski, Croatian, and English), as well as a description of the syntax of the language, and a study of the macro- and micro-sociolinguistic forces that have affected its current endangerment.
The envisioned corpus is noteworthy for including audio and video data not only from the home villages in Croatia, but also from the largest community of Vlashki/Zheyanski speakers outside Croatia, that in New York City, as well as data from the 1920s and 1930s. Hence, it will provide insight into variation in the language, from the 1920s and 1930s until today, and in two homeland communities and one diaspora community.
Documentation of this severely endangered language will be achieved while simultaneously educating speakers of the language as to the value of the language and the pressing need for its documentation. Project materials -- the dictionary, a selection of audio and video materials, the syntactic and sociolinguistic studies, the complete translated written texts from the 1920s and 1930s -- will be accessible to community members. In some cases, availability will be achieved via the existing language website (www.vlaski-zejanski.com). The community-centered orientation of the project builds on and reinforces ongoing work with community members.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Documentation of the Vlashki/Zheyanski Language ('RUO') project documented the small and severely endangered Balkan Romance language now spoken in six mountain villages in the Istrian peninsula in Croatia. The language, known as Istro-Romanian in linguistic literature, is called 'Vlashki' or 'Zheyanski' by its speakers. Until now, this language did not have an annotated digital linguistic corpus.
The project accomplished its main goals of (1) creation of an annotated digital linguistic corpus of audio and video recordings and written texts, (2) a bidirectional trilingual dictionary (Vlashki/Zheyanski, Croatian, and English) in a digital format, (3) a study of the macro- and micro-sociolinguistic forces that have affected its current endangerment both in Croatia and New York City, and (4) a description of aspects of syntactic and lexical structure of Vlashki/Zheyanski.
The main outcome of the project is the first of the items listed above, the digital linguistic corpus (Documentation of the Vlashki/Zheyanski Language ('ruo'), #0543), deposited at the Endangered Language Archive (ELAR) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. It contains 55 hours of audio and video recordings consisting primarily of oral histories and narratives. These recordings have been transcribed, translated into Croatian and, partially, into English, and morphosyntactically annotated. This audio/video collection represents the speech of 44 fluent and active speakers in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. The collection also includes (1) a Fieldworks Language Explorer file containing a) a trilingual dictionary consisting of a digitized older print dictionary, the only published dictionary extant, now expanded with new lexical entries and b) a morphosyntactically annotated text collection with transcriptions and translations of the largest portion of speech samples recorded in the course of the project; (2) over twenty video clips of skill demonstrations and narratives with subtitles, (3) community-oriented language learning publications in book and CD format, (4) a published photo-exhibit catalogue, (5) two published illustrated maps of the village areas,(6) language-descriptive website materials for a general audience, and (7) academic publications..
In addition, two major written collections of texts, originally gathered in the 1920s and 1930s, inaccessible and without annotations until now, have been digitized and translated into Croatian and English and will be added to the ELAR corpus. Further, results of a sociolinguistic study of language shift in Croatia have been published.
This collection is noteworthy for including materials (recordings, texts, and dictionary entries) from different locations where speakers reside (two homeland communities and one diaspora community) and thereby providing insight into diachronic and synchronic variation in the language, and for enabling access to the gathered materials by a wider audience of community members and scholars by digitizing them and making them available online and translating them into English
Additionally, this project's principal goal, the comprehensive documentation of a severely endangered language, was achieved in a collaborative manner. It simultaneously engaged and educated speakers of the language as to the value of the language and for the pressing need for its documentation. In the course of doing so, the project provided speakers of the language with knowledge about language documentation and preservation principles and techniques. All project products are accessible to community members through the ELAR archive or on the language/s website at http://www.vlaski-zejanski.com.
Last Modified: 12/31/2018
Modified by: John V Singler
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