| NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 31, 2016 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 15, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 1562130 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Mary Paster
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2016 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $300,400.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $300,400.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
105 JESSUP HALL IOWA CITY IA US 52242-1316 (319)335-2123 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
170 English Philosophy Building Iowa City IA US 52242-1408 |
| 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): |
International Research Collab, 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
What are the structural properties of closely related languages when separated for more than four centuries? What kinds of properties do these languages share and where do they diverge? Documenting and studying the intricacies, particularly in syntax ("sentence structure"), increases our understanding of the complex properties in a particular language as well as in closely related languages. While isolation caused by mountains or bodies of water has been one variable, this study asks these questions in an entirely different context by documenting the speech of a community that went into seclusion in the 16th century. With rapid change in the area in the linguistic and social landscape, there is urgency to document the language of this isolated area now, while there are still speakers. Investigating the grammar of such a language variety will show how it is both structurally similar to and different from related languages and contributes to the knowledge of relationships between languages in the same family tree. The project will train University of Iowa graduate and undergraduate students in cutting-edge technologies and methods for language documentation, digital file management, linguistic fieldwork and research methods in the language sciences. The collection and analysis of a publicly archived, wide variety of language materials will generate data of scholarly interest to other disciplines that depend on language-related material (anthropology, biology, history, geography), while increasing our scientific knowledge of the unique aspects of this language and its relatives.
William Davies of the University of Iowa leads an international collaboration with researchers at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, teaming up to document the language of the Baduy Dalam 'Inner Baduy,' a small group of about 1170 living in a remote area on the island of Java in Indonesia. The team will record natural speech (narratives and conversations) and lexical items to produce an audio and video transcribed corpus of Baduy Dalam speech, a dictionary (with special focus on culturally distinctive concepts), and a grammar sketch. Recordings, data files, and field notes will be archived at the University of Iowa and the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, where they will be accessible to other researchers and the general public. Broader impacts include producing print and video materials for direct use by the Baduy as linguistic and cultural education resources. Baduy Dalam is of linguistic importance in part due to how its syntax manifests the Austronesian 'voice' system, which involves how predicates (e.g. "subjects" and "objects") pattern in sentences based on the verb and sentence type. These results will contribute to understanding of the micro-syntactic variation in the Austronesian language family, the second largest language family in the world. The implications are thus important for typology, syntax, and linguistic studies of variation, especially the micro-variations in syntax, which have in many cases focused on larger world languages, like English, or Indo-European language subgroups, like Italian, Spanish and closely related Romance languages. This project will also support international research and training opportunities for a graduate student and it will stimulate new international collaborations between U.S. and Indonesian academic institutions. The NSF Office of International Science and Engineering is providing support for international activities associated with this project.
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.
This project has focused on documenting the language of the Baduy (also known as Kanekes), an indigenous community living in the mountains of western Java. The Baduy secluded themselves in the 16th century, rejecting increasing foreign influences in order to preserve their view of traditional Sundanese society and values. In recent years, the community has had increasing contact with the outside world, largely through ecotourism and growing integration with wider contemporary Indonesian society. These rapidly evolving social and economic circumstances mean that the Baduy language and culture are currently changing more quickly than at any time in the past.
In this project, researchers from the Indonesian Education University (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia or UPI) in Bandung collaborated with Professor William Davies (University of Iowa) to document the Baduy language. Although Professor Davies passed away soon after the project began, the UPI research team continued their work in collaboration with researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the University of Melbourne. Working closely with the Baduy community (including elders and emerging culture bearers), the UPI team collected a large number of audio and video recordings covering different aspects of Baduy society, beliefs, livelihood and environment. The UPI researchers and international partners have prepared these recordings through transcription, glossing and translation with metadata and annotations. Publicly available materials can be accessed through http://kanekes.kaipumakani.org and https://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/BAC01
This collection forms the foundation for producing texts, a dictionary and other materials for use by both the Baduy community, in order to aid their efforts in maintaining their language and culture, and by international scholars for use in further analytical work. It will also contribute to our understanding of Sundanese dialects and the mechanisms of language shift. During the course of this project, several students in Indonesia and the US have been trained in linguistics and language documentation, academic seminars on the Baduy language and the Baduy documentation project have been presented locally and at international symposium and UPI has set up Baduy cultural site to disseminate information about the Baduy to the wider Indonesian community.
Last Modified: 01/29/2023
Modified by: Bradley J Mcdonnell
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