NSF Org:	BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Recipient:	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Initial Amendment Date:	September 2, 2020
Latest Amendment Date:	October 14, 2020
Award Number:	2035185
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Jorge Valdes Kroff jvaldesk@nsf.gov  (703)292-7920 BCS  Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE  Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date:	September 1, 2020
End Date:	August 31, 2023 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$18,897.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$18,897.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2020 = $18,897.00
History of Investigator:	Anthony Woodbury (Principal Investigator) acw@mail.utexas.edu Gladys Camacho Rios (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	University of Texas at Austin 110 INNER CAMPUS DR AUSTIN TX  US  78712-1139 (512)471-6424
Sponsor Congressional District:	25
Primary Place of Performance:	University of Texas at Austin 3925 W Braker Lane, Suite 3340 Austin TX  US  78759-5316
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	37
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	V6AFQPN18437
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	DLI DDRIG-DynLangInfrast DDRIG
Primary Program Source:	01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):	1311, SMET, 7719, 9179
Program Element Code(s):	123Y00
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.075

ABSTRACT

The way bilinguals and monolingual elders speak an endangered indigenous language is not uniform. Bilinguals are typically more dominant in one of their two languages, in most cases not their indigenous one but the national or dominant language in their country of origin. Monolingual speakers differ from bilinguals in having one single, fully developed, linguistic system. This difference can be seen in their use of words, especially complex verbs, since a range of semantic nuances that are idiosyncratic to their speech are displayed. The speech of elderly monolinguals in indigenous languages is vanishing as villages decrease in population, leading to significant losses of cultural diversity.

In this dissertation project, the doctoral student will document naturalistic spoken monolingual speech and provide an in-depth analysis of the grammar and the semantics of verbal morphology in a particular monolingual variety that will allow answering questions such as: What is the verbal morphology of elderly monolinguals like and what grammar underlies such complex systems? What semantic information is prominently displayed through the verbs used by monolinguals that is not present in bilingual speech? These questions remain just loosely explored in current literature. The results of this project will enhance understanding of the diversity of endangered indigenous languages as it brings into the analysis monolingual systems which are morphologically more elaborate, thus allowing researchers to evaluate different cross-linguistic theories of morphologically complex languages. Since the doctoral student is bilingual, data collection will include her participation in everyday conversations. This interactive process will guarantee gathering real speech while spontaneously interacting with elderly monolinguals. Complementary elicited data will also be gathered to help achieve a better understanding of the semantics of verbal morphology. The naturalistic data corpus collected will be transcribed, annotated and analyzed, and will then be curated and deposited in a digital archive for the use of a wide range of stakeholders including indigenous language speakers, linguists, and other researchers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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 grant allowed the co-PI to conduct documentation of a variety of South Bolivian Quechua (SBQ) spoken in a rural town in Southern Bolivia. The co-PI recorded a fifty-hour linguistic corpus in audio and video while interacting solely in SBQ with elderly monolingual speakers. This documentation allowed the co-PI to produce a doctoral dissertation titled: Verbal complexity in South Bolivian Quechua: insights from the speech of monolingual elders’. The dissertation describes the complexity of verb forms found in the SBQ variety spoken in the rural town of Uma Piwra. This variety is only spoken by elders and had not been documented. The co-PI also produced two academic papers, ‘Constituency and word formation in South Bolivian Quechua’ (in press) and ‘Associated Motion and Direction in South Bolivian Quechua’ (submitted)

The co-PI produced the first large naturalistic corpus of SBQ, consisting of 50 hours of the recordings with linked transcription and translation, to be archived at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA). The documentation also facilitated the production of a community-oriented book. In addition, the co-PI wrote and published a comic book !T’akayacharikamushallanñataq! ‘The rain is starting to fall downwards again’ The book highlights how humor is preserved in the speech of monolingual elders in rural towns and promotes public awareness about the endangerment of the linguistic and cultural diversity of South Bolivian Quechua that is maintained in rural towns.

Finally, concerning the impact in the Bolivian society, this research project trained a group of SBQ-speaking younger students to document monolingual varieties in different towns in Southern Bolivia. As a result, two of them managed to enter grad school in the United States.

Last Modified: 11/18/2023
Modified by: Anthony C Woodbury

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