This page has specific resources that may be of interest for students participating in the 2024 cohort of the REU linguistics site program.
Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas
Focusing on the Americas - home to 40 to 50 million Indigenous people - this book explores the history and current state of Indigenous language revitalization across this vast region. Complementary chapters on the USA and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean, offer a panoramic view while tracing nuanced trajectories of "top down" (official) and "bottom up" (grass roots) language planning and policy initiatives. Authored by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, the book is organized around seven overarching themes: Policy and Politics; Processes of Language Shift and Revitalization; The Home-School-Community Interface; Local and Global Perspectives; Linguistic Human Rights; Revitalization Programs and Impacts; New Domains for Indigenous Languages Providing a comprehensive, hemisphere-wide scholarly and practical source, this singular collection simultaneously fills a gap in the language revitalization literature and contributes to Indigenous language revitalization efforts.
Teaching Writing to Children in Indigenous Languages
This volume brings together studies of instructional writing practices and the products of those practices from diverse Indigenous languages and cultures. By analyzing a rich diversity of contexts--Finland, Ghana, Hawaii, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and more--through biliteracy, complexity, and genre theories, this book explores and demonstrates critical components of writing pedagogy and development. Because the volume focuses on Indigenous languages, it questions center-margin perspectives on schooling and national language ideologies, which often limit the number of Indigenous languages taught, the domains of study, and the age groups included.
Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis
Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis brings various scholars, educators, and community voices together in ways that reimagines and recenters learning processes that embody Indigenous education rooted in critical Indigenous theories and pedagogies. The contributing scholar-educators speak to the resilience and strength embedded in Indigenous knowledges and highlight the intersection between research, theories, and praxis in Indigenous education. Each of the contributors share ways they engaged in transformative praxis by activating a critical Indigenous consciousness with diverse Indigenous youth, educators, families, and community members. The authors provide pathways to reconceptualize and sustain goals to activate agency, social change, and advocacy with and for Indigenous peoples as they enact sovereignty, self-education, and Native nation-building. The chapters are organized across four sections, entitled Indigenizing Curriculum and Pedagogy, Revitalizing and Sustaining Indigenous Languages, Engaging Families and Communities in Indigenous Education, and Indigenizing Teaching and Teacher Education. Across the chapters, you will observe dialogues between the scholar-educators as they enacted various theories, shared stories, indigenized various curriculum and teaching practices, and reflected on the process of engaging in critical dialogues that generates a (re)new(ed) spirit of hope and commitment to intellectual and spiritual sovereignty. The book makes significant contributions to the fields of critical Indigenous studies, critical and culturally sustaining pedagogy, and decolonization.
Revitalizing Endangered Languages: A Practical Guide
Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of the twenty-first century. Languages are endangered by a number of factors, including globalization, education policies, and the political, economic and cultural marginalization of minority groups. This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as well as some background, to help with the effective revitalization of endangered languages. It covers a broad scope of themes including effective planning, benefits, wellbeing, economic aspects, attitudes and ideologies. The chapter authors have hands-on experience of language revitalization in many countries around the world, and each chapter includes a wealth of examples, such as case studies from specific languages and language areas. Clearly and accessibly written, it is suitable for non-specialists as well as academic researchers and students interested in language revitalization. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Language Revitalization at Tribal Colleges and Universities
Since the founding of the first tribal colleges over 50 years ago, language revitalization has been an integral part of every tribal college or university's mission. This new edited volume compiles an array of articles, essays, reports, and speeches that showcase the great efforts being made to preserve, protect, and revitalize Indigenous languages at tribal colleges across the United States. The first book of its kind, Language Revitalization at Tribal Colleges and Universities offers a chronological overview of preservation and revitalization efforts, revealing how programming and thinking have evolved over the past 25 years.
A Bibliography of Navajo and Native American Teaching Materials
A Bibliography of Navajo and native American teaching materials = Diné k'éeji naaltsoos bee nida'nitínígíí
Language Shift among the Navajos
To experience change on the Navajo Reservation, one need only close one's eyes and listen. Today an increasing number of Navajos speak only English, while very few speak only Navajo. The Navajo language continues to be taught, but it is less often practiced. Deborah House asks why, despite the many factors that would seem to contribute to the maintenance of the Navajo language, speakers of the language continue to shift to English at such an alarming rate--and what can be done about it. Language Shift among the Navajos provides a close look at the ideological factors that intervene between the desire of the Navajos to maintain their language as an important aspect of their culture and their actual linguistic practice. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork within a Navajo institution and community, it points to ideologies held by Navajo people about their unequal relationship with the dominant American society as a primary factor in the erosion of traditional language use. House suggests that the Navajos employ their own paradigm--Sa'ah Naagh#65533;#65533; Bik'eh H#65533;zh#65533;#65533;n--to learn both Western language and culture and their own without denigrating either perspective. By building on the traditional Navajo belief in harmony and balance, she advocates that those who value the language should use and teach it not just in school but also in the home, in the ceremonial hogans, and among those who cherish their heritage. Now is the time when language choices and behavior will influence whether the Navajo language lives or dies. House's book carries important lessons for anyone concerned with cultural continuity. It is a wake-up call for educators, youth, politicians, or family and community members who value Native language and culture. It remains to be seen in what language that call will be answered.
The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary
The Navajo Verb: A Grammar for Students and Scholars
The verb is the most important and the most complex part of Navajo grammar. For the first time, students and scholars interested in the Navajo language have a book that presents the verb system in a step-by-step and thorough fashion. By providing easy-to-follow descriptions with abundant examples, this book unravels the complexity of Navajo and reveals its expressiveness. In Navajo, numerous prefixes combine with verb roots to form single words that, in English translation, require a phrase or even a sentence to convey their meaning. Therefore, verb stems and prefixes must be mastered piece by piece to understand the language. This volume leads the reader carefully and systematically through the complexities of the Navajo verb system. By doing so, the book makes Navajo more accessible to all those interested in this American Indian language.
Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance
Winner of the Beatrice Medicine Award In south-central Oklahoma and much of "Indian Country," using an Indigenous language is colloquially referred to as "talking Indian." Among older Chickasaw community members, the phrase is used more often than the name of the specific language, Chikashshanompa' or Chickasaw. As author Jenny L. Davis explains, this colloquialism reflects the strong connections between languages and both individual and communal identities when talking as an Indian is intimately tied up with the heritage language(s) of the community, even as the number of speakers declines. Today a tribe of more than sixty thousand members, the Chickasaw Nation was one of the Native nations removed from their homelands to Oklahoma between 1837 and 1838. According to Davis, the Chickasaw's dispersion from their lands contributed to their disconnection from their language over time: by 2010 the number of Chickasaw speakers had radically declined to fewer than seventy-five speakers. In Talking Indian, Davis--a member of the Chickasaw Nation--offers the first book-length ethnography of language revitalization in a U.S. tribe removed from its homelands. She shows how in the case of the Chickasaw Nation, language programs are intertwined with economic growth that dramatically reshape the social realities within the tribe. She explains how this economic expansion allows the tribe to fund various language-learning forums, with the additional benefit of creating well-paid and socially significant roles for Chickasaw speakers. Davis also illustrates how language revitalization efforts are impacted by the growing trend of tribal citizens relocating back to the Nation.
Chickasaw: An Analytical Dictionary
The Chickasaws are one of the Five Tribes removed by the U.S. government to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) more than 150 years ago from their homelands in the southeastern United States. Most speakers of the Chickasaw language now live in the Chickasaw Nation in south-central Oklahoma. Although there are fewer than one hundred fluent speakers today, the tribe has a language program designed to revitalize and perpetuate the language. This first scholarly dictionary of the Chickasaw language contains a Chickasaw-English section with approximately 12,000 main entries, secondary entries, and cross-references; an English-Chickasaw index; and an extensive introductory section describing the structure of Chickasaw words. The dictionary uses a new spelling system that represents tonal accent and the glottal stop, neither of which is shown in any previous dictionary of either Chickasaw or the closely related Muskogean language, Choctaw. In addition, vowel and consonant length, vowel nasalization, and other important distinctions are given. Grammatical information is also provided. The dictionary is the product of a seventeen-year collaboration between Pamela Munro and Catherine Willmond. They have consulted over forty other Chickasaw speakers in Oklahoma to collect variant forms of words, which are also listed in the dictionary.
Relativization in Ojibwe
In Relativization in Ojibwe, Michael D. Sullivan Sr. compares varieties of the Ojibwe language and establishes subdialect groupings for Southwestern Ojibwe, often referred to as Chippewa, of the Algonquian family. Drawing from a vast corpus of both primary and archived sources, he presents an overview of two strategies of relative clause formation and shows that relativization appears to be an exemplary parameter for grouping Ojibwe dialect and subdialect relationships. Specifically, Sullivan targets the morphological composition of participial verbs in Algonquian parlance and categorizes the variation of their form across a number of communities. In addition to the discussion of participles and their role in relative clauses, he presents original research linking geographical distribution of participles, most likely a result of historic movements of the Ojibwe people to their present location in the northern midwestern region of North America. Following previous dialect studies concerned primarily with varieties of Ojibwe spoken in Canada, Relativization in Ojibwe presents the first study of dialect variation for varieties spoken in the United States and along the border region of Ontario and Minnesota. Starting with a classic Algonquian linguistic tradition, Sullivan then recasts the data in a modern theoretical framework, using previous theories for Algonquian languages and familiar approaches such as feature checking and the split-CP hypothesis.
Comanche Vocabulary
The Comanche Vocabulary collected in Mexico during the years 1861-1864 by Manuel Garcia Rejon is by far the most extensive Comanche word list compiled before the establishment of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in 1867. It preserves words and concepts that have since changed or even disappeared from the language, thus offering a unique historical window on earlier Comanche culture. This translation adds the English equivalents to the original Spanish-Comanche list of 857 words, as well as a Comanche-English vocabulary and comparisons with later Comanche word lists. Daniel J. Gelo's introduction discusses the circumstances in which Garcia Rejon gathered his material and annotates significant aspects of the vocabulary in light of current knowledge of Comanche language and culture. The book also includes information on pictography, preserving a rare sample of Comanche scapula drawing. This information will help scholars understand the processes of language evolution and cultural change that occurred among all Native American peoples following European contact. The Comanche Vocabulary will also hold great interest for the large public fascinated by this once-dominant tribe.
Comanche Dictionary and Grammar
Presents the Comanche-English dictionary with illustrative sentences, a brief grammar, photographs and original art.
A Grammar of Comanche
This text briefly discusses those aspects of the Comanche, it will be of greatest interest to a reader who has little or no background in the Numic languages.
1501 Kincaid Street
Eugene, OR 97403
P: 541-346-3053
F: 541-346-3485
