Documenting Endangered Languages

 
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    CFDA#

    47.050, 47.070, 47.075, 47.076
     

    Funder Type

    Federal Government

    IT Classification

    B - Readily funds technology as part of an award

    Authority

    National Science Foundation (NSF)

    Summary

    Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) is a joint funding program of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop and advance scientific and scholarly knowledge concerning endangered human languages. Made urgent by the imminent death of roughly half of the approximately 7000 currently used human languages, DEL seeks not only to acquire scientific data that will soon be unobtainable, but to integrate, systematize, and make the resulting linguistic findings widely available by exploiting advances in information technology. Principal Investigators (PIs) and Applicants for Fellowships (Applicants) may propose projects involving one or more of the following three emphasis areas:

    • Language Description To conduct fieldwork to record in digital audio and video format one or more endangered languages; to carry out the early stages of language documentation including transcription and annotation; to carry out later stages of documentation including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases; to conduct initial analysis of findings in the light of current linguistic theory.
    • Infrastructure To digitize and otherwise preserve and provide wider access to such documentary materials, including previously collected materials and those concerned with languages which have recently lost all fluent speakers and are related to currently endangered languages; to create other infrastructures, including conferences to make the problem of endangered languages more widely understood and more effectively addressed.
    • Computational Methods To further develop standards and databases to make this documentation of a certain language or languages widely available in consistent, archivable, interoperable, and Web-based formats; to develop computational tools (taggers, parsers, speech recognizers, grammar inducers, etc.) for endangered languages, which present a particular challenge for those using statistical and machine learning, especially deep learning methods, since such languages do not have the large corpora for training and testing the models used to develop those tools and to develop new approaches to building computational tools for endangered languages, which make use of deeper knowledge of linguistics, including language typology and families, and which require collaboration among theoretical and field linguists, and computational linguists, and computer scientists and engineers

     In each emphasis area, DEL encourages collaboration across academic disciplines and /or communities. For example, a DEL project might pair linguists with computer scientists, geographers, anthropologists, educators and others as appropriate. Examples of community collaborations might include scholars working in well defined partnerships with native speaker communities. DEL also encourages investigators to include in their projects innovative plans for training native speakers in descriptive linguistics and new technologies which support the documentation of endangered languages. The DEL program is also interested in contributing to a new generation of scholars through targeted supplements, which support both graduate and undergraduate research experience. DEL gives high priority to projects that involve actually recording in digital audio and video format endangered languages before they become extinct.

     

    History of Funding

    Previous awards can be seen at https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?ProgEleCode=7719&BooleanElement=Any&BooleanRef=Any&ActiveAwards=true&#results.

    Additional Information

    Documentation is a key complement to language revitalization efforts, but DLI does not support projects to revive or expand the actual use of endangered languages. Tribal groups interested in the full range of language revitalization activities should contact the Native Language Program of the Administration for Native Americans in the Administration for Children & Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.


    However, DLI-DEL encourages investigators from Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP)-eligible institutions to submit either senior research proposals or collaborative proposals from consortia of TCUP-eligible institutions and partnering universities with educational or research ties to TCUP-eligible institutions' faculty or students. While one TCUP-eligible institution may be identified to take the lead on organizational activities, each institution will independently manage its award. Examples of collaborations with TCUP-eligible institutions may include:

    • Building TCU institutions' research and scholarly training capacity in documentary and descriptive linguistics, computational methodology, archiving and preservation.
    • Attracting, retraining, and supporting TCU students in independent research endeavors.
    • Non-TCU institutions providing research training to enable the successful transition of TCU students to major research universities

    Contacts

    Colleen Fitzgerald

    Colleen Fitzgerald
    Documenting Endangered Languages
    4201 Wilson Boulevard
    Arlington, VA 22230
    (703) 292-4381
    (703) 292-9068
     

  • Eligibility Details

    Proposals may only be submitted by the following:

    • Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) - Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members. Special Instructions for International Branch Campuses of US IHEs: If the proposal includes funding to be provided to an international branch campus of a US institution of higher education (including through use of subawards and consultant arrangements), the proposer must explain the benefit(s) to the project of performance at the international branch campus, and justify why the project activities cannot be performed at the US campus.
    • Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research labs, professional societies and similar organizations in the U.S. associated with educational or research activities.
    • Tribal organizations and other American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian serving organizations.

    Deadline Details

    The applications are to be submitted for FY22 by October 14, 2022. A similar deadline is anticipated annually.

    Award Details

    Approximately $4,800,000 is available in annual funding. At least half of the available funding will be awarded to projects involving fieldwork.


    Award Size and Duration

    • Senior Research and Conference Projects: Approximately 20-25 Standard or Continuing Grants of up to $450,000 for up to three years. Funding will be available in the form of one- to three-year senior research grants, in addition to conference proposals. Collaborative Senior Research projects should not exceed the $450,000 limit.

    Related Webcasts Use the links below to view the recorded playback of these webcasts


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