Morphologically Complex Data Collection and Analysis for Improving Lexicographic Models

Analytic dictionaries provide information on the possible and impossible sound combinations and words and clause structures found in individual languages. Linguists and cognitive scientists mine analytic dictionaries to uncover knowledge about word meaning and cultural significance of places, things, and actions and how these are referred to by speakers.

These dictionaries are also useful for discovery of universally predictable or newly discovered grammatical patterns. This project collects data to create an analytic dictionary of a language with unusually complex verb morphology. The original fieldwork conducted with elder birth speakers for this project adds crucial information on the structure of the language, which in turn informs various subfields of linguistics such as historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, morphology, and syntax.

This project supports education and diversity, engaging the Native American elders, teachers, and learners in creating a high-quality, comprehensive, and enduring language resource.

The project expands current lexicographic models to deal with complex verb morphology. The project reviews existing lexical databases to locate gaps in entries and analyzes and fills gaps through information collected via interviews of elder speakers of endangered languages. These elders hold key pieces of lexical and grammatical knowledge that have not been documented elsewhere.

The investigator adds this newly collected information to the existing in a data format that is easily revised and augmented as new data becomes available. Research conducted under this project implements a language documentation method that ensures that current and future learners and researchers have the opportunity to access newly documented lexical items, which provide the necessary data for the development of scientific language materials. These materials can be used by the nonacademic community for language and culture revitalization.

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.