Building Tone Resources for Second Language Learners from Phonetic Documentation: Cherokee Examples

Lexical tone is a linguistic feature which can present difficulties for second language learners wanting to revitalize their heritage language. This is true not only from the standpoint of understanding and pronunciation, but also because tone is often under-documented and resources are limited or too technical to be useful to community members. Even with these challenges, carefully attending to the intricacies of a language’s sound system allows learners to express themselves more “authentically” or “naturally,” which can be important for confidence and acceptance as language users. Learners can be trained to distinguish tones by attending to acoustic or auditory cues related to tone (e.g., pitch contour). This paper describes multimedia resources designed to focus learner attention on perceiving tone -- visual and audio accompaniments helping to increase the perception of tone in Cherokee, a severely endangered Native American language. We created resources for tone in the form of an electronic presentation containing explanations, example recordings, and intuitive images to provide audio and visual support for language learners. Presentation and format choices were collaboratively designed based on community requests, with an explicit attempt to de-jargonize materials and make them less technical and more accessible to community members

Collaborative Documentation and Revitalization of Cherokee Tone

Cherokee, the sole member of the southern branch of Iroquoian languages, is a severely endangered language. Unlike other members of the Iroquoian family, Cherokee has lexical tone. Community members are concerned about the potential loss of their language, and both speakers and teachers comment on the difficulty that language learners have with tone. This paper provides a brief overview of Cherokee tone and describes the techniques, activities, and results from a collaborative project aimed at building greater linguistic capacity within the Cherokee community. Team members from Cherokee Nation, the University of Kansas, and the University of Oklahoma led a series of workshops designed to train speakers, teachers, and advanced language learners to recognize, describe, and teach tone and how to use this information to document Cherokee. Following a participatory approach to endangered language revitalization and training native speakers and second language users in techniques of linguistic documentation adds to the knowledge-base of the community and allows for the documentation process to proceed from a Cherokee perspective rather than a purely academic/linguistic one. This capacity-building aspect of the project could serve as a model for future collaborations between linguists, teachers, and speakers in other communities with endangered languages.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

A community-driven approach to assessing language and cultural revitalization

This chapter addresses a question many ask about revitalization efforts: Does revitalization work have an impact? Our goal is to provide a case study specifically highlighting the assessment process used by the Myaamia community to document the impact of their language and cultural revitalization work. Este capítulo responde a una pregunta que muchos tienen sobre los esfuerzos de revitalización: ¿tiene el trabajo de revitalización algún impacto? Nuestra meta es proporcionar un estudio que haga resaltar el proceso de evaluación que usa la comunidad Myaamia para documentar el impacto de su trabajo de revitalización lingüística y cultural

From technical to teachable: Tone and vowel length

Language documentation and description in their many forms (e.g., word lists, dictionaries and grammars, discourse representations, or audio/visual recordings) often for academic purposes of research, in and of themselves cannot save a language. They do, however, comprise a critical facet of the revitalization enterprise. Challenges come when these sources of information are overly technical and inaccessible to communities working to revitalize the language (Penfield & Tucker 2011; Rice 2011; Hinton 2001) and are perceived as only preservation oriented. This presentation discusses ways in which meeting community needs for teaching can be addressed through documentation designed to be mutually beneficial. Examples come from a revitalization effort focused on tone and vowel length in Cherokee. Understanding the distinctive features of tone and vowel length in the Cherokee language without available resources has been challenging for second language learners whether in the classroom or studying on their own. With no corresponding audio and written examples for the learners, teachers, or researchers to refer to, learners felt limited. Responding to this community need, documentation served to specifically feed into teaching through a close interface between the different foci of documenting and creating educationally helpful tools. The collaborative aspect of the project brought together speakers, second language users, linguists, educational specialists, and others with a vested interest in taking documentation beyond preservation to facilitating teaching. Documentation and acoustic analysis resulted in data about pitch and vowel length including visual representations (AUTHOR submitted). This technical info contributed toward a better understanding of the nature of Cherokee tone and vowel length. To convert this information to a useful form for language learning, we built on the idea that improving ability to receptively identify tones can generalize to production (Wang et al. 1999). Research indicates that the complexity of and confusion about input associated with tones can be lessened by providing visual pitch contours with written forms accompanying audio materials (e.g., Liu, et al. 2011) and also by presenting tones in pairs (e.g., Wang et al. 1999). The resulting “teachable” component kept linguistics jargon to a minimum and incorporated visual representations in PowerPoint lectures with embedded audio that could be used by teachers plus allow learners to practice on their own. Constant input from teachers and learners helped guide the documentation process so it would result in information valuable to revitalization efforts – thus, teaching needs helped determine the direction the documentation work. REFERENCES AUTHOR. Submitted. “Collaborative Documentation and Revitalization of Cherokee Tone.” Language Documentation and Conservation. Penfield, S.D. & Tucker, B.V. 2011. “From Documenting to Revitalizing an Endangered Language: Where do Applied Linguists Fit?” Language and Education, 25(4), 291-305. Rice, S. 2011. “Applied Field Linguistics: Delivering Linguistic Training to Speakers of Endangered Languages.” Language and Education, 25(4), 319-338. Hinton, L. 2001. “Audio-Video Documentation” In L. Hinton and K. Hale (Eds.), The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice, 265-271. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Wang, Y. Spence, M., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. 1999. “Training American Listeners to Perceive Mandarin Tones.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106(6), 3649-3658. Liu, Y., Wang, M., Perfetti, C.A., Brubaker, B., Wu, S., & MacWhinney, B. 2011. “Learning a Tonal Language by Attending to the Tone: An In-Vivo Experiment.” Language Learning, 61(4), 1119-1141

"What can I do with this?" Using existing language documentation for teaching and learning

Documentation products created primarily for academic audiences have received criticism for their inaccessibility relative to revitalization needs of speech community members. For communities initiating revitalization projects that include a formal teaching component, existing resources may go unused because of their unsuitableness for language learning (Cope & Penfield 2011; Penfield & Tucker 2011; Rice 2011). Emerging documentation models seek to bridge gaps between different stakeholders (e.g. speech community members, academic linguists, teachers, learners, and/or administrators) by designing projects collaboratively from the outset with deliberate thought given to multiple potential end users (Czaykowska-Higgins 2009; Author 2007, 2010; Grinevald 2003; Penfield et al. 2008). Although thoughtfully planned collaborative projects are the ideal, speech community members often begin with existing documentation resources out of necessity. This presentation addresses the challenge of making best possible use of available documentation to develop curriculum, lessons, and materials that support revitalization. Whether formal grammatical descriptions or recordings discovered in someone's attic, with planning and creativity, documentation materials can be fashioned into supplemental and core support for language learning. Furthermore, making efficacious use of materials includes creating multiple learning tools from a single product. For example, a single recording might be revisited for different skills (e.g. listening, speaking, reading, writing), levels (e.g. beginner, intermediate, advanced), age groups (e.g. early childhood, adult), and/or settings (e.g. community classes, Head Start programs, high school courses). Some issues to consider when building materials for formal teaching include the intended audience's receptiveness to various topics and formats, honoring speech community members' conceptualizations of teaching and learning, and protecting the endangered language from dominance by majority language perspectives (see Meek and Messing 2007 for further discussion). Keeping in mind the multi-faceted interplay between these issues, this presentation draws from the authors' varied work with speakers, teachers, and learners of languages of North and South America, and provides case study examples of using existing documentation in curriculum, lesson, and materials development. Attention is paid to extracting maximal benefit from each product by illustrating multiple uses for a single piece of documentation. The authors seek to help answer the question, "What can I do with this?" by sharing ways one resource can morph into a variety of teaching and learning materials. This presentation provides a sense of what can be done within the confines of limited resources to help support communicatively-oriented language learning opportunities. REFERENCES Author. 2007. Author. 2010. Cope, Lida & Susan Penfield. 2011. Applied linguist needed: cross-disciplinary networking for revitalization and education in endangered language contexts. Language and Education 25 (4): 267-271. Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa. 2009. Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities. Language Documentation & Conservation 3 (1): 15-50. Manoa: University of Hawai'i Press. Grinevald, Colette. 2003. Speakers and documentation of endangered languages. In P.K. Austin (Ed.) Language Documentation and Description 11: 52-72. London: Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. Penfield, Susan D., Angelina Serratos, Benjamin V. Tucker, Amelia Flores, Gilford Harper, Johnny Hill, and Nora Vasquez. 2008. Community collaborations: best practices for North American indigenous language documentation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 191:187-202. Penfield, Susan & Benjamin Tucker. 2011. From documenting to revitalizing an endangered language: Where do applied linguists fit? Language and Education 25 (4): 291–305. Rice, Sally. 2011. Applied Field Linguistics: delivering linguistic training to speakers of endangered languages. Language and Education 25 (4): 319-338. Meek, Barbra & Jacqueline Messing. 2007. Framing Indigenous Languages as Secondary to Matrix Languages. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 38: 9-118

Bridging gaps: Documentation, description, and revitalization as mutually beneficial, integrated counterparts

Documentation and description of endangered languages has traditionally been the purview of academic linguists, while revitalization is often viewed as applied work of greater interest to speech community members. Separating documentation, description, and revitalization can create an artificial hierarchy wherein pedagogical materials are secondary to and derivative of documentation. Rather than view these as disparate activities, we argue for an integrative approach that bridges the endeavors and reframes them as equal, concurrent, and non-derivative. We maintain that approaching them as counterparts of a single enterprise strengthens all. Re-envisioning the relationship from sequential to concurrent is essential to creating a more robust corpus that better meets the needs of all stakeholders. As opposed to mining documentary corpora for teaching aids after the fact, both speech community and academic community goals are considered from the beginning and are reflected in all aspects of a project. We will discuss the integration of documentation, description, and revitalization from a methodological perspective illustrated with our own fieldwork. Case-study examples emphasize practical ways of integrating revitalization with documentation by working with community partners to set mutually beneficial goals and develop an integrated workflow from the outset of a project (c.f. Author 1, 2011). For instance, members of the community where Author 1 works have begun a revitalization project that includes a teaching component. While planning curriculum for particular high frequency forms, community teachers and Author 1 discovered that the forms of interest were under-described in existing academic literature. This eventually led to both a more thorough academic description (c.f. Author 1, 2014) and a way to teach the constructions these forms appear in. The description is now part of a bigger typological work, AND teachers are better able to convey aspects of the language in use. Had Author 1 been focused solely on documentation and description to the exclusion of revitalization, she may not have become aware of or may have overlooked this gap in existing descriptions of the language. Both formal teaching and academic description were enriched by supporting revitalization concurrently with documentation. Teaching curricula, lessons, and other such materials, thus, are not viewed as products to be delivered as an academic linguist's "giving back" to a speech community, but instead are integral to maximally useful documentation. We hope this talk will be part of an ongoing conversation theorizing a methodology for endangered languages research that integrates documentation, academic description, and revitalization

DOCUMENTATION, REVITALIZATION, AND BENEFITS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES (NSF-SPONSORED WORKSHOP RESULTS)

Documentation provides critical linguistic resources for e orts to support endangered language (re)learning, but there is little research on exactly how documentation benefits these efforts. In addition, there is almost no research on the long-term linguistic and extra-linguistic benefits to child learners of endangered languages. With support from NSF’s Documenting Endangered Languages Program, a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from linguistics, public health, child development, psychology, and education is addressing the following questions: What documentary resources and reclamation practices lead to positive outcomes? What research is needed to better understand the benefits and promising practices of language reclamation and documentation? In this workshop, we will share our preliminary findings and recommendations for future study, and discuss implementation of these recommendations with workshop participants

Collaborative documentation and revitalization of Cherokee tone and vowel length

Collaborators from Cherokee Nation, University of Oklahoma and University of Kansas worked together on a Cherokee tone and vowel length project. Our work represents a unique contribution to language documentation, especially with respect to prosodic features of tonal languages. Additionally, it demonstrates the benefits of cooperative and interdisciplinary sharing of expertise and exemplifies how the varied skills of many people, including speakers, learners, theoretical and applied linguists, documentation specialists, second language specialists, teacher trainers, and technology specialists can complement each other. Overall goals of our project include the accurate description of both tone and vowel length. These features will eventually be represented and accessible to the community through an online dictionary. Training sessions were designed around these goals and an educational component of the project involves applying this knowledge to Cherokee second language classrooms as a pedagogical resource for helping learners improve their Cherokee pronunciation. Tone can be challenging to document because it is relative to both the speaker (e.g. vocal tract, pitch rate, emotional state) and phonetic context (e.g. manner, place, word-size, phonological phrasing, focus). This is a difficult task even for native speakers and more so for learners. Linguists led user- friendly (often non-technical) workshops illustrating numerous techniques to make Cherokee tone and vowel length more salient. Teams, consisting of one first language speaker and one second language speaker (typically with no background in linguistics), worked through the tasks with both members contributing to the marking of linguistic features. Results of the ongoing project include word lists illustrating different Cherokee vowel length and tonal characteristics, recorded files that illustrate different tones and vowel lengths with different speakers, and a growing database containing over 1000 acoustic measurements for tone and vowel length. These materials provide us with an empirical base from which to begin evaluating current models concerning the typology of prosodic systems. The literature on Cherokee tone documents five or six surface tones (Johnson 2005; Lindsey 1985; Montgomery-Anderson 2008; Author 1975; Uchihara 2009; Wright 1996). Our findings suggest that Cherokee has a high level tone, a relatively level low tone, a low falling tone, a high falling tone, a rising tone, and a super-high tone. We will discuss these findings, present a preliminary acoustic analysis of Cherokee tone and vowel length, and share the lessons we learned from taking a holistic, collaborative approach to the description, documentation, and teaching of tone and vowel length in Cherokee. *The opinions expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cherokee Nation