Aché
The purpose of the Aché Documentation Project (ADOP) is the extensive documentation of the Ache language, spoken by a small indigenous population living in the subtropical region of eastern Paraguay. The project is designed to systematically record, describe, and archive language data and to investigate it from ethnolinguistic and anthropological points of view. The Aché language is in urgent need of documentation as the number of speakers is very small, and the socio-cultural conditions are changing rapidly.
Throughout the course of the three project years, the ADOP team will gather extensive linguistic and cultural data by applying multiple research techniques: audio and video recording, participant observation, document analysis, and personal interviews to build a comprehensive multi-media archive documenting the Aché language, its internal variations, and speech events. Work from other anthropologists and linguists will complement the project’s results to provide a longitudinal depiction of language loss as well as to record cultural practices no longer in use.
Working in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) of the Republic of Paraguay, ADOP has begun a program to give indigenous schoolteachers a foundation in linguistics and language documentation, so to encourage basic linguistic research by indigenous people on their own languages. The DOLLIP Program (the Linguistic Documentation of Indigenous Languages) has completed its first two-week long course with representatives from all Tupi-Guarani languages in Paraguay. We plan to conduct 4 more training courses within next year with representatives from Paraguay's remaining language families, each course with 25 students. To give continuity to the DOLLIP work, the program will provide long-term supervision to a small group of DOLLIP students that ideally prepare for a study of their own languages in a linguistic program outside Paraguay. The DOLLIP program is currently planning the organization of an international conference on language documentation and linguistic in Paraguay for the beginning of 2012.
Throughout the course of the three project years, the ADOP team will gather extensive linguistic and cultural data by applying multiple research techniques: audio and video recording, participant observation, document analysis, and personal interviews to build a comprehensive multi-media archive documenting the Aché language, its internal variations, and speech events. Work from other anthropologists and linguists will complement the project’s results to provide a longitudinal depiction of language loss as well as to record cultural practices no longer in use.
Working in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) of the Republic of Paraguay, ADOP has begun a program to give indigenous schoolteachers a foundation in linguistics and language documentation, so to encourage basic linguistic research by indigenous people on their own languages. The DOLLIP Program (the Linguistic Documentation of Indigenous Languages) has completed its first two-week long course with representatives from all Tupi-Guarani languages in Paraguay. We plan to conduct 4 more training courses within next year with representatives from Paraguay's remaining language families, each course with 25 students. To give continuity to the DOLLIP work, the program will provide long-term supervision to a small group of DOLLIP students that ideally prepare for a study of their own languages in a linguistic program outside Paraguay. The DOLLIP program is currently planning the organization of an international conference on language documentation and linguistic in Paraguay for the beginning of 2012.