Documentation of endangered Tungusic languages

  Contact person

Brigitte PAKENDORF , Natalia Aralova

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Scientific framework and objectives

Two endangered Tungusic languages have been the focus of documentation projects: Even (https://dobes.mpi.nl/projects/even/project/) spoken in Yakutia and on Kamchatka, and Negidal (http://hdl.handle.net/2196/b644db81-725c-4031-935c-f33c763df152) spoken on the Amgun' and Lower Amur rivers in the Far East of the Russian Federation. The Negidal documentation was funded by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (Major Documentation Project MDP0346, 2016-2021) and focused on the documentation of Upper dialect, which is still spoken with varying degrees of proficiency by only four women (seven in 2018), of whom the youngest was born in 1955 (Pakendorf & Aralova 2018).

The Negidal project mainly annotated recordings made in 2005-2010 by a team of Russian linguists headed by Elena Kalinina, but also added some recordings of speakers not included in the previous project, as well as genres that were underrepresented, especially procedural texts accompanied by videos. In addition, we were able to add digitized tape recordings made in the 1990s of two speakers (a woman and a man) who have already passed away.

In addition, work is ongoing to prepare a collection of Even texts for publication in the Open Text Collections at Language Science Press. This will comprise excerpts of narratives dealing with the traditional Even way of life centered around reindeer herding and hunting recorded in two dialects, Lamunkhin Even and Bystraja Even. Work on this collection is funded by a grant (CleanCorpus) by the ASLAN Laboratory of Excellence.

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  Financial support

• ELDP - Major Documentation Project (MDP)
  Documentation of Negidal, a nearly extinct Northern Tungusic language of the Lower Amur
  ELDP - Arcadia - SOAS, London University
  
• CleanCorpus
  Updating a corpus of two dialects of the Tungusic language Even
  LabEx ASLAN
  

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  Publications

• Pakendorf, B., Aralova, N., 2018, "The endangered state of Negidal: A field report", Language Documentation and Conservation , 12, pp. 1-14
• Pakendorf, B., Aralova, N. (eds), 2019, "Ŋeːɣidal təːluŋəltin-dəː, ulgujiltin-daː, etkaltin-daː. Negidal’skie skazki, rasskazy i obyčai. [Negidal fairy tales, stories, and traditions]", Fürstenberg/Havel, Kulturstiftung Sibirien, ISBN 978-3-942883-37-5
• Pakendorf, B., 2024, "The Dynamics of Language Endangerment: A Comparative Study", Sibirica, 23:1, pp. 32–65