Research and writing of a grammar of Eyak, a dormant Alaska Native language, accessible to both scholars and the Eyak community, to be published as a book and e-book, including illustrations and audio files.

This project will create a shorter reference grammar of Eyak (ISO 639-3 eya), a sleeping language once spoken across the Gulf Coast of Alaska from Cordova to Yakutat. Eyak plays a unique role in the linguistic prehistory of Alaska, for it is just as closely related to the neighboring Ahtna language as it is to distant Navajo in the desert Southwest US. This succinct (300-400 pages) work incorporates a modern approach to grammatical description, including links to recordings of Eyak language which illustrate the language in use. The research draws on the work of the late Michael Krauss, world renowned scholar of Eyak and Alaska Native languages, as well as a vast collection of archival recordings from three of the last speakers of the language. The resulting grammar will be a reference for linguists and other scholars, as well as anyone interested in learning the Eyak language.

This is a critical time for the Navajo language. Although most Navajo adults can at least converse in the language, very few children of pre-school age can speak the language at all. Existing reference materials on Navajo focus on its magnificently complex verbal structure. However, there is no existing reference work that exposes the range and use of possible sentence structures. This project will bring together insights gleaned over the years, complemented by original research, to complete a reference grammar that focuses on Navajo sentence structure. This is a proposal for a year of fellowship support to allow Dr. Ellavina Perkins to complete work on this grammar which was begun with a three-year NSF grant that is now in its final year. This reference grammar will cover traditional topics but is unusual in that it includes teachers and curriculum planners as part of its target audience along with linguists. Another unique feature of the project is the involvement of teachers and community members in the Navajo Language Academy (NLA) summer workshops. The resulting book and CD-ROM will be an important tool for educators developing more advanced language courses as well as for linguists doing pure research on the world's languages. (Edited by staff)

This is a critical time for the Navajo language. Although most Navajo adults can at least converse in the language, very few children of pre-school age can speak the language at all. Existing reference materials on Navajo focus on its magnificently complex verbal structure. However, there is no existing reference work that exposes the range and use of possible sentence structures. Several native speakers of Navajo have obtained advanced degrees in linguistics and recent years have brought increased momentum in theoretical and descriptive work on the grammar. This has resulted in a large quantity of theoretically significant work. However, much of it is highly technical, and a large portion of it is unpublished or out of print. This project will bring together insights gleaned over the years, complemented by original research to fill in the gaps, to complete a reference grammar that focuses on Navajo sentence structure. An abridged version of the grammar is now in press. This is a proposal for a year of fellowship support to allow Dr. Ellavina Perkins to continue work on this grammar which was begun with a three year NSF grant with two years of subsequent fellowship support. Dr. Perkins is a native speaker of Navajo and a linguist with vast experience teaching Navajo in K through 12 and at the university level. The reference grammar now under development will cover traditional topics but is unusual in that it includes teachers and curriculum planners as part of its target audience along with linguists. (Edited by staff)