Collaborative documentation of Piaroa, a language of the Venezuelan Amazon

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

This project focuses on the documentation of Piaroa, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon, and serves to support ongoing community efforts towards preserving TEK and specialized speech genres. The project will result in a documentary corpus with audio and video recordings of culturally relevant communicative events and a collection of texts, both with potential to be mobilized in pedagogical materials creation. In addition to shedding light on aspects of the human language capacity, another important contribution of the project is the experience gained in working collaboratively with a native community on language documentation and preservation. Primary investigator: Jorge Rosés Labrada

Project Details


Location: Venezuela, Cuba, Venezuela, Caribbean, South America, Americas Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of British Columbia Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £9,668.00 Commencement Date: 01/2012
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