Documentation of Negidal, a nearly extinct Northern Tungusic language of the Lower Amur

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 Negidal, a highly moribund Northern Tungusic language spoken by at most a handful of individuals on the Amgun’ and Lower Amur rivers in the Russia . The language comprises two dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal, of which the latter might already be extinct. The project will result primarily in an extensive corpus of interlinearized texts from the Upper dialect together with accompanying audio recordings. Should a search for remaining (semi-)speakers of the Lower dialect be successful, this corpus will be augmented with similarly interlinearized texts and accompanying recordings of Lower Negidal. Primary investigator: Brigitte Pakendorf

Project Details


Location: Russia, Eastern Europe, Europe Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): CNRS Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £134,507.00 Commencement Date: 01/2012 Project Status: Active
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