Seeing voices: documenting the Gitksan narrative

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.

Gitksanimx is the language spoken by the First Nations people who live in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. Gitksan is known to have different speech registers, manifested through a variety of sentence constructions and discourse particles that can distinguish the different functions of a narrative. The objective of this project is to establish a foundational body of video, audio and text documents conceptually and thematically centred on the narrative, specifically including the telling of stories and legends, the relaying of personal history, and the description of the events involved in modern day life. Primary investigator: Tyler Peterson

Project Details


Location: Canada, Northern America, Americas Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of British Columbia Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £10,000.00 Commencement Date: 01/2002 Project Status: Active
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