The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Research Programs is accepting applications for Dynamic Language Infrastructure – Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) Fellowships program, offered in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Donor Name: National Endowment for the Humanities
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/13/2023
Size of the Grant: $60,000
Grant Duration: 24 months
Details:
This program supports individual scholars pursuing research on documentation and analysis of one or more endangered languages. DLI-DEL Fellowships provide recipients with time for fieldwork to record languages; digital archiving; transcription and annotation; linguistic and ethnographic analysis of findings; and preparation of print or digital research publications. Anticipated products may include, but are not limited to, lexicons, grammars, databases, peer-reviewed articles, and monographs.
Purpose
The Dynamic Language Infrastructure–Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) program is an interdisciplinary partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to advance scholarly knowledge concerning endangered human languages.
Preserving the broad range of human languages is vital for understanding human behavior and cognition. Yet roughly half of the world’s seven thousand languages are endangered and at risk of extinction. These endangered languages constitute an irreplaceable resource, not only for the communities who speak them, but also for scientists and scholars.
The great variety of these languages represents a vast, largely unmapped territory for which linguists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists can chart and study the full capabilities and limits of the human mind. Each endangered language embodies unique local knowledge of the cultures and natural systems in the region in which it is spoken. These languages are important sources of evidence for filling in the record of the human past.
DLI-DEL Fellowships prioritize the collection, analysis, and publication of highly endangered language corpuses or extinct languages closely related to highly endangered languages. NEH funding supports fieldwork and other activities relevant to the digital recording, documenting, archiving, and scholarly analysis of endangered languages, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, databases, peer-reviewed articles, and monographs. The program aims to leverage advances in information technology and contributes to the development of the next generation of researchers. NEH expects that recipients will archive and maintain language documentation to ensure its long-term availability.
NEH invites applications from individual linguists, linguistic anthropologists, or sociolinguists, and encourages submissions from independent scholars and junior scholars. Applicants should demonstrate a history of collaboration with other scholars and/or community members. Competitive submissions employ state-of-the-art documentation methods; embody exceptional research and rigorous analysis; and clearly articulate the level of endangerment of the language or languages to be studied.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $300,000
- Award Ceiling: $60,000
- Award Floor: $30,000
Grant Period
May 1, 2024 to September 1, 2025.
Eligibility Criteria
You must be one of the following to be eligible:
- A U.S. citizen residing domestically or abroad
- A foreign national who has lived in the United States or its jurisdictions for at least the three years prior to the application deadline
Foreign nationals who take up permanent residence outside the United States any time between the application deadline and the end of the period of performance will forfeit their eligibility. Leaving the U.S. on a temporary basis is permitted.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
