Projekt

The project intends to document the indigenous language Ache, today spoken by 250 to 300 people of an indigenous population with 1,300 members in eastern Paraguay. Because of the high frequency of Spanish, Guarani and Brazilian Portuguese languages in eastern Paraguay, the six Ache communities are exposed to a complex sociolinguistic condition. The number of fluent speakers is very low, and the drastic language shift by younger Ache generations puts the language in a precarious state of survival. The community members, leaders, elders and school teachers emphasize the urgency of documentation, as this can support language maintenance strategies by the Ache themselves. In the proposed three years, the project will establish a comprehensive multi-media archive documenting the Ache language, its internal variations, speech events, and related aspects of Ache culture. The actual research will be conducted by the linguist Eva-Maria Roessler and the social anthropologist Jan David Hauck under the supervision of the two applicants Gippert and Drude.

• Prof. Dr. Jost Gippert

  Universität Frankfurt am Main
  Fachbereich 09: Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften
  Institut für Empirische Sprachwissenschaft
  Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
  Frankfurt am Main
  

• Dr. Sebastian Drude

  Universität Frankfurt am Main
  Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften
  Empirische Sprachwissenschaft
  Frankfurt am Main