Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that two grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,500 has been awarded to Rynj Gonzales for a project entitled “Vanaw Language Documentation and Description.” Vanaw is a speech variety within the continuum of Kalinga languages spoken in the northern Philippines. An MTB-MLE (Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education) program was initiated in the Vanaw community about a decade ago, and a written Bible translation project is now being planned for the near future. To date, linguistic study of Vanaw has been limited, focusing only on synchronic and historical phonology. This project seeks to address that gap by producing a grammatical description of the language, with particular attention to applications in education and Bible translation. Additionally, the project aims to develop a grammatical description template that can be used for documenting other Kalinga speech varieties. The project will collaborate closely with both local and national partners to ensure that the resulting description is practically useful. Ryn Gonzales is a Pike Scholar and serves as LEAD Co-Coordinator and Linguistics Consultant with SIL Philippines. She holds an MA in Missiology from the Alliance Graduate School and is nearing completion of a PhD in Linguistics at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD).

$1,600 has been awarded to Rahel Beyer for a project entitled “Chances and Challenges of Language Portraits as a Survey Tool in Cameroon.” As the metaphor of the “heart language” has not consistently connected with people in many multilingual target communities, there is an ongoing need to find more effective ways of understanding the emotive versus cognitive functions of language. This exploratory study will apply the Language Portrait (LP) methodology to address this challenge in several language communities in Cameroon. Although the LP method has been widely used in educational contexts, it remains largely unexplored as a tool within indigenous, multilingual communities. This project aims to assess the extent to which the method is effective in African contexts, particularly those with lower levels of formal education, and to evaluate its potential utility for language development programs. Dr. Rahel Beyer is a Pike Scholar and serves as a Language Assessment Specialist with SIL Cameroon. She holds a PhD in General Linguistics from the University of Münster, Germany.

One outcome of the recent Pike Center symposium on Evidence-Based Research was the founding of a new community of practice named Resources for Evidence-Based Research, or REBaR for short. The motivation behind launching REBaR is to build our capacity for doing evidence-based research on a large scale. A particular focus is using the tools of data science so that we can use methods that are systematic, scalable, and reproducible. This will be supported by building up an electronic body of knowledge in the CRO’s wiki space.  See the prospectus for a more detailed description of who the CoP is for, what topics it will cover, and how it will work. 

The membership role is managed via a Google Group named REBaR Community of Practice.. Go to that link to join the group. If that doesn’t work, you may also join the group by sending an empty email to the following address: <rebar_cop+subscribe@groups.sil.org>. This mailing list is used to inform all members of CoP meetings that have been scheduled and of new resources that have been added to the wiki space. It also provides a channel for members to ask questions of other members.  If you are curious about the group, but not quite sure if you want to join, go ahead and join since you can easily go to the Google Groups page at any time and click on Leave Group once your curiosity is satisfied.

The Pike Center recently hosted a symposium, entitled Evidence-Based Research in Language Program Assessment, as part of  the International Language Assessment Conference which was attended by over 200 participants  in Penang, Malaysia (17-24 September 2024). This posting announces the availability of the symposium proceedings. In preparing this announcement, we realize that a year ago we failed to announce the availability of the proceedings of the Pike Center symposium, entitled Quality in Translation: A Multi-Threaded Fabric, that was embedded within the Bible Translation Conference held in Dallas, USA (12-17 October 2023). Both are available for free download from Leanpub (slide the price slider all the way to the left):

• Evidence-Based Research in Language Program Assessment, edited by Gary Simons and Stephen Watters. 507 pp.  https://leanpub.com/evidence-based-research

• Quality in Translation: A Multi-Threaded Fabric, edited by Stephen Watters and Reinier de Blois. 466 pp. https://leanpub.com/qualityintranslation

Note that the volume on Quality in Translation is now being prepared for publication with Wipf & Stock, with an anticipated release in 2025.

The next round of Pike Center small grants (of up to $3,500 each) will be awarded at the beginning of October. Note that the deadline for submitting a Letter of Intent is just 7 days away on August 20. This letter need not contain all the details of a proposal; rather it is for the purpose of running your project idea past the program staff in order to ensure that it is a good fit before you go to the work of preparing the full research proposal. The program supports both research projects (which result in the publication of research results) and research planning projects (which result in the submission of a larger funding proposal to a funding agency). In the case of the former, a small grant could be used to fund aspects of the investigation or the presentation of your work at a conference as a step toward publication; in the case of the latter, it could be used to convene the project team for a planning meeting or to conduct a pilot study. See the Listing of small grants awarded for examples of successful proposals and the Program Guidelines for the details on eligibility and how to apply.

Pike Center is pleased to announce the launch of the 2024 cohort of two Pike Scholars in its Scholar Development program. The Pike Scholars program is aimed at those who are in a doctoral study program or who have recently completed one. Rising scholars work under the mentorship of an established scholar who is a Pike Center Fellow to grow in their vision for scholarship and in their practice of scholarship as they develop their publishing track record.

The new Pike Scholars and their mentors are:

• Rahel Beyer (working with Dave Eberhard)

• James Morrison (working with Steve Watters)

See brief bios on the People page. Participants in the Pike Scholars program make a commitment to produce at least one publication per year over the course of the three-year program. Through the program they receive the funding support they need in order to present their work at conferences as a step in the publication process.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,500 has been awarded to Bagamba Araali for a project entitled “Study of the impact of the New Testament in Omiti and prospects for Old Testament translation.” Language groups respond to the arrival of the New Testament in different ways; even the response within a single language group may not be uniform across all of its communities. This project will study the variation in acceptance among the Omi people of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It will research the remarkable response of the Catholic church in embracing the translated Omiti New Testament with a view of documenting the conditions that favor a request for additional Scripture from the Old Testament. The Protestant church has been slower to respond to the Omiti New Testament; it is hoped that lessons learned from the response of the Catholic Church can be more uniformly applied across all Omiti speaking communities. Dr. Araali is a Senior Research Associate with the Eastern Congo Group, and is a Senior Sociolinguistics Consultant with SIL; he holds a PhD in sociolinguistics from Essex University.

$3,000 has been awarded to Susan Walters for a project entitled “Standardized Collection of Artistic Communication Data: Local Song Genres.” The importance of artistic communication genres is increasingly recognized as vital to language and cultural maintenance, as well as having a key role in translation and education projects. However, the adhoc study of these genres has limited our understanding of their function across communities and the role that they might play in language development. Dr. Walters envisions the eventual development of a research database on song genres that is global in scale. This project will enable her to launch that effort by collaborating with colleagues in Indonesia and Nigeria to collect data on about 60 features of 5 song genres each from around 20 languages. The dataset will have actionable data that will enable researchers to look for correlations between a community’s local song genres (and their vitality and paths of transmission) and other known aspects of these language communities, such as population size, language vitality, literacy, economic status, religious allegiances/affiliations. Dr. Walters has an adjunct position at Dallas International University and is a Pike Scholar; she holds a PhD in Intercultural Education from Biola University.

$3,000 has been awarded to Katrina Boutwell for a project entitled “Measuring Community Participation and Ownership in Language Development Programs.” Language development organizations understand the importance of community ownership in programs, but there is little research on how to measure the level of community ownership. This lack of research on how the community engages in decision-making affects the ability of organizations to monitor and assess with the community the extent to which their language development goals are sustainable without the assistance of outside organizations. The project will adapt a measure of community participation that has been widely used in the field of community organizing, pilot testing it in a number of different language programs. It is envisioned that such a tool will enhance the ability to work with language communities to assess their current level of participation, and allow for regular monitoring that enables stakeholders to dialogue and make adjustments of plans. Ms. Boutwell is an adjunct faculty member at Dallas International University and Lead Mentor for ALA Language Program Management Internship Program; she has an MA in Language Development with a focus on Sociolinguistics from Dallas International University.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,000 has been awarded to Whitney Cary for a project entitled “Use of Immersive Technologies in the Documentation of Pahari, an Endangered Language of Nepal.” While Pahari is used as a first language by more than 3,000 speakers, the majority of the ethnic community has shifted to Nepali. This project will use technologies like 360° imaging and video, ambisonic recording, and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to create language documentation that incorporates virtual and augmented reality. In addition to producing a holistic language corpus that better captures the interconnectedness of language, culture, and environment, it is hoped that using immersive technologies to present language documentation will be more compelling for community members, especially among young people and heritage learners. Ms. Cary is a Field Linguist and Archivist affiliated with SIL International; she holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from Dallas International University.

$3,000 has been awarded to Ken Olson for a project entitled “Map of Primary Lingua Francas in Africa.” The maps currently published in Ethnologue identify national languages and plot the ranges of local languages, but in between is a mosaic of regional languages that serve as languages of wider communication across the local language communities. This project will fill gaps in the Ethnologue information on second language use so that a continent-wide map of the lingua francas can be added to Ethnologue and presented at a major conference on African linguistics.  Dr. Olson is a Linguistics Consultant with SIL International; he holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. 

$3,000 has been awarded to Colleen Ahland for a project entitled “The Expression of Number in Gumuz and Daats'iin.” Gumuz and Daats'iin are Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia in which the expression of number poses a challenge for translation. They mark number on nouns (e.g. singular, plural) but only in certain circumstances; reference to number is not required.  They have another system of number that is marked on verbs (e.g. pluractional) to indicate that more than one event or action is being referenced, and this marking is similarly not required. The description resulting from this research will increase our understanding of how number (both nominal and verbal) is expressed in these languages and how it is best translated across languages. Dr. Ahland is a Linguistics Consultant with SIL Ethiopia; she holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oregon. 

Pike Center is pleased to announce the launch of the 2023 cohort of seven Pike Scholars in its Scholar Development program. The Pike Scholars program is aimed at those who are in a doctoral study program or who have recently completed one. Rising scholars work under the mentorship of an established scholar who is a Pike Center Fellow to grow in their vision for scholarship and in their practice of scholarship as they develop their publishing track record.

The new Pike Scholars and their mentors are:

• Carlos Benitez (working with Keith Slater)

• Robert Bradshaw (working with René van den Berg)

• Elissa Ikeda (working with Cathryn Yang)

• George Payton (working with Ernst Wendland)

• Benjamin Pehrson (working with Don Daniels)

• Sophia Pitcher (working with Steve Watters and Steve Parker)

• Hessel Visser (working with Helen Eaton)

See brief bios on the People page. Participants in the Pike Scholars program make a commitment to produce at least one publication per year over the course of the three-year program. Through the program they receive the funding support they need in order to present their work at conferences as a step in the publication process.

Pike Center is pleased to announce (belatedly) the launch of the 2022 cohort of eight Pike Scholars in its Scholar Development program. The Pike Scholars program is aimed at those who are in a doctoral study program or who have recently completed one. Rising scholars work under the mentorship of an established scholar who is a Pike Center Fellow to grow in their vision for scholarship and in their practice of scholarship as they develop their publishing track record.

The new Pike Scholars and their mentors are:

• Bronwen Cleaver (working with Brenda Boerger)

• Ndokobai Dadak (working with Mike Cahill)

• Anya Ezhevskaya (working with Johannes Merz)

• Rynj Gonzales (working with Steve Quakenbush)

• Rachel Miles (working with Bernie van der Louw-Hendriks)

• Erin SanGregory (working with Michael Boutin)

• Susan Walters (working with Steve Watters and Kirk Persons)

• Juha Yliniemi (working with Steve Watters)

See brief bios on the People page. Participants in the Pike Scholars program make a commitment to produce at least one publication per year over the course of the three-year program. Through the program they receive the funding support they need in order to present their work at conferences as a step in the publication process.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that two grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,000 has been awarded to Erin SanGregory for a project entitled “Language Documentation and Grammatical Description of the Wakhi Language.” Wakhi is a minoritized language of the Southeastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. There is an ongoing language development program within the language community, but the language is under-documented. The funding will allow Ms. SanGregory to travel to the language area to begin developing a corpus of language documentation for use in linguistic analysis, as well as to travel to an international conference to present preliminary findings on a known  feature of the language that is of interest to language typologists—its use of locative constructions to express possession. She is a Linguistics Consultant-in-Training with SIL International and a Pike Scholar; she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Oregon.

$3,000 has been awarded to Christopher Troutman for a project entitled “Ethnographic Arts Research Among Forcibly Displaced Communities in Tbilisi, Georgia.” Historically, Tbilisi has been a major site for people groups seeking to escape violence in that region of the world, including the recent conflict in Ukraine. This research will study how artists among a number of communities of forcibly displaced persons (FDP) relate their artistic practice to their experience of displacement. It is hoped that the findings will give insights to practitioners in the fields of FDP advocacy, healing, education, and cultural preservation into how to better work with these communities and help them restore agency. Mr. Troutman is an Arts Specialist with SIL International and is a PhD candidate in World Arts at Dallas International University. 

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that another grant has been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$2,800 has been awarded to Dr. Andreas Joswig for a project on “Orthography Research for the Hamer-Banna Language.” Hamer-Banna is an Afro-Asiatic language of Ethiopia with 80,000 speakers. Hamer and Banna are similar enough to have been classified as dialects of the same language, and yet separate literature development has been ongoing. These efforts have run into problems concerning the representation of glottal stop, vowel length, diphthongs, and suprasegmentals like stress and tone.  An even deeper issue is whether a solution for unified language development can be found. This grant will support participatory research into both the sound systems of the two dialects and the attitudes of their speakers in order to arrive at an optimal orthography solution. Dr. Joswig serves with SIL Ethiopia as a Senior Linguistics Consultant; he holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Leiden.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,000 has been awarded to Hazel Gray for a project on “Bungu grammatical tone orthography testing.” Bungu is a Bantu language of Tanzania with 30,000 speakers in which literature is being developed for the first time. The language has grammatical tone, but writing the tone complicates the orthography.  An overly complicated orthography will not be used; however, one that is too simple will result in confusion and lack of comprehension for readers. This grant will support the formal testing needed to establish the optimal approach to grammatical tone in the orthography. A similar problem is found across Africa, so the published results could serve as a guide to many other orthography developers. Ms. Gray serves with SIL Tanzania as a Linguistic Specialist; she holds a Masters in applied mathematics from the University of Bath.

$3,000 has been awarded to Joseph Leman for a project entitled “Applied discourse analysis in Magar Kham varieties.” Magar Kham is a group of closely-related Tibeto-Burman languages in Nepal. Some varieties have been written while other remain primarily spoken. It is not clear to what extent the written varieties will serve all varieties of Magar Kham. The current research will collect a corpus of natural texts in the two varieties and perform a comparative analysis of the discourse patterns. Published results will include a comparative discourse analysis of two Magar Kham varieties and an evaluation of the results of computer adaptation in terms of its discourse naturalness. Mr. Leman serves with SIL Nepal as a Field Linguist; he is pursuing a Masters degree at the Canada Institute of Linguistics. 

$2,825 has been awarded to Dr. Rebecca Paterson for a project entitled “Towards the Classification of Kainji: A window on Niger-Congo.”  Kainji is a group of about 60 related languages spoken in west-central Nigeria. SIL and partners currently have projects in fifteen of these languages.  They form a subgroup within the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. This project involves a historical-comparative reconstruction of the sound system and noun class affixes of Northwest Kainji. Knowledge of sound changes across the dialect continua should better inform language development efforts as to how far materials in one language variety might be usable by other varieties. Another impact is that this information about the Kainji languages, once shared, will challenge the status quo related to the general understanding of Niger-Congo. The funding will enable Dr. Paterson to present her findings at a premier international conference on historical linguistics as a step toward publishing the results. Paterson serves with SIL Nigeria as a Linguistics Consultant; she holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Oregon.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. The program solicits grant applications three times per year, but has been victim to the pandemic with few applications in the last two years.  In this cycle, however, we are pleased to announce that two new grants have been awarded.

$3,000 has been awarded to Ryn Jean Fe Gonzales for the Itneg Ilaud Language Documentation Project. The Itneg Ilaud language is a threatened language of the Philippines that remains unstudied. The lack of knowledge about the language poses a problem for language development, in general, and the education program of the community, specifically. Ms. Gonzales will work with the community to develop and archive a corpus of fifteen hours of recorded speech, supplemented with some interlinearized texts and the beginning of a dictionary. The corpus will provide pedagogical content for the education curriculum, as well as data for language description and language development. Ms. Gonzales serves with SIL Philippines as a member of the Language Documentation Team. She is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of the Philippines.

$3,000 has been awarded to Benjamin Pehrson for a project entitled "Phonology of Onnele Goiniri: Sounds at the borders of the Torricelli family in Papua New Guinea." The Onnele Goiniri language has a unique sound system with certain features not previously known in the language families spoken in the region. This uniqueness poses a special challenge for writing the language with a number of sounds that are under-represented or not represented at all in the alphabet. The grant will allow Mr. Pehrson to bring Onnele speakers to a regional center where they can collaborate in analyzing the sound system of the language. Their research seeks to strengthen community ownership in such things as reading fluency and community engagement with locally published materials, as well as extend the boundaries of knowledge about a language with features yet to be attested in the languages of the region. Mr. Pehrson is a member of SIL PNG, where he serves as the Aitape West Team Leader. He is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at Leiden University.

As announced earlier on this site, Dr. Boone Aldridge (who is Corporate Historian for SIL International) was awarded a Pike Center Small Grant to help meet the costs of publishing a scholarly biography of the center’s namesake, Kenneth L. Pike. We are pleased to announce that the work has been completed and the book was released last month by Wipf and Stock Publishers. The 260-page book is being sold for $31.00 in both paperback and digital formats. The publisher describes the book as follows:

This biography examines the life of a most unusual twentieth-century evangelical, Kenneth L. "Ken" Pike (1912-2000), who served with the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Pike began his missionary career as a Bible translator, but he went on to become a world-class linguist who made his mark on the science of linguistics and the study of indigenous languages around the world. Known among linguists and anthropologists for his theoretical contributions, this volume seeks to bring Pike to a wider audience by illuminating his life as a key evangelical figure, one who often broke with conventional evangelical constraints to pursue the life of the mind as a Christian intellectual and scholar. Here is a story of how one evangelical Christian man served the global church, the scientific community, and the world's indigenous peoples with his entire heart, soul, and mind.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. The program solicits grant applications three times per year, but the previous cycle was an apparent victim of pandemic-related restrictions on travel as no applications were received.  We are pleased to announce that a suitable application was received in the latest cycle and a new grant has been awarded.

$1,975 has been awarded to Dr. Theo van der Louw for a project entitled “Translation Theory and Translation Techniques in the Septuagint and Their Relevance for the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.” This research addresses a problem faced by translators of the Old Testament into the thousands of languages of the world, namely, the problem of evaluating variants in the manuscript source texts to help identify the probable original text.  The research hypothesis is that a better understanding of the translation techniques of the Septuagint translators will help us to better explain the “deviant” renderings in the Septuagint—helping to identify when they reflect translation techniques versus when they give evidence for an actual variant in the Hebrew source text. Dr. van der Louw is a Translation Consultant with SIL International; he holds a Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. The program solicits grant applications three times per year, but the previous cycle was an apparent victim of pandemic-related shutdowns as no applications were received.  We are pleased to announce that applications resumed in the latest cycle and two new grants have been awarded.

$1,250 has been awarded to Boone Aldridge for a project to “Publish a scholarly biography of Kenneth L. Pike.” Pike, who is the namesake for our center, was an important evangelical scholar and leader of the mid-to-late twentieth century, but he is not as well known as deserved. This biography, entitled Kenneth L. Pike: An Evangelical Mind, is aimed primarily at the academic community and secondarily the wider public. It will demonstrate how one evangelical scholar served God and the world with his entire heart, soul, and mind. The book has been accepted for publication by an academic press and the funds will help the author to pay the typesetting and indexing fees charged by the publisher. Dr. Aldridge is Corporate Historian for SIL International; he holds a Ph.D. in Religious History from the University of Stirling.

$2,500 has been awarded to Virginia Beavon-Ham for a project entitled “Testing the tool A→Z+T for tone documentation and analysis.”  The marking of tone poses a special challenge in developing the writing systems for many languages. Another problem is that those with the needed expertise in tone analysis may not be available to do the needed research on location. Beavon-Ham and her colleagues have developed a software tool that non-experts can use to elicit and archive a collection of cataloged recordings that can be used by an expert who could be located anywhere in the world to do the tone analysis.  The grant will allow this team to run a trial of the tool with speakers of Bafanji (a Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon), publish the documentation on how to use the tool, and present the results of their work at a conference of African linguistics. Dr. Beavon-Ham is the Linguistics Coordinator for SIL Cameroon and a Pike Scholar; she holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Leiden University. 

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,000 has been awarded to Steve Nicolle for a project entitled “Conditionals in the Greek New Testament: A Guide for Translators.” There are around 600 grammatically marked conditional clauses in the original text of the New Testament, representing a variety of functions. The functions of conditionals in Greek argumentation and instruction are often not those of conditional constructions in other languages, thus posing a problem for speakers of those languages who want to translate the New Testament. The project will produce a database that analyzes the function of every conditional in the Greek New Testament, along with a guide that will help translators to translate them naturally and clearly according to the styles of argumentation and instruction that are appropriate for their languages. Dr. Nicolle is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (Trinity Western University) and a Fellow of the Pike Center; he holds a D.Phil. in Linguistics from the University of York.

$2,790 has been awarded to June Dickie for a project entitled “Two Books on Composing and Performing Psalms.”   Psalms are the Scriptures which speak most to people undergoing difficult times. They also have great potential for community engagement through performance. Over the past five years, Dr. Dickie has worked with youth in South Africa to compose and perform psalms for their communities. This work has resulted in over twenty articles in peer-reviewed journals, but has yet to reach the practitioners who could benefit from her research. The grant will allow her to produce a pair of openly accessible ebooks that will equip Bible translators, Scripture engagement workers, and church leaders to help language communities on the margins to engage with psalms through composing and performing their own versions. Dr. Dickie is a researcher and translation consultant with Wycliffe South Africa and a Pike Scholar; she holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. 

$1,500 has been awarded to Stephen Daley for a project entitled “Textual Choices in the Book of Ezra.”   Those who would translate the Old Testament into one of the many languages of the world will encounter difficulties with the Hebrew source text in which different ancient manuscripts give witness to different versions of the text. The translator wonders which variant to adopt as best reflecting the original text. This grant will allow Dr. Daley to produce a guide for translators to textual variants in the book of Ezra. The project is a pilot test of the methodology for a Common Text Project which is developed in his recent monograph, The Textual Basis of English Translations of the Hebrew Bible (2019, Brill). Dr. Daley is a translation consultant with the Eurasia Area of SIL International; he holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce the grant that has been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

Steve Parker (middle) pictured in 1985 with two Chamikuro speakers in Yarinacocha, Peru

$3,000 has been awarded to Dr. Steve Parker for a project entitled “Documentation of Chamikuro.” Chamikuro is a nearly extinct and severely under-documented Maipurean language spoken in the Amazon jungle of Peru. Descriptions of the language are minimal and there are no archived recordings. Furthermore, the last-known fluent speaker of the language is quite elderly. This grant (with matching funds from other sources) will allow Dr. Parker to lead a team to work with the last speaker, not only to fill gaps in the scientific record but also to create an enduring record for the members of the ethnic community of their heritage language. Dr. Parker is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Dallas International University (DIU); he holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The field team will include two DIU students, along with Dr. Maggie Romani Miranda (linguist at Ricardo Palma University, Lima, Peru) and Dr. Scott Berthiaume (academic dean at DIU).

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$2,800 has been awarded to Pete Unseth for a project entitled “Field manual for proverb research: Producing a resource for aspiring scholars to study and publish on proverbs from their own languages.” Thousands of language groups across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific have used the verbal art form of the proverb to capture and pass down their collective wisdom.  Local scholars know and value their proverbs and want to share them with the wider world, but need a tool to help them know how to do this. The grant will allow Dr. Unseth, who has more than a dozen publications in the area of proverb studies, to complete his work on a field manual for such aspiring scholars. It will offer methods for collecting many proverbs, describe alternative ways to format and translate them, explain a variety of approaches for analyzing proverbs, and present ideas on how to use proverbs for community benefit. Dr. Unseth is Associate Professor of Applied Anthropology at Dallas International University and a Fellow of the Pike Center; he holds  a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington.

$2,200 has been awarded to Brenda Boerger for her work on “An illustrated indigenous autobiography: Promoting language vitality, literacy, and well-being.”  Dr. Boerger has observed a decline in the spoken and written vitality of the Natugu language (Santa Cruz Island, Solomon Islands) over the past 10 years, but has also observed that recent language development efforts have led to a resurgence of interest in the language and culture. This grant will allow her to complete work on The Autobiography of Simon G. Meabr (1921–2012) and publish it in multiple formats, including a diglot version intended for grade six classrooms on the island, an English version for a national audience, and a version with morphological analysis and interlinear glossing for linguistic scholars. The autobiography is a culturally and historically significant text by an indigenous leader and is the longest known work authored by a Natugu speaker.  Dr. Boerger is a Language and Culture Documentation Consultant with SIL International and a Fellow of the Pike Center; she holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin.

$2,600 has been awarded to Sangsok Son for a book publishing project entitled “Negotiating linguistic diversity in classrooms.” Son’s doctoral research investigated approaches to pedagogy within multilingual classrooms in two schools in Delhi, India. His unpublished dissertation documents how teachers and students negotiate the linguistic barriers posed by the fact that the students’ various home languages are different from the medium of instruction. The grant will allow Dr. Son to use the Pike Center’s Agile Publishing platform to create an ebook for sharing these research results widely and to refine them as literacy and education practitioners around the world engage with the content and give feedback. Dr. Son is a Literacy and Education Consultant with SIL in Asia and is a Pike Scholar; he holds a PhD in Education from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that two grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$2,500 has been awarded to Thomas Payne for a project entitled “Pagsantop han Winaray — Understanding Waray Grammar.” This project will allow Dr. Payne to travel to the Philippines to complete his collaboration with Dr. Voltaire Oyzon (a linguist who is also a speaker of Waray) in writing a textbook on Waray grammar. The textbook will be written in both English and Waray for use at teacher training institutions in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines where Waray is used as a lingua franca. With over 3 million speakers, Waray is the sixth most widely spoken language in the Philippines. It is hoped that the resulting grammar will become a kind of template for similar textbooks to be produced in other Philippine languages for educators in other regions. Dr. Payne is a Senior Linguistics Consultant with SIL International; he holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

$2,400 has been awarded to June Dickie for work on “A Facebook community group for (Zulu) poets: a means to encourage interest in Psalms and their translation.” Zulu is one of twenty indigenous languages in South Africa. Zulu youth enjoy writing and performing their own poetry, but generally are not aware of biblical poetry or they find that it does not sound like Zulu oral art. This research will experiment with using social media as a platform for promoting interest in artistic renderings of biblical psalms and for inviting participation in the process of crafting them. Many poetic “translations” will be produced for each psalm that the group focuses on. These could contribute to the Bible translation project that is in progress, but more importantly, it is hoped that the cultural identity of youth will be strengthened, along with their interest in translation. The published research results will describe how the methodology can be replicated for other languages and genres. Dr. Dickie is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and a translation consultant for Wycliffe South Africa; she holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.