Project Description

My doctoral project (2012-2015) focused on the documentation and description of Mako, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon by about 1500 people. Prior to the start of the project, the only published material on Mako amounted to 38 words. This project resulted in a large documentary corpus with audio and video recordings of culturally relevant communicative events and a collection of texts, both to be used in research and in the development of pedagogical materials. It also produced a grammar of the language (available here: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2851/ ) and an in-depth assessment of language vitality (see Rosés Labrada 2017). I continue to work with this corpus in my descriptive and comparative research on the Sáliban languages.

I recently received funding from the University of Alberta General Research Fund to use this corpus to build a Mako lexicon. I'm currently working with 5 undergraduates students in this subproject with the goal of returning a lexicon to the Mako communities this year.

Funding

• A lexicon of Mako, an Indigenous language of Venezuela. General Research Fund. Faculty of Arts and Office of the Vice-President Research and Innnovation, University of Alberta. Amount: $14,075 CAD, 2019-2020
• Bourse de mobilité WP 4. LabEx ASLAN (Études avancées sur la complexité du langage - Advanced Studies on LANguage complexity). Amount: €5,000 EUR, 2014-2015
• “Collaborative Documentation and Description of Mako, a Sáliban Language of Venezuela”. SSHRC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Amount: $150,000 CAD [Award # 770-2012-0151], 2012-2015
• “Collaborative Documentation and Description of Mako, a Language of Venezuela” ELDP Individual Graduate Scholarship. Amount: £38,033 GBP (successful, not awarded), 2012-2014
• “Documenting and Describing Mako, a Language of Venezuela”. Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Amount: $15,000 CAD (declined), 2012-2013
• Global Opportunities Award, The University of Western Ontario. Amount: $1,000 CAD, 2012
• Western Graduate Thesis Research Award, Faculty of Arts and Humanities & The University of Western Ontario. Amount: $1,500 CAD, 2012
• Western Graduate Thesis Research Award, Faculty of Arts and Humanities & The University of Western Ontario. Amount: $1,500 CAD, 2011