Interweaving Stories, Conversation, and an E-dictionary: Comox-Sliammon Language Documentation for the Future
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SSHRC PDG awarded 2025: This project addresses the rapid loss of linguistic and cultural heritage caused by colonialism and globalization by supporting the revitalization of 7ay7ajuthem (Central Salish), the ancestral language of the Tla'amin, Homalco, Klahoose, and K'ómoks Nations. With very few fluent Elders remaining, adult learners—now serving as teachers and language leaders—lack sufficient conversational resources to achieve fluency. The project will create the first searchable online corpus for a Salish language, featuring recorded conversations, narratives, and legacy materials. This corpus will be linked to an existing 7ay7ajuthem e-dictionary, enriching dictionary entries with real-life usage examples and enabling advanced search functions for teaching, learning, and linguistic research. It will support curriculum development, corpus-based learning, and analysis of discourse patterns, grammar, and word frequency, while also contributing new vocabulary and preserving cultural knowledge. Community-linguist teams from Homalco, Klahoose, and Tla'amin will document and transcribe recordings with Elders, while in K'ómoks—where no fluent speakers remain—archival recordings and historical texts will be re-transcribed and translated. The project builds on nearly a decade of collaborative research and includes computational linguists from the University of Alberta, who will adapt existing corpus technology (developed for Cree and Saami) to create an accessible, user-informed online tool. This initiative will not only strengthen 7ay7ajuthem revitalization efforts but also establish a model for other Salish languages.
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http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_1843
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© Huijsmans, Marianne. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document is embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2030.
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en
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Western Canada
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Canada
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Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as © Huijsmans, Marianne. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document is embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2030.