NSF Grants

Since 1993, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has played an active role in supporting LINGUIST List through many of its ventures. The following is a listing of LINGUIST List NSF grants, as well as a detailed report of the results of each grant.

NSF grant for "Multi-Tree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships"
(BCS 04040000)

• This 3-year grant will lead to the development of a web-accessible database of scholarly hypotheses about language families and language relationships.

NSF Human and Social Dynamics Grant: "LL-MAP: Language and Location, a Map Annotation Project"
(HSD 0527512. In collaboration with the University of Stockholm, IGRE, and 5 international archives.)

• This 3-year grant will lead to the development of a geographical information system (GIS) mapping language information to geographic, political, and economic features.

NSF National Science Digital Library Initiative Grant: "The ALL Language Project"
(NSDL-0333530. In collaboration with the Rosetta Project, Stanford U., U. of Pennsylvania, and the Endangered Language Fund.)

• This 2-year collaborative project resulted in the creation of a digital library of educational information on approximately 4000 languages.
• LINGUIST added information on over 10,500 linguists to its Directory of Linguists, bringing the total number of entries to approximately 12,500.
• Visit the Directory of Linguists .

NSF Polar Programs Grant: "DATA: Dena'ina Archiving, Training, and Access"
(OPP-0326805. In collaboration with the Alaska Native Language Center.) The goals of DATA are to digitize legacy material on the Dena'ina language in the Alaska Native Language Center and to institute a model training program for using digital technologies in documentary linguistics.

• Archiving. Digitized the legacy materials in the ANLC and created an online catalog.
• Training. Held 2 workshops to train community members in digital language technology, including archival audio recording, text/audio alignment, and web design.
• Trained 3 graduate students in documentary linguistics, giving them practical experience in documenting Dena'ina.
• Access. Created Qenaga.org, which houses the Dena'ina Qenaga Digital Archive and functions as a point of access for the community.

NSF Social Sciences Infrastructure Grant: "E-MELD: Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data"
(SES-1099652. In collaboration with U. of Arizona, U. of Pennsylvania (Linguistic Data Consortium), Endangered Languages Fund (Haskins Laboratories, Yale U.))

• This five-year grant has led to the development of LINGUIST List's largest initiative, E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data).
• The objective of E-MELD is to not only aid in the preservation of endangered languages data and documentation, but to also develop an infrastructure necessary for effective collaboration among e-archives.
• Find out more about E-MELD .

NSF grant for workshop Endangered Languages Digitization: the Need for Standards
(BCS-1097249)

• Through this grant, the 2001 conference entitled "The Digitization of Language Data: The Need for Standards" was held in Santa Barbara, CA June 21-24.
• Participants of the workshop included many of the most knowledgeable field linguists and language engineers in the world who collaborated on issues of standardization of language data.
• Due to the success of the conference, a 2002 conference (Digitizing Lexical Data, August 2-5) was held in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
• Find out more about E-MELD conferences .

NSF grant for configuration of database to support endangered language initiatives
(BCS-0003197)

• This grant allowed for exploration into the development of a database structure to support initiatives involving the digitization of endangered languages data.
• Tools that are supported by this database have been created for field linguists working on endangered languages.
• Try these tools .

NSF grant to create a searchable archive of other linguistics-related mailing lists
(SBR-9975299)

• LINGUIST List's goal for this grant was to make archived linguistics-related mailing lists searchable via the web.
• Due to the fact that much of the information regarding mailing lists is difficult for academic linguists to access, LINGUIST List provides a single archive site for most mailing lists.
• LINGUIST List offers subscription via the web, archiving and searching of current and future postings, and searching of past discussion archives of most of the lists.
• As an added benefit the mailing lists are now searchable by Linguistic Subfield and Language.
• Try the Multi-List Search Engine .

NSF REU grant (Research Experiences for Undergraduates)
($5000 Awarded to: student editor at EMU)

• Awarded to LINGUIST List twice (1997 and 1999), this grant served as a scholarship to support James Yuells attain his B.A. while working at LINGUIST List.
• Not only has James received the undergraduate grant twice, but he continues to work at LINGUIST List while attaining his M.A. in English Linguistics from EMU.
• Check out James .

NSF grant to produce an enhanced web site and search facilities
(SBR-9601352)

• This grant allowed LINGUIST List to develop software for editing operations and the LINGUIST website.
• Software development therefore focused on facilitation of editing and administration and enhancement of the information functions of the web site.
• The primary benefit of this work was to give academic linguists access to electronic information, which has now grown to include language information, fonts, software, and web resources.
• Search the entire site with LINGUIST List's Search-All .

NSF grant to customize mailing list software
(SBR-9311748)

• With this grant, LINGUIST List was able to customize its mailing list software in order to reach its then 4,000 subscribers.
• Entitled "Makeissue", the software allows LINGUIST List Research Assistants to edit and post more than 87,000 email messages to over 16,000 subscribers per day.
• Makeissue software also allows Research Assistants to post under a variety of topics, such as Calls for Conferences, Job Announcements, Book Announcements, Calls for Papers, and many more.
• See an example book posting .