The first specific outcome of this project will be a database of reocrdings of naturalistic speech. I will gather approximately 120 horus of audio recordings from different speech genera such as conversations, mythologies, instructions on cultural activies and the construction of technologies, personal narratives, spells and ethnic history. Different aspect of Araona culture will also be documented. For instance knowledge of flora, fauna and biological taxa, hunting, fishing, warfare, the construction of traditional technology (houses, canoes, farming, bow and arrows), traditional clothing, ornaments, dolls, and cuisine. My previous experience documenting Chácobo and Pacahuara (IGS #0230) and a recent pilot study with the Araona, funding by DDL, suggests that these outcomes are highly feasible. In fact, I was able to gather approximately 13 hours of naturalistic speech during the last short field trip (October 2016), despite the fact that most of the pilot project consisted of learning the logistics for arriving at the Araona communities, in addition to gathering basic wordlists. 12 hours of natural discourse will be selected for transcription and translation in ELAN. These transcriptions will be imported to FLEX and provided with morpheme by morpheme analyses in glosses. I will train at least two speakers in documentation techniques; David Washima and Chanito Matawa. These speakers have expressed the most interest in the project and are already semi-literate in the language, which makes them the ideal starting point for educational efforts. Other speakers will be trained according to interest and availability. The number of hours to be transcribed may increase depending on the availability of electricity and linguistic consultants. In a previous ELDP project with the Chácobo (IGS #0230), overtime some consultants became so proficient with transcription and translation that I was able to gather 27 hours of naturalistic speech in ELAN (compare this to the 10 hours originally promised for this project). At least 20 hours of video reocrdings focusing on different aspects of material culture, farming, fishing, canoe building, house building, cloth making, pottery, textiles, fire making, spells, traditional medicine, traditional ceremonies, bow and arrow construction will be recorded. This part of documentation is crucial to undertake now because the Araona still practice much of their material culture (making them nearly exceptional in the Bolivian context, Mily Crevels personal communication). For instance, the Araona still have detailed knowledge of how to construct bow and arrows across generations, and older Araona still know how to build fires using only material in their natural environment (creating friction between different types of wood). The amount of video recordings I gather may increase as I develop a stronger working relationship with the Araona communities. A lexicon of at least 3000 roots, affixes, clitics and particles will be collcted. The cosntruction of this list will be built out of the elicitation of word lists (underway) and the spontaneous production of forms found in texts, and the testing of specific cognate forms with other Takanan languages. All words from Pitman’s diccionaro araona will be re-elicited, and I will systematically elicit items from other Takanan lexicons (from Guillaume and Vuillermet) in order to enrich the database for Araona and provide more comparative Takanan data. Currently very few Araona are literate either in Spanish or in Araona. The community leadership has expressed interest in workshops on the creation of an alphabet. Currently there are two working alphabets, one based on the work of the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) missionary David Pitman, and another based on the linguist Carola Emkow. I will work with the community to produce and publish a booklet of the Araona alphabet. Furthermore, I will also produce at least two booklets of Araona texts. The content of these texts (be they mythological or ethnic history or something else) will depend on the interests of the Araona community. Another type of community output will be training in documentary efforts. The non-existence of literacy and the remoteness of the Araona mean that the priorities will be less ambitious than they would be otherwise (e.g. it may be difficult to provide training in ELAN), however, training in the use of recording equipment will be provided. The type of training in documnetary techniques will depend on other factors, such as whether the government’s plans to implement schooling and create other types of workshops are successful. Finally, a grammatical description of the Araona language will be produced. The analysis of this grammar will be enriched by greater contact with Takananists throughout the duration of the project (Antoine Guillaume and Marine Vuillermet). In collaboration with Antoine Guillaume and Marine Vuillermet I hope to produce a comparative Takanan lexicon. Currently a plethora of materials now exist to reassess the genealogical and areal relationship between Takanan and Panoan languages. Lyon will be an ideal institution to conduct this research since, Professor Guillaume and Dr. Vuillermet (an expert on Ese Ejja).

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