Cherokee Syllabary Texts:  Digital Philology and Experiential Learning

1. Abstract

The Digital Archive of American Indian Languages Preservation and Perseverance (DAILP) has partnered with the Linguistics program at project host Northeastern University in order to provide processing support for its digital text editions. Under this innovative arrangement, qualified Linguistics students provide philological processing and linguistic annotation of primary texts derived from digitized historical Cherokee Syllabary manuscripts. The backdrop for these activities is a required research seminar that explores topics in Cherokee linguistics and provides hands-on philological training for working with Syllabary manuscripts and annotating these texts using the project's web-based collaborative software. The talk will describe this innovative approach to experiential learning and its vital contribution to language preservation and revitalization.