Prof. Ryan Bochnak and Ktunaxa community partner Vickie Thomas were awarded a Community-University Engagement Support (CUES) grant to develop a pilot chapter of a new grammatical sketch of the Ktunaxa language. Also involved in the application were doctoral candidate Anne Bertrand and grad program alumni Elise McClay and Rose Underhill, as well as former linguistics undergrad and current University of Toronto postdoc Terrance Gatchalian.
The documentation project is necessary because existing formal documentation on Ktunaxa is not suited to support language learning and preservation. One early grammar is entirely in Latin. The central result of the project will be a description of the tense-aspect-modal system in Ktunaxa, developed in collaboration with the community, that will be useful to teachers and learners.
