Research summary
Since 2007, the Wendat have been working to revive the Wendat language (previously known as the Huron language) from dormancy. Linguistic research and archival documentation from the 17th and 18th centuries are front and centre in this revitalization effort.
As Canada Research Chair in Reconstruction and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, Dr. Megan Lukaniec is studying how Wendat and Wandat speakers combine words to form sentences (syntax) and interlinked statements (discourse) as well as how these statements are pronounced (prosody). This is an essential step in creating a new generation of speakers of Wendat and Wandat, two closely related linguistic varieties from the Iroquois family. As part of their work, Lukaniec and her team will reconstruct 40 Wandat texts from the 20th century and 500 Wendat sentences from the 17th and 18th centuries. They will analyze these data to identify syntactic, discursive and prosodic models. Lastly, they will publish a grammar guide.