Grant Details

New and Updated | Grant Search

National Science Foundation (NSF) Dynamic Language Infrastructure - National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) - FY 2025

Agency: U.S. National Science Foundation
CFDA: 47.050, 47.070, 47.075, 47.076
Federal FON: 22-615
Office: Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (SBE/BCS) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) Directorate for STEM Education (EDU)
Multipart Grant: No
Next Due: 09/15/2025 (Multiple)
Solicitation Date: Unknown
   
Match Required: No
Actual Funds: $4,800,000 (Estimated)
Summary:

The purpose of this program is to support projects that will develop and advance knowledge concerning dynamic language infrastructure in the context of endangered human languages that are both understudied and at risk of falling out of use. This program is intended not only to acquire scientific data that will soon be unobtainable by the imminent loss of roughly half of the approximately 7,000 currently used languages in the world, but also to integrate, systematize, and make the resulting linguistic findings widely available by exploiting advances in information technology.

This program will support projects that contribute to data management and archiving, and to the development of the next generation of researchers. Funding may support fieldwork and other activities relevant to the digital recording, documenting, analyzing, and archiving of endangered languages, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases. Funding will be provided as senior research awards and conference awards.

Projects may address one or more of the following emphasis areas:

  • Language description:
    • Conduct fieldwork to record in digital audio and video format one or more endangered languages
    • Carry out the early stages of language documentation, including transcription and annotation
    • Carry out later stages of documentation, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases
    • Conduct initial analysis of findings in the light of current linguistic theory
  • Infrastructure:
    • Digitize and otherwise preserve and provide wider access to documentary materials, including previously collected materials and those concerned with languages that have recently lost all fluent speakers and are related to currently endangered languages
    • Create other infrastructures, including conferences, to make the problem of endangered languages more widely understood and more effectively addressed
  • Computational methods:
    • Further develop standards and databases to make the documentation of languages widely available in consistent, archivable, interoperable, and web-based formats
    • Develop computational tools for endangered languages that present an additional challenge for those using statistical and machine learning, especially deep learning methods, since such languages do not have the large corpora for training and testing the models used to develop those tools
    • Develop new approaches to building computational tools for endangered languages, which make use of deeper knowledge of linguistics, language typology, and families, and which require collaboration between theoretical, field, and computational linguists and computer scientists and engineers

Projects should include multidisciplinary research teams as well as comprehensive and interdisciplinary approaches across the sciences, engineering, education, and humanities, as appropriate.

Applicants are encouraged to include innovative plans for training native speakers in descriptive linguistics and new technologies that support the documentation of endangered languages.

High priority will be given to projects that involve actual recording in digital audio and video format of endangered languages before they become extinct.

Program Office Notes:

The program officer confirmed the solicitation for this program, attached as the NOFA file, is current.

Last Updated: September 20, 2024

Eligibility Notes:

Eligible applicants are:

  • Two- and four-year institutions of higher education (IHEs), including community colleges, that are accredited in, and have a campus located in, the United States, and act on behalf of their faculty members
  • Nonprofit and non-academic organizations, including independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies, and other similar organizations associated with educational or research activities
  • Tribal organizations and other American Indian-, Alaska Native-, and Native Hawaiian-serving organizations

Collaborative proposals in which investigators from two or more organizations wish to collaborate on a unified project may be submitted.

Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP)-eligible institutions are encouraged to submit senior research proposals or collaborative proposals from consortia of TCUP-eligible institutions and partnering universities with educational or research ties to TCUP-eligible institutions’ faculty or students. While one TCUP-eligible institution may be identified to take the lead on organizational activities, each institution will independently manage its award.

Previously declined proposals may be resubmitted, but only after substantial revision.

There are no limits on the number of proposals that an organization may submit.

An individual may be listed as a PI or co-PI on no more than one senior research proposal per review cycle. This limit does not apply to conference/workshop proposals. A PI may not submit both a CAREER and a senior research proposal in the same cycle.

Federal agencies and federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) are generally not eligible to apply, except under exceptional circumstances and with prior funding agency approval.

Eligible Applicants:
Academic Institutions
Consortia
Non Profits
Tribal Organizations/Institutions
Application Notes:

Proposals must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. applicant's local time on one of the following dates:

  • February 18, 2025
  • September 15, 2025

Conference proposals must generally be submitted at least one year in advance of the scheduled date of the conference.

Proposals must be submitted online at www.research.gov or www.ecivis.com/grants.gov.

Proposals submitted via Research.gov must include:

  • Single-copy documents
  • Cover sheet
  • Project summary (1 page max)
  • Table of contents
  • Project description (15 pages max)
  • References cited
  • Budget
  • Budget justification (5 pages max)
  • Subaward budget justification (if applicable; 5 pages max each)
  • Facilities, equipment, and other resources
  • Senior/key personnel documents
  • Special information and supplementary documentation

Proposals submitted via Grants.gov must include:

  • SF 424 (R&R)
  • Project/performance site location(s)
  • Research and related other project information
  • Research and related budget
  • R&R subaward budget attachment(s) (if applicable)
  • NSF cover page
  • NSF senior/key person profile (expanded)
  • NSF deviation authorization (if applicable)
  • NSF list of suggested reviewers or reviewers not to include (if applicable)

Refer to the NSF Proposal Guide or the NSF Grants.gov Guide for additional information on proposal formatting.

In addition to standard research proposals, applicants may submit other types of proposals to this program. Refer to pages 81-100 of the NSF Proposal Guide file for additional information regarding other types of proposals.

The following are required in order to submit an application:

  • Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) number
  • SAM (System for Award Management) registration

Applicants may obtain a UEI number and verify or renew SAM registration status at www.ecivis.com/sam.

Proposals will be evaluated according to the following merit review criteria:

  • Intellectual merit
  • Broader impacts

Proposals will also be evaluated according to the following additional criteria:

  • Degree of endangerment of the language(s) to be documented and the urgency of the need for documentation
  • Level, quality, and accessibility of any existing documentation of the language(s)
  • Special linguistic, historical, cognitive, cultural, or social significance of the language(s)
  • Collaborations and other arrangements made with the speaker community, including the training of native speakers in the practice of linguistics and the production of resources useful to the community of native speakers

Refer to the NOFA file, the NSF Proposal Guide, and the NSF Grants.gov Guide for additional application information.

Match Required: No
Actual Funds: $4,800,000 (Estimated)
Match Notes:

Matching funds are not required for this program. Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing in the proposal budget is prohibited; however, applicants may contribute voluntary uncommitted cost sharing.

Funding Notes:

An anticipated $4.8 million is available to support approximately 20 to 25 awards of up to $450,000 for up to three years through this program.

The project period will last from one to three years. Award recipients may authorize a one-time extension of the award period of up to 12 months if additional time beyond the established end date is required to assure adequate completion of the original scope of work within the funds already made available. If additional time beyond the extension is required and exceptional circumstances warrant, award recipients must submit a formal extension request to the funding agency.

Funds may not be used to support projects to revive or expand the actual use of endangered languages.

In general, funding will not support:

  • Technical assistance
  • Pilot plant efforts
  • Research requiring security classification
  • Product development for commercial marketing
  • Market research for a particular project or invention
  • Biological research on mechanisms of disease in humans, biological research to develop animal models of such conditions, or the development or testing of procedures for their treatment
  • Payment of fees

Examples of ineligible costs include:

  • Entertainment
  • Meals and coffee breaks
  • Alcoholic beverages
  • Rental of property owned by individuals or entities affiliated with National Science Foundation (NSF) award recipients for use as home office workspace
  • Procuring or obtaining the equipment, services, or systems identified in section 889 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
Contacts:

Jorge Valdes Kroff
Program Director
(703) 292-7920
jvaldesk@nsf.gov

Rachel M. Theodore
Program Director
(703) 292-4770
rtheodor@nsf.gov

Wilson de Lima Silva
Program Director
(703) 292-7096
widelima@nsf.gov

Kenyatta Johnson
Program Specialist
(703) 292-4850
kenjohns@nsf.gov

Jacquelyn H. Clements
Senior Program Officer
(202) 606-8475
jclements@neh.gov

Agency Address
National Science Foundation
2415 Eisenhower Avenue
Alexandria, VA 22314

Contact Notes:

Questions should be directed to the program staff.

Proposals must be submitted online at www.research.gov or www.ecivis.com/grants.gov.

The agency address provided is for reference purposes only.

Files:
NOFA File: US15579_NOFA_FY2025.pdf (1001.8 Kb)
Federal Forms:
NSF Grants.gov Guide (742.4 Kb)
NSF Proposal Guide (2.4 Mb)
File Notes:

The NOFA file contains the full solicitation for this program. The NSF Proposal Guide and the NSF Grants.gov Guide are attached. Previous awards issued through NSF programs may be accessed online at www.nsf.gov/awardsearch.

The program officer confirmed the solicitation for this program, attached as the NOFA file, is current.

September 20, 2024
The program officer confirmed the NOFA file is the current solicitation for this program. The Financial section has been updated accordingly.

Grant Keywords
institution of higher education, institutions of higher education, two-year institution of higher education, four-year institution of higher education, community college, college, university, nonprofit organization, non-academic organization, independent museum, observatory, research lab, professional society, Tribal organization, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, NSF, IHE, National Science Foundation, NEH, National Endowment for the Humanities, DLI, DEL, DLI-DEL, language, world language, endangered language, dead language, extinct language, linguistic, linguistics, morphology, philology, philological, phonology, phonetics, computer science, information technology, IT, database, language database, dictionary, primer, grammar, semantic, semiotics, syntax, phoneme, language study, language studies, academia, Native American language, dialect, Native American dialect, endangered dialect, multidisciplinary research, language theory, doctoral thesis, dissertation, doctoral dissertation, digitization, digital repository, digital repositories, language mapping, lexicon, advanced, cutting edge, pilot, prototype, scientific frontier, technologies, computer, connectivity, cyberspace, information science, interactive, internet, network, virtual reality, world wide web, collaboration, cross-disciplinary, multidisciplinary, multiple disciplines, partnership, scientific research, humanities, sociology, studies, study, fellowship, conference, scientific conference, tribe, tribal, Native American, museum, nonprofit, non-profit, not-for-profit, observatories, laboratories, laboratory, professional societies, Tribal Colleges and Universities Program, TCUP, collaborative, consortium, consortia, National Science Foundation Dynamic Language Infrastructure - National Endowment for the Humanities Documenting Endangered Languages, digital, SBE, SBE/BCS, BCS, CISE, GEO, EDU
Grant Categories
Arts & Culture
Education
Information Technology/Telecommunications