Center for American Indian Languages

Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL)
The Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL) was a research and outreach arm of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah. Its mission was to assist community members in the maintenance and revitalization (where possible) of endangered languages, to document these languages, and to train students to do this sort of work. The Center was founded in 2004 by well-known Americanist and historical linguist Lyle Campbell. It was located in the Fort Douglas part of the University of Utah campus. The center carried out eleven research projects. CAIL also hosted the annual Conference on Endangered Languages and Culture of Native America (CELCNA). As of 2012, the Center was closed by the University of Utah so that the Department of Linguistics could narrow its focus to endangered languages spoken by Native American groups in Utah alone.

The Center was composed of a Board of Advisors, including major indigenous language linguists and anthropologists such as Lyle Campbell (University of Hawai'i, Manoa), Willem F.H. Adelaar (Leiden University), Forrest S. Cuch (Utah State Division of Indian Affairs), Wade Davis (National Geographic Society), Ives Goddard (Smithsonian Institution), Verónica Grondona (Eastern Michigan University), William Merrill (Smithsonian Institution), Victor Montejo (University of California, Davis), Keren Rice (University of Toronto), and Robert Zavala (CIESAS-Sureste).

CAIL hosted the Lyle Campbell American Indian Languages Library, which contains over 3,000 books and journals on languages of the Americas, and was part of the Center.

CAIL was a member of the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity and a part of the Endangered Languages Project.

Links for CAIL
CAIL website

CAIL research projects