August 31, 2020
Updates from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:
- Alums Justin Spence (PhD 2013) and Ramón Escamilla (PhD 2012) together with Verdena Parker, who members of this department have collaborated with since 2005, have archived a large new collection of audio and video recordings of Hupa (Athabaskan, California), spanning work from 2015 to 2019, and with a major focus on the interpretation of legacy documentation. As Justin writes, "The recordings cover a broad range of topics: original texts told by Mrs. Parker, including narrations of 8mm films she recorded in the 1960s; sessions in which recordings are transcribed and/or translated; elicitation of paradigms, grammatical phenomena such as evidentiality, purpose clauses, and indefinites, and words and phrases for use in language revitalization programs; [and] re-transcription and translation of unpublished texts found in archival sources."
- Teela Huff, Myriam Lapierre, and Nick Carrick (BA 2020) published A'uwẽ Mreme: Dicionário Preliminar da Língua Xavante (Jê, Brazil), the first in our new series Publications in Language Maintenance and Reclamation. This series aims to profile community-oriented materials in revitalization and allied work, both from university- and community-based people. Stay tuned!
- Steve Parker (Dallas International University & SIL International) has archived a new collection of field notes and sound recordings of Iñapari (Arawak, Peru). The consultant was Jorge Trigoso Silvano. Dating from 1993 and 1994, these are the earliest known sound recordings of the language, which is spoken fluently by a set of four siblings currently in their 60s and 70s, of whom Don Jorge is the eldest. They are the children of one of the few Iñaparis to return to their traditional territory in the Madre de Dios region of Peru following their removal to Cochabamba and other areas of neighboring Bolivia in the early 20th century.