Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages(link is external):

Madeline Bossi(link is external) archived a new collection(link is external) related to her work on Kipsigis and Tugen (Southern Nilotic; Kenya) with speakers Linus Kipkoech and Robert Langat (Kipsigis) and Nicholas Kipchumba Koech (Tugen). A major portion of the collection consists of video recordings of elicitation sessions conducted on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. José Armando Fernández Guerrero archived a new collection(link is external) of recordings, transcriptions, and translations of stories in the Ja'a variety of Kumiay (Yuman; Mexico, US) told by Yolana Meza Calles (some on Zoom). The stories were published as Ja'a Kumiay: Jwañow Tipey Aam(link is external) in the Survey's Publications in Language Maintenance and Reclamation, together with a coloring book, Tipey Aam Awilk Tañorj(link is external). Susan Steele(link is external) archived a new collection(link is external) of sound recordings of Luiseño (Uto-Aztecan; California) and Ichishkíin (Sahaptian; Pacific Northwest), together with over 2200 pages of field notes of Luiseño spanning the 1970s to '90s. Speakers Villiana Hyde (1903-1994, Luiseño) and Hazel Miller (c1917-1989, Ichishkíin) are featured. We released a new collection(link is external) related to the 2017-2018 field methods course taught by Lev Michael(link is external) on the San Juan Atitán variety of Mam, with speaker Henry Sales. (See here for a summary of the department's field methods classes since its inception.) Justin Spence(link is external) (PhD 2013) added 185 new file bundles to the collection Materials of the Hupa Language Documentation Project(link is external) (see 427-599, 1416-1429). The materials stem from a longtime collaboration with speaker Verdena Parker and others, and include sound recordings of elicitation sessions, (re-)transcription and translation of texts (many of them told by others and/or archived previously), discussions of cultural topics, and more. Larry Hyman(link is external) and Florian Lionnet(link is external) (PhD 2016) archived a new collection(link is external) of recordings, field notes, and a draft lexicon of Teke (Bantu; Congo, Gabon) from their work in 2016 and 2018 with speaker Christophère Ngolele. Hannah Pritchett(link is external) (MA 2009) archived a small new collection(link is external) of recordings and photographs from an exploratory field trip in 2009 to work with speakers of Koho (Austroasiatic; Vietnam) and Chru (Austronesian; Vietnam). We digitized papers from a graduate seminar that Leanne Hinton taught on Aikanã (isolate; Brazil) in fall 1992 (here(link is external) and here(link is external)). The course was based on the documentary materials collected by Harvey Carlson (1954-1994, BA 1985), who received a President's Undergraduate Fellowship to do fieldwork in Brazil in 1984, facilitated by visiting professor Aryon Rodrigues (1925-2014), who had taught a course on South American indigenous languages in winter 1983. We digitized more of Series 1 and Series 2 of the Laura Buszard-Welcher Papers on the Potawatomi Language (Series 1: here(link is external) and here(link is external); Series 2: here(link is external), here(link is external), here(link is external), and here(link is external)), consisting of Buszard-Welcher's (PhD 2003) notes and Charles Hockett's transcriptions of Potawatomi (Algonquian; Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario) stories from the 1930s and '40s. We digitized three volumes of papers on indigenous languages of the Americas written at Harvard and collected by Karl Teeter (1929-2007, PhD 1962) during his early years there (here(link is external), here(link is external), and here(link is external)). Authors include Berkeley linguists such as Robin Lakoff and Alan Timberlake, among others such as Ives Goddard and the late Michael Silverstein (1945-2020).

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages(link is external):

We have updated our Languages of California(link is external) page(s), thanks to the efforts over the course of this semester of Allegra Robertson, who is finishing a semester as Graduate Student Researcher in the archive. In this role Allegra has been instrumental in cataloguing and making publicly available collections related to Kawaiisu(link is external) (Uto-Aztecan; California), Kiliwa(link is external) (Yuman; Baja California), Lulamogi(link is external) (Bantu; Uganda), Sereer(link is external) (Senegambian; Senegal, The Gambia), and Tswefap(link is external) (Grassfields; Cameroon), and in preparing other forthcoming collections related to Abo (Bantu; Cameroon) and Totela (Bantu; Zambia, Namibia). On Monday and Tuesday of this week, 10 boxes of papers related to Gerald Weiss's study of Ashaninka (Arawak; Peru, Brazil) language and culture arrived at the Survey, in addition to some 75 tape recordings spanning the early 1960s to 1980 brought back by Zachary O'Hagan(link is external) from Boca Raton last week. In addition to field diaries and lexical file slips, the papers include everything from notes on cosmology to transcriptions of recordings to detailed identification of biological specimens, alongside some 5000 slides and photographs. Here(link is external) is an example of the good quality of one of the tapes, a song sung by an Ashaninka woman named Rosa circa 1963.

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages(link is external):

We've digitized and catalogued 15 reel tapes of sound recordings of Kiliwa(link is external) (Yuman; Baja California) made by Mauricio Mixco(link is external) (PhD 1971) primarily between 1966 and 1969, when he was a graduate student in our department. The storytellers were Rufino Ochurte, Braulio Espinoza, and Rodolfo Espinoza. Trinidad Ochurte Espinoza collaborated closely with Prof. Mixco in the transcription and translation of his uncles' stories, many of which were published in 1983 as Kiliwa Texts: "When I have Donned My Crest of Stars." Soon Prof. Mixco will also be archiving his papers with our archive. We've digitized four notebooks of transcribed, glossed texts in Potawatomi (Algonquian; US, Canada; here(link is external), here(link is external), here(link is external), and here(link is external)) that belonged to Charles Hockett (1916-2000). The texts come from speakers Jim and Alice Spear. The first three notebooks are dated 1940, after Hockett received his PhD in linguistics from Yale (1939) with a dissertation supervised by later Berkeley faculty member Murray Emeneau(link is external) (1904-2005); all four of them come to us as part of the papers of Laura Buszard-Welcher (PhD 2003).