Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Survey updates

September 6, 2023

Zach O'Hagan sends the following report from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

Thanks to Anna Macknick, the CLA website now includes a FAQ page, with a video! The page includes information about using our digital catalog, about our holdings, and about access, among other topics. We've digitized 101 cassette tapes of Kwtsaan (Yuman) and added them to the Abraham M. Halpern Collection of Kwtsaan Sound Recordings (see items LA250.073-LA250.160). Made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tapes primarily feature speakers Howard Allen, Ignatius Cachora, Rosita Carr, Amelia Caster, Henry Collins, John Comet, Jessie Escalanti, Josepha Hartt, and Tom Kelly. To improve the usability of the collection, undergraduate volunteer Naomi Schroeter has added references to associated paper materials in the Margaret Langdon Papers. We've accessioned a new collection of sound recordings of Paipai (Yuman; Mexico), made in 1957 by Roger Owen, then a graduate student in anthropology at UCLA, with speaker Loreto González. We've accessioned a new collection of materials related to the 1993-1994 Berkeley graduate field methods course on Armenian (Indo-European), with consultant Aleks Göllü and instructor James Matisoff. Newly listenable in our Linguistics Lectures collection are William Bright's (PhD 1955) "Plant and Animal Names in Northwestern California" (1964) and Professor Emeritus William Wang's "Phonological Rules and Distinctive Features" (1965) and "Phonological Description and Speech Recognition" (1966). This collection consists mainly of departmental colloquia beginning in 1960, and is being digitized incrementally. We've accessioned a new collection of materials related to the 2021 UC San Diego graduate field methods course on Todos Santos Cuchumatán Mam (Mayan), with consultant Angela Ramirez and instructor Emily Clem (PhD 2019). We've accessioned a set of small collections of materials related to graduate field methods courses that Margaret Langdon (PhD 1966) taught at UCSD. Kumeyaay (1966), consultant Rosalie Robertson Kumeyaay (1967), consultant Rosalie Robertson with Fernando Kwaxa as guest Kumeyaay (1969), consultant Rosalie Robertson Paraguayan Guaraní (1972), consultant Marina dos Santos Iñupiaq (1973), consultant Edith Rowray Kwtsaan (1975), consultants Christine Emerson, Cynthia Wilson, and others unidentified Paraguayan Guaraní (1984), consultant Marina dos Santos Kumeyaay (1990), consultant Jane Dumas

O'Hagan on a research trip in South America

August 30, 2023
Zachary O'Hagan spent seven weeks in South America this summer, presenting on focus in Caquinte (Arawak; Peru) at AMAZONICAS IX in Bogotá and on 17th-century Omagua (Tupí-Guaraní; Peru) toponyms at SALSA XIV in Leticia, Colombia, followed by four weeks in Iquitos, Peru. There he worked with speakers of Urarina (isolate) and Taushiro (isolate), presented preliminary results from the California Language Archive's recent acquisition of Urarina legacy archival materials to Urarina school teachers (with Emanuele Fabiano, in nearby Nauta), was a panelist at the Apostolic Vicariate of Iquitos's second conversatorio "¿Qué Amazonía Queremos?" and rekindled relationships with school teachers and others at a meeting in San Joaquín de Omaguas for the revitalization of Omagua.

Ko files dissertation

August 16, 2023

Congratulations to Edwin Ko who recently filed his dissertation on "Studies in Crow Linguistics". He is beginning a position in Yale's Linguistics Department starting this month.

Dabkowski receives NSF grant

August 16, 2023
Congratulations to Maksymilian Dąbkowski who was awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant entitled Nominal and deverbal morphology in an endangered language (i.e. A'ingae).

Bossi files dissertation

August 16, 2023
Congrats to Madeline Bossi, who has just filed her dissertation Epistemic modality across syntactic catergories in Kipsigis! Starting in mid August, Maddy will be working as the Programs Data Manager for DREAM Charter School in New York City. She'll be running data collection and analysis for all of the school’s extracurricular programs, as well as leading UX research on the products that the data team uses and creates to make sure they’re working as user-friendly as possible.

Scott files dissertation

August 16, 2023

Congrats to Tessa Scott on her dissertation Pronouns and agreement in San Juan Atitán Mam, filed in May! Tessa has accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow with the UC Berkeley Future of Higher Education Postdoctoral Fellowship Program starting in September. She will be working in the office of the Dean of the College of Letters and Science on undergraduate education policy and advising. In this position she will also continue her research and work on Mam. We look...

Sande receives NSF CAREER Award

August 16, 2023

Congratulations to Hannah Sande; who has received a 5-year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation! The project is entitled Documentation, description, and analysis of multiword tone and harmony systems in four languages. The grant will fund language documentation work in Côte d'Ivoire, including fieldwork training for students, with a focus on harmony and tone processes that cross word...