Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Studies in Crow Linguistics: Documentation, Grammar, and History

Edwin Ko
2023

Epistemic modality across syntactic categories in Kipsigis

Madeline Bossi
2023

Pronouns and agreement in San Juan Atitán Mam

Tessa Scott
2023

CLA updates

May 3, 2023

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

Tessa Scott, Lucrecia Carrillo, and Henry Sales have accessioned a new collection, Documentary Materials on Mam, a Mayan language of Guatemala, Mexico, and the Bay Area. The collection consists of audio recordings of lexical and grammatical elicitation, subtitled video recordings of narrative texts (with the assistance of Kenneth Gallanosa), typed field notes, and PDF scans of handwritten field notes. It spans multiple varieties of Mam, as spoken in the following towns in Guatemala: San Antonio Ixchiguán, San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, San Juan Atitán (majority), San Rafael Petzal, and San Sebastián Huehuetenango.

CLA updates

April 26, 2023

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, 10 Wintu people, led by Michelle Radcliff-Garcia, visited the California Language Archive (CLA). Anna Macknick (GSR) was responsible for the conceptualization and coordination of the event, which they carried out in conjunction with Chelsi Sparti, drawing new connections among the CLA, the American Indian Graduate Program, the Native FEWS Alliance, and the Student Technology Equity Program (STEP), all of which provided financial and/or logistical support; STEP fully donated several laptop computers to the group! The group also spent time at the Bancroft Library, at the Native Community Center (Anthony Hall), and with Prof. Beth Piatote here in the department, in her capacity as head of the Arts Research Center, which houses the Indigenous Poetics Lab. Alex Elias and Måsi Santos also provided valuable assistance, including as part of a workshop on using FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx). Rebecca Jarvis, Julianne Kapner, and Katherine Russell have accessioned the new collection Materials of the Atchan Language Project (Kwa; Côte d’Ivoire), based on a collaboration with Jeanne Doko, Léocadie Guebeapo, Timothée Kouadio, Evelyne Koutouan, and others. Materials include audio recordings of elicitation sessions, oral narratives, and sociolinguistic interviews; field notes; and time-aligned TextGrids. The project has been conducted both in person in Côte d’Ivoire and remotely on Zoom.

CLA updates

March 12, 2023

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

We've accessioned a new collection of materials related to the winter-spring 1980 Berkeley graduate field methods course on Lakota (Siouan; US), with consultants Eva (Martin) Brown (1909-1996), previously a consultant for the 1974-1975 course, and Mary (Afraid of Enemy) McDaniel (1917-1992), and instructor Wallace Chafe (1927-2019). Mrs. McDaniel was a granddaughter of Solomon Afraid of Enemy, who fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 and survived the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890; she was also the great-granddaughter of the Oglala Sitting Bull (d. 1877). The single notebook in the collection was recovered at an estate sale at the former home of Knud Lambrecht (PhD 1986) in Alameda in 2019!

Hyman publishes in Studies in African Linguistics

February 21, 2023

Congrats to Larry Hyman, whose article "Deverbal nominalization in Runyankore" has just appeared in Studies in African Linguistics (though published as part of the last issue from 2022). Click here for the PDF.

O'Hagan speaks at Texas Linguistics Society

February 16, 2023

Zachary O'Hagan is in Austin to attend the 22nd meeting of the Texas Linguistics Society February 17-18, giving a keynote presentation titled "The Ashaninka Archival Collection of Gerald Weiss: Value in Legacy Documentation and Priorities in Preservation."

Publication of first two volumes of Amazonian Languages: An International Handbook

January 31, 2023

The first two volumes of Amazonian languages: An international handbook were officially published on January 30. Edited by Patience Epps and Lev Michael, these two volumes present grammatical descriptions of all reasonably well-attested linguistic isolates of the Greater Amazonian region. Volume I covers Aikanã to Kandozi-Shapra, and Volume II covers Kanoé to Yurakaré. (A chapter in Volume III will summarize what we know about the more poorly-attested isolates and small language families known only from colonial-era materials.)

Linguists currently or formerly affiliated with Berkeley contributed significantly to these volumes:

Introduction (freely available online): Patience Epps (UT Austin) and Lev Michael

Aʔɨwa: Christine Beier and Lev Michael

Cholón: Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus (University of Amsterdam) and Kelsey Caitlyn Neely (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme; Berkeley PhD 2019)

Muniche: Lev Michael, Stephanie Farmer (Berkeley PhD 2015), Greg Finley (Meta, Berkeley PhD 2015), Karina Sullón Acosta (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), Christine Beier, Alejandrina Chanchari Icahuate (Munichis, Peru), Donalia Icahuate Baneo (Munichis, Peru), and Melchor Sinti Saita (Munichis, Peru)

Mỹky: Bernat Bardagil (University of Groningen; Berkeley postdoc 2017-2020)

Omurano: Zachary O'Hagan (Berkeley PhD 2020)

Taushiro: Zachary O'Hagan

Warao: Andrés Romero-Figueroa (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello) and Konrad Rybka (University of Leiden; Berkeley postdoc 2015-2018)

In addition, Zachary O'Hagan was the editorial assistant in the first several years of the project.

The next volumes in the series will focus on the small language families of Greater Amazonia, and the final volumes, on the large language families of the region.

CLA updates

January 22, 2023

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

Shweta Akolkar has accessioned the new collection Bishnupriya Manipuri Language Documentation Materials (Indo-Aryan; India, Bangladesh), based on a collaboration with Uttam Singha and other speakers. The collection represents a kind of archival collection that has come to exist originally due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consisting of audio and/or video recordings of Zoom calls where notes are shared onscreen and later bundled with the same recording files as PDFs.