Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

We've digitized and catalogued 15 reel tapes of sound recordings of Kiliwa (Yuman; Baja California) made by Mauricio Mixco (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, here, here, and here) 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 (1904-2005); all four of them come to us as part of the papers of Laura Buszard-Welcher (PhD 2003).

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

Chris Beier and Lev Michael archived a new collection of materials on Andoa (also known as Katsakáti; Zaparoan, Peru). In 2009 the Berkeley team, including Ramón Escamilla (PhD 2012) and Marta Piqueras-Brunet (MA 2008), collaborated for an intensive few days primarily with speakers Juan Mucushua and María Sandi, in addition to Dionisia Arahuanaza and Lidia Arahuanaza. The collection includes sound recordings, fieldnotes, a booklet "Katsakáti: El idioma antiguo del pueblo de Andoas," photographs, and documents deriving from previous documentation of the language in the 1950s by Catherine Peeke and Mary Sargent of SIL International. These are the only known surviving sound recordings of the language.

Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

We've digitized over 3000 lexical file slips of Makah (Wakashan, WA) made by Berkeley linguistics alum William Jacobsen, Jr. (PhD 1964). File slips were the primary way of organizing lexical data before the advent of tools like FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx).