Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Survey updates

January 11, 2021

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

Maks Dąbkowski has archived over 65 file bundles of audio and video recordings of texts in A'ingae (isolate, Ecuador). The materials stem from his 2019 fieldwork in the community of Sinangoé, with 21 different consultants and especially the contributions of Shen Aguinda and Leidy Quenamá as interviewers, transcribers, and translators.

O'Hagan joins Survey as postdoc

January 13, 2021

The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages is very happy to announce that Zachary O'Hagan (PhD, 2020) is joining the Survey, effective immediately, for a two-year stint as a Postdoctoral Scholar (and de facto Archive Manager) working on a project to archive language materials from the work of Leanne Hinton, Margaret Langdon, Frank Lobo, and Pamela Munro with a variety of California (and other) Indigenous communities. (The project is funded by an NEH grant through the NEH-NSF Documenting Endangered Languages program.) Congrats, Zach!

Mikkelsen and colleagues publish in Language

December 17, 2020

Congrats to Line Mikkelsen, whose paper Forms and functions of backward resumption: The case of Karuk, co-authored with Karuk tribal members Charron (Sonny) Davis, Vina Smith, Nancy Super (née Jerry), Peter Super Sr., and Charlie Thom Sr., has just appeared in Language! As the paper notes in its opening paragraph:

The research on Karuk reported here is the outcome of a collaboration between Karuk master speakers and Elders Sonny Davis, Julian Lang, the late Vina Smith, Nancy Super (née Jerry), the late Peter Super, Sr., and the late Charlie Thom, Sr.; Karuk language learners, researchers, and teachers Tamara Alexander, Robert Manuel, Crystal Richardson, Susan Gehr, Arch Super, Florrine Super, and Franklin (Frankie) Thom; and UC Berkeley linguists Andrew Garrett, Erik Maier, Line Mikkelsen, Karie Moorman, Ruth Rouvier, and Clare Sandy in Yreka, California, starting in 2010 and continuing through 2020. The work includes language documentation, linguistic analysis, language learning, development of language curriculum, educational support, language teaching, working through texts, (re)transcribing legacy recordings, linguistic elicitation with verbal and visual stimuli, and the development of ararahih-'urípih (= Karuk language net; http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~karuk/index.php), an online dictionary and morphologically parsed text corpus.

Survey updates

November 16, 2020

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

We've catalogued new paper materials related to Q'anjob'al (Mayan; Guatemala, Mexico; item 2016-01.048 and above) that derive from the department's 1986-1987 field methods course, with speaker Rafael Pascual and instructor Leanne Hinton. The course was followed by an undergraduate course on K'iche' (Linguistics 175) in fall 1987, and a combined undergraduate-graduate seminar (Linguistics 198/298) on Mayan languages in spring 1988, both taught by Prof. Hinton.

O'Hagan defends dissertation

November 20, 2020

Congratulations to Zach O'Hagan, who will defend his dissertation, "Focus in Caquinte," on Tuesday, November 24, 9am-12pm. Please click here for the full schedule and abstract. Everyone is warmly invited: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/93235048189. (A celebration will take place at 5pm: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/95596376015.)

Rouvier receives Most Impactful Paper Award at ICLDC

November 5, 2020

Congrats to Ruth Rouvier, whose paper "Emotion and Motivation in Language Reclamation" has been accepted for presentation at the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) and selected for a Most Impactful Paper Award, which comes with a cash prize. The conference will be held virtually March 4-7, 2021.

Survey updates

October 15, 2020

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

Myriam Lapierre has archived four new collections on languages of Brazil: Panära (Jê); Kajkwakhrattxi (aka Tapayuna, Jê), with Jérémie Beauchamp; Kawaiwete (aka Kayabi, Tupí-Guaraní); and Xavante (Jê), with Nick Carrick (BA 2019) and current undergraduate student Teela Huff. Other materials related to Panära are archived with the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS (here). David Shaul (PhD 1982) is the author of a new Survey Report, with his monograph Baja California Languages: Description and Linguistic Prehistory, part one of his upcoming series Southern California Pacific Linguistics.

Bardagil publishes in Linguistic Variation

October 15, 2020

Congrats to researcher Bernat Bardagil, whose article Number morphology in Panará has just appeared in Linguistic Variation 20:2!

Berkeley @ NELS 51

October 8, 2020

The program for the 51th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (to be hosted virtually by the Université de Quebec à Montreal) has just been released, promising the following presentations by current department members and recent alumni:

Amy Rose Deal: 3-on-3 restrictions and PCC typology Peter Jenks: Names as complex indices: On apparent Condition C violations in Thai Laura Kalin and Nicholas Rolle (PhD '18): Deconstructing subcategorization: Conditions on insertion vs. position Edwin Ko: Feeding agreement: Anti-locality in Crow applicatives of unaccusatives

Congrats all!

Survey updates

September 13, 2020

Updates from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

We released a new collection of materials on Imbabura Quichua (Quechuan; Ecuador), from the 2009-2010 graduate field methods course. The consultants were Mariana Chuquín and Augusto Oyagata, the instructor was Lev Michael, and students were alums Will Chang, Jessica Cleary-Kemp, Clara Cohen, Stephanie Farmer, Melinda Fricke, Laura Kassner, Roger Kroeger, Iksoo Kwon, Joshua Marker, Tom Recht, John Sylak-Glassman & Elisabeth Wehling.