J.P. Harrington's recordings in unidentified Native languages

[Dave Robertson]

Hello,

If you read down to the end of this selection, you'll see the mention of Harrington's sound recordings in unidentified Native languages.  I suppose there's some chance that some of these contain Chinuk-Wawa.  Worth looking into.  -- Dave


...from <http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/NALC/home.html>...

The Native American Language Center is an initiative of the Department of Native American Studies at UC Davis, under the direction of Martha Macri, Victor Montejo and Victor Golla, (Humboldt State University). Sheri Tatsch, Ph.C., is the Executive Director.

The Native American Language Center Archives will be housed in the Special Collections of Shields Library at UC Davis. It will serve as a repository for field notes donated by linguists and other scholars who have recorded Indian languages.

The Center maintains an information network providing access to pedagogical and research materials on Native American languages through the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). This will include a comprehensive bibliography of Native American languages and linguistics; a database of archives and language collections at other universities, libraries, and cultural centers; and a directory of linguists; a database of archives and language collections at other universities, libraries, and cultural centers; and a directory of resource personnel and organizations, including contact persons within Native American communities, linguists and other scholars who have collected materials or written descriptions of the languages, and regional organizations promoting Native American languages. These resources will be on-line to insure maximum accessibility. See the SSILA page for resources currently available.

The Center coordinate with faculty throughout the UC and CSU systems in providing instruction in Native American languages to students and community members. Some of this instruction will be made available through distance learning technologies, some will consist of support in securing materials and finding knowledgeable speakers and linguists.

The Center plans to maintain an up-to-date collection of pedagogical materials, including copies of audio and video tapes, CD ROMs, and WWW resources. An appeal to scholars and tribal organizations for pedagogical materials is being made beginning the summer of 1996.

J.P. Harrington Database Project
The papers of John Peabody Harrington, a field linguist with the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology who collected over a million pages of data on North American Indian languages and cultures during the first half of this century, are a uniquely rich resource for Native American languages. The Harrington materials contain the only extensive documentation of the language and traditional culture of a number of Indian groups, particularly in California. Although they are archived in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian has made the papers accessible on microfilm. Unfortunately, the cost of the microfilms, the amount of data, and the manner of storage, makes access and retrieval unusually difficult for Native people and research scholars alike. Only a few California repositories have even incomplete collections of this valuable material.

Work on the Harrington materials will be a major commitment of the Center. Projects will include a computerized index to the entire collection (currently a student, working with a tribal elder, has begun keyboarding Harrington's Luiseno material), and a Handbook for Harrington Researchers, containing such information as a complete list of abbreviations and phonetic symbols used by Harrington, a detailed chronological record of Harrington's field projects, and a glossary of unusual terms found in the notes.

Many of the nearly 1,000 aluminum disc audio recordings made by Harrington between 1928 and 1942 have not been identified, and the Center hopes to coordinate a collaborative effort, involving linguists, native speakers, and other resources to identify the languages and speakers on these recordings.



--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



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