Natural History of the Interview?

[Frank Bechter]

Leila,

To my knowledge, La Mont West's little known but very impressive structural
analysis of Plains Indian Sign Language -- his 1960 dissertation in
anthropology at Indiana -- has never been published. As you know, 1960 is
the date Stokoe published "Sign Language Structure," commonly referred to
as the first linguistic description of a sign language. Contemporary
typography and computer graphics could elegantly convey West's phonemic
notation system, and your background in sign language would make you an
ideal publisher. Foreword or afterword essays by contemporary sign language
linguists and linguistic anthropologists might also work well.

By chance, I recently heard that West, now 83 years old, is living on
Vashon Island, just outside of Seattle. There may be anthropologists at U
Dub (where West once taught) who could approach him, and perhaps something
could be pursued. I believe it would be a significant contribution to the
literature.

Let me know if I can be of any help.

Frank


On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Leila Monaghan <leila.monaghan at gmail.com>wrote:

> Does any one know who holds the copyright of the Natural History of
> Interview and/or has a decent copy that I could copy?
>
> I am also interested in hearing about any out of print classics in
> linguistic anthropology that you think should be in print again--early
> works by people on this list particularly welcome.
>
> best,
>
> Leila
> (writing as publisher of Elm Academic Press)
>
> --
> Leila Monaghan, PhD
> Department of Anthropology
> Southern Illinois University Carbondale
>