Karuk [kyh] and Yurok [yur] syntax and text documentation

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will analyze and collect new information about syntax and texts in two indigenous languages of northern California, Karuk [kyh] and Yurok [yur]; each language has a handful of (elderly) speakers. Existing scholarly literature carefully describes the pronunciation and word formation patterns of both languages, but discourse and word order patterns have attracted relatively little attention. This project will investigate these topics through work with speakers, analysis of existing published and unpublished texts (collected by several linguists over the 20th century), and creation of syntactically annotated text corpora for both languages. This project is important scientifically for three reasons. First, while indigenous California was linguistically the densest and most diverse area of its size in the western hemisphere, its languages have mostly not been analyzed in syntactic detail. Second, over the last 1000-2000 years there has been intensive cultural interaction between neighboring Karuk and Yurok, but its linguistic effects have not been carefully studied. Language contact effects tend to be especially conspicuous in syntax; preliminary work suggests that the syntactic correspondences between these two languages will cast new light on the mechanisms of contact-induced language change. A third reason is methodological: it is highly unusual to build syntatically annotated corpora of "small" languages; the results are expected to show researchers throughout the world that this approach can yield interesting syntactic generalizations. More broadly, this project will be of direct benefit for Karuk and Yurok language learning. Learners in both communities have a good knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation, and word formation. But they are less familiar with the distinctive syntactic patterns of their heritage languages, and naturally tend to use English patterns. This research will allow for the writing of grammatical descriptions that are useful for learners and teachers, emphasizing aspects of each language that differ from English, and reinforcing linguistic and cultural revival.