Creating a lexical database for Tututni, Coquille and Galice, three Native American languages of Oregon

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Just like biologists have methods to investigate the relationships between species, linguists have methods that allow them to determine the relationships between languages. Linguists do this by comparing a set of languages along various dimensions, such as words or language structures that may have a common origin. Documentation of a language plays a key role in how scholars reconstruct the family relationships between languages, but when the documentation exists in archives, in "analog" forms, like handwritten field notes or cassette recordings, this creates challenges in doing reconstruction of family relationships. This project will address this challenge focusing on three underdocumented languages, whose archival materials have received little attention in the linguistic literature. The research team will digitize materials, and then process and analyze them by creating a database of the three languages. This research infrastructure will create digital access to the materials and will create a lexicon of use to both linguistic science and to learners. Tututni, Coquille and Galice, the focus of this project, are three severely endangered Native American languages of the Oregon Coast. Broader impacts include the dissemination of the lexicon to Native communities and the scholarly community, and the education and training of three budding Native social scientists, broadening participation in the linguistics by underrepresented groups. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The Athabaskan language family includes many languages and has an expansive geographic distribution, ranging from Alaska and the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada and to the southwest including Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma. Southwest Oregon Athabaskan language communities were extremely fragmented following the forced relocation of members to reservations during the 1850s-60s, termination of tribes in the 1950s and boarding school language policies. However, Tututni, Coquille and Galice have extensive documentation, most of which neither easily accessible nor linguistically analyzed, a gap in the scientific understanding of an important branch of Athabaskan languages. By digitizing and databasing this archival documentation, this project will increase the linguistic understanding of relationships in the Athabaskan family. Methods include the linguistic analysis of verbs, notoriously complex in this language family, and transcription of legacy recordings. These materials, collected between the 1880s and 1980s, will be analyzed and synthesized into a single database. Scientific hypotheses can be tested against the large bodies of research to yield new discoveries and explanations for Athabaskan languages and their family relationships, especially those of the Pacific Coast branch. Results will also promote language use in Oregon Athabaskan communities and advance education of diverse groups, as these Native citizen scientists engage with the lexicon and the disseminated resources in a host of initiatives, including language and cultural revitalization.