In this paper I review the methodology that I used in beginning my early fieldwork on a tonal Athabaskan language, including preparation through reading and listening, working with speakers, organizing data, and describing and analyzing the data, stressing how these are not steps or stages, but intersect and interact with each other.

Among the many ways in which sounds alternate in the world's languages, changes in the order of sounds (metathesis) are relatively rare. Mutsun, a Southern Costanoan language of California which was documented extensively before the death of its last speaker in 1930, displays three patterns of synchronic consonant-vowel (CV) metathesis. Two of…

This dissertation offers a detailed account of the phonology, morphophonology and elements of the morphosyntax of Kubeo, a language from the Eastern Tukanoan family, spoken in the Northwest Amazon. The dissertation is itself an experiment of how language documentation and empowering of the native speaker community can be combined with academic…

This dissertation explores the diversity and unity of coordination constructions in natural language. Following the goal of bridging syntactic typology with formal semantics, it takes the typological variation in NP coordination patterns as a challenge for semantic theory. Hybrid Coordination in Russian and Comitative Coordination in…

A study of Dakota Sioux presents evidence for Possessor Ascension. In this construction, a nominal that is semantically a possessor is syntactically not a constituent of the noun phrase but a constituent of the clause. The report first discusses the universal characterization of Possessor Ascension in the framework of relational grammar, and…

Recently collected evidence shows the likely existence of twelve South American Indian languages with object-initial word order. This is contrary to what had been generally predicted in the literature on word order typology before 1977. Numerous examples are provided of OVS (Object-Verb-Subject) and OSV (Object-Subject-Verb) word order, primarily…

New conclusions emerge about Southern Tiwa, a Tanoan language of New Mexico, from a morphoyntactic analysis of the language, including nouns occur as serial predicates; nouns can license an argument in the role of possessor; and the verb agrees with all and only final terms. (47 references) (JL)

The structure of the noun phrase (NP) in Alsea, an extinct language of the Oregon coast, is examined with particular attention to the behavior of a clitic occurring in second position within the NP. A presentation of the basic facts includes the following: referential(s) and the deictics, possessive pronouns, third-person possessive, the ergative,…

This work discusses the limits of conversion, or zero-derivation, as a nominalization process in the Choctaw language. It demonstrates that Choctaw relies on zero derivation for many nominalizations, but that this is a process occurring in the lexicon and therefore not a word formation rule. It also asserts that there is one reliable lexeme-level…

This dictionary contains lists of nouns in the Deg Xinag or Ingalik language as spoken in the Yukon River villages of Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross, and the Kuskokwim River village of Stony River. After a presentation of the Ingalik alphabet, the nouns, with English equivalents, are listed according to the following categories: mammals; fish;…

The spontaneous speech of a Mohawk-speaking boy was recorded from age 2;10 to 4;1. Analysis of this speech indicated that certain verbal prefixes are acquired earlier than suffixes. The pronominal prefix of nouns, on the other hand, enters late. Yet, before the appearance of any nominal affix, the child already uses a pronominal possessive as a…

"Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics" is intended as a forum for the presentation of the latest original research by the faculty and students of the Department of Linguistics and other related departments of the University of Kansas. Papers in this volume include: "Some Issues in Japanese Accent" (Kenneth Miner);…

This dictionary contains lists of nouns in the Holikachuk Athabaskan language as spoken by about twenty people, most of whom live in the village of Grayling, Alaska. The Holikachuk alphabet and sound system are presented. The nouns with English equivalents are listed according to the following categories: animals, fish, insects, birds, plants,…

The Mapuches, a tribe now numbering about 500,000 people in south central Chile are the descendants of the Araucanians of Spanish legend. Many still speak only their own idiom, which now shows much lexical influence of the surrounding Spanish. This paper is an exposition of Maria Catrileo Chiguailaf de Godo's research in her native language. It…

Dedicated to Margaret Langdon at the University of California, San Diego, for her contributions to Yuman studies, this volume of occasional papers contains papers presented at two conferences on Hokan-Penutian languages. The papers and presenters are as follows: "Yuman Linguistics: The Work of Margaret Langdon" (Leanne Hinton), which is…