Building an Achumawi Linguistic Database
FAIN: FN-50116-13
Bruce E. Nevin
Unaffiliated Independent Scholar (Edgartown, MA 02539-7401)
This project will complete a linguistic database for Achumawi, the highly endangered language of the Pit River Tribe of northern California, in the northern subgroup of the controversial and poorly understood Hokan superstock. In extensive linguistic fieldwork in 1970-1974 the applicant established a sizeable collection of written and audio records of the language. In this project the applicant will enter these materials into a computer database, which will bring together material on the language from diverse repositories, more or less difficult to access in geographically separate locations, and create a single self-consistent, cross-checked, searchable resource that will be made freely available to researchers and community members. Members of the tribe will be trained to participate in fieldwork with remaining speakers, and to participate in identifying and extracting pedagogically useful material from the database and from the correlated audio recordings. These materials will be used for language revitalization programs funded by the Pit River Tribe. (Edited by staff)