Just as archeologists have methods to analyze material objects to better understand human history and culture, linguists have methods to analyze recordings and manuscripts to better understand the relationship between different languages or how a single language has changed throughout time. As populations stop speaking them, languages, especially unwritten ones, become even more fragile than physical sites and all knowledge held within may easily be lost. This is true of endangered languages all over the world including Kawaiisu, a Uto-Aztecan language of Kern County, California, where just two Native American elder speakers remain. 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. This project will involve a linguist, Kawaiisu second language speakers, and the elder speakers to transcribe, translate, and analyze recordings covering fifty years of Kawaiisu speech. The broader impacts of this include broadening participation as Native American citizen scientists research their heritage language, as well as the implementation of an exemplary partnership between academic linguists and Native American communities. The resulting analyzed Kawaiisu materials will be publicly accessible and will generate data of scholarly interest to linguists and to other disciplines that depend on language-related material (i.e., anthropology, history, geography) in their research.
Fortunately, technology has left a record of the sounds of Kawaiisu. The oldest audio recordings, made in 1958 by Sheldon Klein, clearly present the cadence, sounds, and linguistic patterns of 60 years ago, when Kawaiisu was in more regular use. Later Klein recordings from the 1980s are the bridge between these older ways of speaking and later usage in fluent conversations video-recorded at culturally significant sites by the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center between 2011 and 2015. Less than 10 percent have been translated. Kawaiisu is Uto-Aztecan language family, which has played an important role in many areas of linguistics, including linguistic classification, historical reconstruction, typology and theoretical linguistics. Despite this importance, there are still many questions about the family, including Kawaiisu and its place in the Numic branch of the family. This project will augment scientific knowledge of Kawaiisu and its relatives.
Researchers will investigate language change via this newly annotated documentation. The conversational data spans a critical period in history when major shifts were occurring within indigenous communities, as well as throughout California and the United States. The involvement of Kawaiisu team members ensures that the knowledge gained will remain with the community as they mobilize data in their linguistic and cultural revitalization programs. Recordings and transcriptions will be archived at the California Language Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, where they will be accessible to other researchers and the general public.
