California Indian LanguagesNowhere was the linguistic diversity of the New World more extreme than in California, where an extraordinary variety of village-dwelling peoples spoke seventy-eight mutually unintelligible languages. This comprehensive illustrated handbook, a major synthesis of more than 150 years of documentation and study, reviews what we now know about California's indigenous languages. Victor Golla outlines the basic structural features of more than two dozen language types and cites all the major sources, both published and unpublished, for the documentation of these languages—from the earliest vocabularies collected by explorers and missionaries, to the data amassed during the twentieth-century by Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues, to the extraordinary work of John P. Harrington and C. Hart Merriam. Golla also devotes chapters to the role of language in reconstructing prehistory, and to the intertwining of language and culture in pre-contact California societies, making this work, the first of its kind, an essential reference on California’s remarkable Indian languages. |
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Achumawi affricate American Indian Angulo attested Barbareño Berkeley Cahuilla California Indian California languages Callaghan carton Central Chimariko Chumash Coast Miwok Cochimí Costanoan County Creek cultural Cupeño dialect dictionary Diegueño documentation edited Eel River Esselen ethnographic fricative Gabrielino glottalized Golla grammar groups Harrington Heizer Hokan languages Hupa IJAL Indian Languages Karuk Klamath Klamath-Modoc Kroeber Lake language families lexical linguistic Luiseño Maidu Maiduan Merriam Mission Mono Mutsun National Anthropological Archives Nisenan Nomlaki Northeastern Northern Paiute Northern Pomo notes nouns Numic Obispeño Palaihnihan Patwin Penutian phonemic phonological prefixes published reel Rogue River Rumsen Salinan Santa Sapir Shasta Sierra Miwok Smithsonian Institution Southern speakers spoken stem subgroup suffixes Takelma Takic territory texts tribe tribelet Tubatulabal UC-PAAE UC-PL University of California Uto-Aztecan Valley varieties Ventureño verb village vocabulary collected vowels Wappo Washo Western Wintu Wintuan Wiyot Yana Yokuts Yuki Yukian Yuman Yurok