This paper provides the first evidence of maternal speech--motherese--in Wichi, an indigenous language with a complex morphology spoken in the Gran Chaco region of Argentina. The corpus consists of 22 hours of video recordings from the daily life of three children, starting from their one-morpheme utterance period (MLU = 1) to the onset of…

Yucatec Maya theory of learning may be thought of as Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours. Children learn everyday and specialized tasks by observing and pitching in. This mode of learning is embedded in children's developmental niche in which parental ethnotheories play the central role. I present results from…

This article promotes a grounded approach to Indigenous language revitalization that honours Indigenous peoples' desire to restore Indigenous language use in their daily lives. The approach offers a way of revitalizing Indigenous languages by reintegrating them into Indigenous social life and an Indigenous way of learning, thus also sustaining and…

In Nahuatl-speaking villages located in the north of the state of Puebla, family and community educational practices adhere to the Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours model (LOPI). Attentive observation is encouraged as children's principal method of learning. Co-presence is favoured by the adult educators as a…

This story was told to the author by her grandmother, a Yurok born at Pecwan in 1898. Long ago, at a council meeting, the animals decided to ask the Great Creator for tails. He agreed and promised to give each animal a tail the next morning. The first animal to get up would have first choice. Coyote built a big fire and tried hard to stay awake…

This is a dictionary of Western Abenaki as it is spoken in the last half of the 20th century. A member of the Algonquin family of languages, Western Abenaki is so named to distinguish it from Penobscot and the extinct Eastern Abenaki dialects of what is now the state of Maine. The Western Abenakis, whose homes are Odanak, Quebec, and the Missiquoi…

A handlettered collection of approximately 220 commonly-used expressions and sentences in the language of the Yurok Indians of northwestern California includes common English equivalents as well as word-for-word translations. (LFL)

The life of a primary mythical character of the Hupa culture unfolds in this story, which was translated from a version told by an 82-year-old Hupa. The introduction summarizes the story plot explaining that the hero of the story is born under strange circumstances (dug up by a girl who ignores the warning not to dig potatoes with two leaves) and…

Useful for both linguists and laymen because of its scientific validity and accuracy, the second edition of the Papago/Pima-English dictionary gives full definitions for over 5,000 entries. Beginning with a practical alphabet for Papago-Pima and a guide to the dictionary, the book is divided into two parts. In addition to the lexical entries, Part…

Traditional and contemporary Hupa songs as sung by a Hupa medicine woman in her 70's are collected in this booklet. Songs are presented in Hupa and English on facing pages that are illustrated with pen and ink drawings. The four songs are "Flower Dance Song" and "Kick Dance Song" (both for traditional religious ceremonial…

In 1941, Angeline Williams, an Anishinaabe elder taught the Ojibwa (Chippewa) language to a class at the Linguistic Institute at the University of North Carolina. Ojibwa is an American Indian language which was spoken as a chain of dialects in numerous communities from Quebec across the Great Lakes and into the plains of Saskatchewan. This text…

Yurok Indian legends in Yurok Unifon text include English translations of the entire texts in order to produce fluent reading for English speakers and a continuous text for Yurok readers. Although corresponding sentences are numbered, translation is not word-for-word or sentence-for-sentence. The five stories refer to a time when animals could…

A cross section of Athabascan life as related by eight inhabitants of Lime Village, Alaska, is given in this document. The short narratives are printed in English and in Dena'ina. Illustrations accompany the text. The stories tell of making eagle feather robes, birchbark or mooseskin boats, a raincoat from black bear intestines, and boots from…

The six legends told here, in Tlingit on the left page and in English on the right page, are told by Elizabeth Nyman, a Tlingit elder of the Taku River clan. The narratives represent a portion of the clan's oral history. Introductory sections provide some historical background concerning the clan, the story teller, and the traditions with which…

Three illustrated stories from the Karuk Indians of northwestern California are told in free English translation and in Karuk with literal English translation. Stories tell of Bluejay who pretends to be sick to get higher pay for doctoring the person she is making sick, how the Karuk learned to kill the fattest deer, and the waterdog who kills the…