Anthony C. Woodbury is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Jesse H. Jones Regents Professorship in Liberal Arts. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics in 1975 from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley. His research focuses on the indigenous languages of the Americas, and how they reveal contemporary as well as historic linguistic diversity and creativity on the parts of their speakers. He began working with Yupik-Inuit-Unangan (Eskimo-Aleut) languages in 1974, eventually focusing on Cup’ik in Chevak, Alaska. In 2003 he became engaged in the documentation and description of Chatino, an Otomanguean language group of Oaxaca, Mexico. Themes in his writing have included tone and prosody; morphology, syntax, and historical linguistics; ethnopoetics and speech play and verbal art; and language documentation, revitalization, and the role of linguistics in the struggle for human rights and intellectual justice, especially under conditions of language shift that is directly or indirectly coerced.
[Information adapted from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin; web. Date Accessed: 05/22/2023]
Linguistic field notes and audio cassette recordings containing texts of Chevak, a dialect of Central Alaskan Yup'ik. Anthony C. Woodbury visited the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and Chevak to conduct linguistic fieldwork on the Chevak dialect of Central Alaskan Yup’ik. Goals of his field work were to establish a working relationship with members of the community and collect a corpus of linguistic data for analysis and transcription (with the assistance of a native speaker of the Chevak dialect).
Central Alaskan Yup'ik is the largest of the state's Native languages, both in the size of its population and the number of speakers. Of a total population of about 21,000 people, about 10,000 are speakers of the language. Children still grow up speaking Yup'ik as their first language in 17 of 68 Yup'ik villages, those mainly located on the lower Kuskokwim River, on Nelson Island, and along the coast between the Kuskokwim River and Nelson Island. The main dialect is General Central Yup'ik, and the other four dialects are Norton Sound, Hooper Bay-Chevak, Nunivak, and Egegik.
Central Alaskan Yup'ik lies geographically and linguistically between Alutiiq and Siberian Yupik. The word Yup'ik represents not only the language but also the name for the people themselves yuk 'person' plus pik 'real'. In Chevak the language is referred to as Cup'ik, and in Nunivak as Cup'ig, words that are also used in place of Yup'ik to denote a person of this group.
Early linguistic work in Central Yup'ik was done primarily by Russian Orthodox, then Jesuit Catholic and Moravian missionaries, leading to a tradition of literacy used in letter writing. In the 1960s, Irene Reed and others at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks developed a modern writing system for the language, and their work led to the establishment of the state's first school bilingual programs in four Yup'ik villages in the early 1970s. Since then a wide variety of bilingual materials has been published, as well as Steven Jacobson's comprehensive dictionary of the language and his complete practical classroom grammar, and story collections and narratives by many others, including a novel by Anna Jacobson.
[Information adapted from the “Central Yup'ik” page of the Alaska Native Language Center website. University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Date Accessed: 05/22/2023]
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Creator's literary rights retained. Contact repository for details.
Anthony Woodbury, Chicago, 1979-01-22
Contains information about fieldtrip itinerary and dates; accomplishments of fieldwork; preliminary results; table of contents referring to cassettes and notebooks; and future plans for project
True story from the Yukon Wars narrated by Mary Mokrak [Side A], Ghost Story: Return of woman who died in childbirth, and of the child who was buried with her, narrated by Gregory Teve [Side B]
Three tales narrated by M. Chimiralrea [Side A], Accounts of old life ways narrated by R. Imgalrea, T. Imgalrea, and J. Nash [Side B], and a true story about a man who defied a shaman narrated by J. Nash [Side B]
Two stories, followed by English versions: "How the loon got his colors" and "Orphan Story" (with song) [Side A]; "Two true stories from my grandfather" [Side B]; Narrated by L. Moses
Three true stories, and two tales narrated by T. Moses [Side A]; recording from 1:15-2:05 pm of activities in Chevak's Qaygig ("Kashim"); conversation and storytelling [Side B]
Recording from 2:05=3:35 pm of activities in Chevak's Qaygig ("Kashim"); conversation and storytelling
Recording from 3:35-3:45 pm, and 4:30-5:30 pm of activities in Chevak's Qaygig ("Kashim"); period between 3:45-4:30 pm occupied by daily "firebath"; conversation and storytelling
Recording from 3:30-4:45 pm in Chevak's Qaygig ("Kashim"); conversation and storytelling