Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Phonology and Morphology of Karuk

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Karuk is a highly endangered Native American language of Northern California, spoken as a first language by fewer than a dozen elders. Karuk is characterized by an extraordinarily complex system of morphophonological alternations, that is, changes in a word's sounds with the addition of prefixes or suffixes, akin to the consonant change in 'leaf'~'leaves', and the stress shift in 'democrat'~'democracy', in English. The Karuk system is rife with exceptions and unusual rules of vowel and consonant lengthening and shortening, rightward and leftward accent shift, and consonant changes. This complexity raises the question of what organizing principles underlie word formation, in particular, what determines the placement of prosodic prominence (accent, stress, or high pitch) in words, and how integrated are the sets of rules for assembling words from their component parts and those for the pronunciation of those parts. Prior linguistic scholarship has described many of these alternations in Karuk, but a unifying analysis, which takes into account the theoretical and technological advances of linguistics in the past half-century, has yet to be undertaken. This project addresses these questions by collecting linguistic data on possible affix combinations and their effects on accentuation and other sound changes in words, with the aim of a comprehensive analysis of the disparate patterns. Ms. Sandy will collect data in Northern California from the remaining first-language speakers of Karuk using elicitation, translation tasks, and free narratives, making high-quality audio recordings of sessions which will form the basis for her analysis. This project will provide empirical data to bear on current theories about the range of morphology-phonology interactions possible in human languages. It will also benefit from collaboration with heritage language teachers and learners by providing linguistic data and training in linguistic methodology for the heritage community, as well as training in language revitalization and pedagogy for a linguistics graduate student.