Main Links
Home
ANLC Website
Alaska's Digital Archives
AK Polar Regions Archives
Collection Finding Aids
Aleut
Bergsland
Central Alaskan Yup'ik
Comparative Eskimo-Aleut Language Collection
Deg Xinag
Dena’ina
Han
Holikachuk
Inupiaq
Tanacross
Gwich’in
Tanana
Upper Tanana
Upper Kuskokwim
Search Collections
  |
 |
|
|
GUIDE TO THE CENTRAL ALASKAN YUP’IK LANGUAGE COLLECTION (1778--2006)
Alaska Native Language Archives
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Box 757680
Fairbanks, AK 99775
INFORMATION FOR RESEARCHERS
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
COLLECTION ORGANIZATION
COLLECTION SUMMARY:
Title: Central Alaskan Yup’ik Language Collection.
Extent: 20 manuscript boxes, 2 8x24 boxes, 12 linear feet of unprocessed materials, covering 30 linear feet.
Repository Location:
Alaska Native Language Archive, 406 Brooks Building, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Please consult with the Alaska Native Language Center for information regarding the specific location of materials within the archive.
Forms of Material: The collection includes both original and photocopied manuscript and typescript documents comprised of academic research papers; fieldnotes, particularly pertaining to Central Alaskan Yup’ik place names, phonology, and verb forms; wordlists; ethnographic, religious, and traditional texts; and educational materials.
Languages: Collection languages are primarily Central Alaskan Yup’ik and English, although some materials are in Russian. Some documents offers Central Alaskan Yup’ik words in comparison to other Eskimo languages in Alaska.
Abstract: All materials in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik collection are either written in or about the Central Alaskan Yup’ik language. The earliest documents date from the late 1800s. Materials prior to the 1970s largely relate to ethnographic accounts, wordlists, and, especially in the 1900s, religious texts by Russian Orthodox, Jesuit Catholic, and Moravian missionaries. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1970s and includes a large number of educational materials such as literacy manuals and children’s primers and stories in the various Central Alaskan Yup’ik dialects. Also significant are the materials relating to the lexical and grammatical work of Steven A. Jacobson, Osahito Miyaoka, and E. Irene Reed. Traditional texts are also well represented. Some of the collection consists of photocopied material representing original material held by other repositories, and certain reproduction and use restriction apply. INFORMATION FOR RESEARCHERS:
Access: Collection access is permitted during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 4:30, and further by appointment throughout the year.
Preferred Citation: Please list author, date, and title of publication, whether item is a photocopy or original, location of original document if different than ANLC, then note folder title, Central Alaskan Yup’ik Language Collection, Alaska Native Language Center Archive, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Restrictions: Visitors to the collection may copy non-restricted items, though lack of clerical support prohibits ANLC from processing photocopy requests online or by mail at this time. In addition, many items in the collection are restricted in their use by their authors or by the repositories from which we obtained our copies, and may not be further copied here without permission of the original repositories.
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION:
Acquisition Information: Dr. Michael Krauss of the Alaska Native Language Center began collecting materials now in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik collection when he arrived at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1960. Krauss made great effort to assemble a near-comprehensive collection of primary and secondary source material, in the form of wordlists, fieldnotes, manuscript texts, journal articles, and previously published articles on the language. The staff of the Alaska Native Language Center have also contributed primary material to the collection through their fieldnotes, class lectures and notes, and academic research papers; especially significant contributions have been made by E. Irene Reed and Steven A. Jacobson. In addition, many of the educational materials were provided by local school districts and by the national Bilingual Materials Development Center and by the Alaska State Operated Schools in Anchorage.
Processing History: The first major organization of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Collection occurred in the late 1970s and led to an annotated catalogue based on folder titles. This system has been retained, and recent work (2002-2006) has concentrated on document preservation, the development of an electronic database, and the creation of a finding aid.
Acknowledgements: Some of the photocopies obtained by Krauss were made from originals held in other repositories, including the Alaska and Polar Regions Collection, Elmer Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska.
Funding: The National Endowment for the Humanities (grant # PA-50139-03) funded collection processing and finding aid development.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Language Information: Central Alaskan Yup'ik consists of five distinct dialects spoken from the Seward Peninsula south to Norton Sound: General Central Yup'ik (the main dialect); Norton Sound, Hooper Bay-Chevak, Nunivak, and Egegik. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects, the name for the language and the people is "Cup'ik" (pronounced Chup-pik). Central Alaskan Yup’ik is the largest of Alaska’s Native languages: 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 current orthography for Central Alaskan Yup’ik was developed by Irene Reed and others at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the 1960s; this work led to Alaska’s first school bilingual programs in th four Yup’ik villages in the early 1970s. Since then, a wide variety of educational and linguistic materials have been created in Central Alaskan Yup’ik.
Scope and Content Note: The scope of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik language collection is quite broad in that it strives to include all material written or published in or about the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Language. Dr. Michael Krauss made an effort to collect all things Central Alaskan Yup’ik, and has developed a nearly comprehensive collection. Collection development has slowed in the late 1990s, and the later part of the collection is currently not comprehensive. Many items in the collection owe their presence to contributions by Steven Jacobson and Irene Reed of the Alaska Native Language Center.
The Alaska Native Language Center Central Alaskan Yup’ik manuscript holdings contain approximately 700 items dating between 1778 and 2006. There is only one wordlist from 1778 from Cook’s expedition; thereafter, there is a gap of more than 40 years before the next wordlists from Russian expeditions. There are more records from the second half of the 19th century, largely from expedition or ethnographic reports (e.g. Nelson) or from the early American religious missions of the Catholic and Moravian churches in Alaska; linguistic material is mostly in the form of wordlists throughout this period, although there are some grammatical notes as well. In some cases, where Central Alaskan Yup’ik is secondary to the work, only the relevant pages of a work have been photocopied and included in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik collection.
From the 1900s to about the early 1960s, many of the materials are religious in nature, such as the translation of the Gospels, prayers, and the liturgy into various Central Alaskan Yup’ik dialects. The production of religious works continues to this day, as evidenced by works such as the Moravian Christmas Pagent by Mary Gregory in 1985. The period from the 1960s on, however, shows a flowering of work on educational materials and on linguistic documentation, in the form of dictionaries (e.g. Jacobson’s Yupik Eskimo Dictionary), grammars and grammatical sketches (e.g. Jacobson’s Practical Grammar of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo Language, and Miyaoka’s Preliminaries to a Grammar of Central Alaskan Yup’ik), and more specific linguistic studies (e.g. Yupik Eskimo Prosodic Systems, ed. by Krauss). There are also significant numbers of items relating to the development of orthography and literacy in Central Alaskan Yup’ik, including early works relating to Helper Neck’s independent orthography (late 19th century), as well as the more recent efforts to create a standard orthography (1960s).
The bulk of the collection dates from the mid-1960s to the present; well over half of the items are educational materials, including literacy manuals, children’s primers and stories in the various Central Alaskan Yup’ik dialects, and workshop or classroom notes. Central Alaskan Yup’ik has been taught at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as well as at its rural branch in Bethel, and some of the class materials are found in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik collection. There is also significant fieldwork on the lexicon, particularly relating to efforts to produce an Central Alaskan Yup’ik dictionary (e.g. Jacobson), and to produce grammars and grammatical sketches (e.g. Jacobson, Miyaoka, Reed, and others). Traditional texts are also well represented, both in English and Central Alaskan Yup’ik; notable texts include traditional narratives told by Anna Jacobson, and the first novel in the language, also by Anna Jacobson.
COLLECTION ORGANIZATION:
The Central Alaskan Yup’ik Language Collection adheres to the organizational schema developed and applied to each language within the Alaska Native Language Archives by Michael Krauss and Mary Jane McGary in the late 1970s. It involves a system of call numbers (folder numbers) aimed at arranging items chronologically by author. The files are generally organized by author, and thereunder by date of ‘publication’ or ‘work’. In files with multiple authors, the first or earliest author is used. ‘Authorship’ should be interpreted loosely to include not only author in the traditional sense, but also collector, translator, transcriber, speaker, editor, compiler, or informant; these roles are generally indicated. The call number system codes the language series, author, and date. A brief explanation of the call number system follows:
The call number first notes the language, Central Alaskan Yup’ik, with the two-letter code “CY” (for Central Yup’ik). Because of the large number of school books, many of which are duplicated in the different dialects by the same authors, a recent convention has been to indicate this with (SCH) following the two-letter language code: “CY(SCH)” refers to a schoolbook in Central Alaskan Yup’ik. Another recent convention is the use of codes in parentheses after the two-letter language code to differentiate between the large numbers of religious items; thus, “CY(MOR)” stands for Moravian materials in Central Alaskan Yup’ik; similarly, (CAT) is used for Catholic materials.
The second element of the call number is a three-digit number consisting of the last three digits of the year of the author’s first known work on or in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik language. When an item has more than one author, the date is that of the first-named author.
The third element of the call number is the first letter of the author’s surname, or several letters in the case of co-authors. For example, H refers to Henkelman, and HV refers to Henkelman and Vitt. Note that this is a liberal use of the word “author.” In many cases it is actually referring to a collector, translator, transcriber, speaker, editor, compiler, or informant. Under certain circumstances, our assignment of authorship differs from that of the item itself, and refers to the person chiefly responsible in collecting, compiling, or editing the material. The same is true of wordlists collected by one person then published by another as part of a larger work. The role of the “author” is described in parentheses following his or her name, and where appropriate, additional “authors” are noted in the item description.
The fourth element of the call number gives the date of the item. The given date on the published item is used as the item date. When an item includes several editions, translations, or reprinting of a single item, the date of the specific edition in the archive is listed. In some cases, and academic year date appears on educational publications, such as 78/79; here the first year has been used as an item date. In the dating of unpublished materials, if a date appears on the item, it is used as the publication date, except in rare cases where we have concrete knowledge that the date is in error. Undated items have been assigned dates based on our knowledge of the authors work. Some of theses dates are quite approximate and this is usually noted in the description. If multiple items were published in the same year, they are distinguished by letters of the alphabet following the date, e.g. “1973a”, “1973b”.
Some examples:
CY(MOR)985HV1985 reads as an item dealing with the Moravian Church, by Henkelman and Vitt; Henkelman began working on the Central Alaskan Yup’ik language in 1985. CY(CAT)892B1895b reads as the second of at least two items from 1895 dealing with the Catholic Church by Francis Barnum; Barnum began working on Central Alaskan Yup’ik in 1892.
List of Authors and Contributors
Subject List
Container List (This is the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Holdings Report derived from the database)
To date the data-entry of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik holdings is incomplete; some materials, particularly educational materials, are in the searchable database, but many have not yet been entered.
|
|
|
|
|
