This repository contains linguistic texts in Nuuchahnulth, a language of the Wakashan language family, spoken in the Pacific Northwest. These texts are digitally-searchable versions of those prepared by Toshihide Nakayama (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), and published as volumes A2-027 and A2-028 of the series Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim. The texts were dictated by George Louie and Caroline Little to Toshihide Nakayama, who then transcribed, analyzed, and prepared the edited versions.
- Attribution
- Reporting Typos & Issues
- Corpus Statistics
- Text Formats
- Sounds of Nuuchahnulth
- Abbreviations
- Converting the Corpus
If you would like to use the data in the repository for research, please cite the following sources, depending on the text:
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Nakayama, Toshihide (ed.). 2003. Caroline Little's Nuu-chah-nulth (Ahousaht) texts with grammatical analysis (Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim A2-027). Kyoto: Nakanishi Printing Co.
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Nakayama, Toshihide (ed.). 2003. George Louie's Nuu-chah-nulth (Ahousaht) texts with grammatical analysis (Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim A2-028). Kyoto: Nakanishi Printing Co.
You may also use the stable DOI made available through Zenodo to cite this online version of the corpus:
For other uses of this data, please contact Toshihide Nakayama.
To report a typo or other problem, open an issue on GitHub.
| Statistic | Value |
|---|---|
| Speakers | 2 |
| Texts | 24 |
| Utterances | 2,081 |
| Tokens | 8,366 |
| Wordforms | 4,216 |
| Stems | 2,547 |
| Roots | 1,313 |
The texts are available in three formats:
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The "raw" versions of the texts, in a practical writing system used for the purpose of quickly typing in the data. These versions are used to produce the other versions of the texts. These versions are located in the folder
texts/raw. -
An interlinear gloss format (IGL) — a format used by linguists to represent data in a way that can be read and understood by anyone. Each document itself follows a format called scription, which enforces consistency in the structure of the text, making it computationally parseable. These versions are located in the folder
texts/interlinear.At the top of each text is a header (between the two sets of dashes
---), which provides the title in English (and sometimes Nuuchahnulth), the abbreviation, and the unique ID for each text.Beneath the header are utterances (sentences) in the text. Each utterance is separated from the next by a blank line.
Each utterance has 5 lines, which contain the following kinds of information:
- Utterance Number: The number of the utterance within the text.
- Transcript: A transcription of each utterance using the Nuuchahnulth writing system, along with punctuation.
- Morphemes: A list of each morpheme (meaningful part) of each word, where morphemes are separated by hyphens.
- Glosses: A short gloss (abbreviation) indicating the meaning of each morpheme in the word, separated by hyphens. See the Abbreviations section below.
- Literal Translations: Literal translations of each word.
- Free Translations: A free (loose) translation for the utterance.
For more information about the scription format, visit https://scription.digitallinguistics.io.
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A JSON version, formatted according to the Data Format for Digital Linguistics (DaFoDiL). This version of the corpus is most useful for programmatically interacting with the texts. See the DaFoDiL page for more information about how this data is formatted.
The following table shows the consonant sounds of Nuuchahnulth, arranged by place and manner of articulation in accordance with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
| Manner | Labial | Apical | Alveolar | Lateral | Palatal | Velar | Labio-Velar | Uvular | Labio-Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | p | t | c | ƛ | č | k | kʷ | q | qʷ | ʕ | ʔ |
| Ejectives | p̓ | t̓ | c̓ | ƛ̓ | č̓ | k̓ | k̓ʷ | (q̓ʷ) | |||
| Fricatives | s | ɬ | š | x | xʷ | x̣ | ḥ | h | |||
| Resonants | m | n | y | w | |||||||
| Glottal Resonants | m̓ | n̓ | y̓ | w̓ |
Ahousaht Nuuchahnulth has three vowels: /i, a, u/, each of which may be long (/Vː/), short, or variable-length (/V·/).
Certain suffixes in Nuuchahnulth change the sounds that precede them:
- Hardening suffixes change stops, affricates, and resonants into their glottalized counterparts, and fricatives into /w̓/ or /y̓/ depending on whether the consonant is rounded. Hardening suffixes are indicated by ⟨ʼ⟩.
- Softening suffixes change a preceding fricative into /w/ or /y/ depending on whether the consonant is rounded. Softening suffixes are indicated by ⟨ʽ⟩.
The following abbreviations are used in the texts.
| Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|---|
| CAUS | causative |
| COND | conditional mood |
| CONT | continuative aspect |
| DEF | definite |
| DIM | diminutive |
| DISTR | distributive |
| DUB | dubitative mood |
| DUP | CV reduplication |
| DUP# | syllable reduplication |
| DUPCV | CV reduplication |
| DUR | durative aspect |
| EXP | expression that cannot be translated |
| FIN(ITE) | finite event |
| FUT | future |
| FUT.IMP | future imperative |
| GRAD | graduative aspect |
| IMP | imperative |
| INC | inceptive aspect |
| INC.CAUS | inceptive causative |
| IND | indicative mood |
| INDF | indefinite mood |
| INF | inferential mood |
| INTER | interrogative |
| INTJ | interjection |
| IT | iterative aspect |
| IT.INC | iterative inceptive aspect |
| IT.PL | iterative plural |
| LOC | location |
| MOM | momentaneous |
| MOMCAUS | momentaneous causative |
| PL | plural |
| POSS | possessive |
| PURP | purposive |
| QUOT | quotative |
| REL | relative mood |
| REL.DUB | relative dubitative mood |
| REP | repetitive aspect |
| SG | singular |
| SHIFT | perspective shifting |
| SIM | simultaneous (‘while doing…’) |
| SPOR | sporadic aspect |
| SUB | subordinate mood |
To run the scripts that convert the corpus for yourself, you will need to 1) install Node.js, 2) clone this repository to your computer, 3) install the necessary scripts by running npm install from the command line in the folder for the repository, and 4) then run the command npm build from the command line in the folder for this repository.
You can also run just the transliteration step (npm run transliterate) or the conversion step (npm run convert).
I've also written a find-and-replace script (scripts/findAndReplace.js), which allows the user to run searches on the corpus or update the JSON files in the corpus. See the documentation on how to use this function in the findAndReplace.js file. An example of how to use this function can be seen in scripts/getCorpusStats.js, which calculates the statistics for the corpus.