UC Publications in Linguistics

When Mary R. Haas died in 1996, she left behind several thousand pages of notes and texts in the Creek (Muskogee) language collected in Oklahoma from 1936 to 1940. The majority of the texts come from the unpublished writings of James H. Hill of Eufaula, an especially knowledgeable elder who composed texts for Dr. Haas using the standard Creek alphabet. Twelve other speakers served as sources for dictated texts.

The Seneca language belongs to the Northern Iroquoian branch of the Iroquoian language family, where its closest relatives are Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. Seneca holds special typological interest because of its high degree of polysynthesis and fusion. It is historically important because of its central role in the Longhouse religion and its place in the pioneering linguistic work of the 19th century missionary Asher Wright. This grammatical description, which includes four extended texts in several genres, is the culminatin of Chafe’s long term study of the language over half a century.

This is a dictionary of Bole, a little documented language of the Chadic family, spoken in northeastern Nigeria. This is one of the most comprehensive dictionaries of any Chadic language other than Hausa. All entries for Bole are fully marked for tone and vowel length. The Bole-English-Hausa section has full definitions and explanations of meaning in English with numerous examples of use. Each entry has a Hausa gloss. The English-Bole section is intended mainly as an index to the Bole-English-Hausa section. There are appendices of flora and fauna terms, cultural terms, pronouns, and comprehensive paradigms of verb forms.

The Chimariko language, now extinct, was spoken in Trinity County, California. This reference grammar, based on data collected by Harrington in the 1920's, represents the most comprehensive description of the language. Written from a functional-typological perspective this work also examines language contact in Northern California showing that grammatical traits are often shared among genetically unrelated languages in geographically contiguous areas.

An extensive dictionary (almost 1800 pages) of the Upriver dialects of Halkomelem, an Amerindian language of B.C.,giving information from almost 80 speakers gathered by the author over a period of 40 years. Entries include names and dates of citation, dialect information, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic information, domain memberships of each alloseme, examples of use in sentences, and much cultural information.

Lahu is an important minority language of Southeast Asia, belonging to the Lolo-Burmese subgroup of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken by over 500,000 people in China, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

This English-Lahu Lexicon (ELL) is a computer-aided but manually edited "reversal" of the author's monumental Lahu-English dictionary (The Dictionary of Lahu, UCPL #111, 1988, xxv + 1436 pp.).

English-Lahu Lexicon contains nearly 5400 head-entries and well over 10,000 carefully arranged subentries. Every Lahu expression is provided with a form-class designation to indicate its grammatical function. Eight useful Appendices (e.g. Plant and Animal Names) round out the volume's 450 pages.

Wappo is an indigenous language, generally regarded as a language isolate, which was once spoken in the Russian River Valley, just north of San Francisco, California. This reference grammar is based on the speech of Laura Fish Somersal, its last fluent speaker, who died in 1990, and represents the most extensive data and grammatical research ever done on this language. The grammar focuses on morphosyntax, particularly nominal, verbal, and clausal structures and clause combining patterns, from a functional/typological perspective.

This volume represents a reconstruction of Proto-Wintun, the parent language of a group of California Indian languages. It includes a grammatical sketch of Proto-Wintun, cognate sets with reconstructions and an index to the reconstructions. The book fulfills a need for in-depth reconstructions of proto-languages for California Indian language families, both for theoretical purposes and deeper comparison with other proto- or pre-languages.


This volume represents a reconstruction of Proto-Wintun, the parent language of a group of California Indian languages. It includes a grammatical sketch of Proto-Wintun, cognate sets with reconstructions and an index to the reconstructions. The book fulfi

In one of the most thorough studies ever prepared of a California language, Hill’s grammar reviews the phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse features of Cupeño, a Uto-Aztecan (takic) language of California. Cupeño exhibits many unusual typological features, including split ergativity, that require linguists to revise our understanding of the development of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages in historical and areal perspective.

This 800-page volume is a clear and readable presentation of the current state of research on the history of the Tibeto-Burman (TB) language family, a typologically diverse group of over 250 languages spoken in Southern China, the Himalayas, NE India, and peninsular Southeast Asia. The TB languages are the only proven relatives of Chinese, with which they form the great Sino-Tibetan family.

The exposition is systematic, treating the reconstruction of all the elements of the TB proto-syllable in turn, including initial consonants (Ch. III), prefixes (Ch. IV), monophthongal and diphthongal rhymes (Ch. V), final nasals (Ch. VII), final stops (Ch. VIII), final liquids (Ch. IX), root-final *-s (Ch. X), suffixes (Ch. XI). Particular attention is paid to variational phenomena at all historical levels (e.g. Ch. XII "Allofamic variation in rhymes").

This Handbook builds on the best previous scholarship, and adds up-to-date material that has accumulated over the past 30 years. It contains reconstructions of over a thousand Tibeto-Burman roots, as well as suggested comparisons with several hundred Chinese etyma. It is liberally indexed and cross-referenced for maximum accessibility and internal consistency.

Emphasis is placed on the special theoretical issues involved in historical reconstruction in the East/Southeast Asian linguistic area.

This volume describes aspects of word- and sentence-formation in Nuuchahnulth (formerly known as Nootka), a language spoken on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Aspects included are polysynthetic word formation, word classes, and clause structure. The morphosyntactic regularities are examined in the context of general structural characteristics of the language in an attempt to contribute to the language an internally and typologically accurate understanding of Nuuchahnulth morphosyntactic structures.

From Latin through the Romance languages, which types of past participle survived? Which older, "irregular" types disappeared and which older, "regular" types proliferated? Which new types of past participles emerged, which proved popular in standard Romance languages, and which exist in a wide range of dialects? The author explores reasons for the expansion or contraction of each type, in each area.

In this dictionary of the Nez Perce language, linguist Haruo Aoki illustrates how each word is used by citing examples from published Nez Perce oral literature. In addition, Aoki retranscribes and incorporates words from earlier publications that are recognized by today's Nez Perce speakers. The dictionary includes an English-Nez Perce index, appendixes listing phonosymbolic words and Nez Perce animal and plant names, and illustrations from Nez Perce life. Originally published in 1994, the Nez Perce Dictionary continues to be a reference and resource for new generations of speakers and scholars.

The Cocopa Dictionary serves as a vital resource in documenting and preserving the Cocopa language, a member of the Yuman family, spoken by communities in southwestern Arizona and northern Mexico. With a heritage rooted in the Colorado River delta region, this language connects its speakers to a rich history of cultural and environmental adaptation. Based on over 21 months of immersive fieldwork from 1963 to 1979, the dictionary captures the intricacies of Cocopa grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, offering a window into a language at risk of disappearing. This work synthesizes both firsthand data and historical records, providing a comprehensive linguistic resource that preserves the voices and knowledge of the Cocopa people for future generations.

Designed for linguists, educators, and those invested in indigenous language preservation, the Cocopa Dictionary provides detailed grammatical analyses, including noun inflections, verb constructions, and sentence structures. It highlights the dynamic nature of the language, noting generational variations in speech patterns while addressing its synthetic and agglutinative morphology. In addition to linguistic data, the dictionary includes cultural insights, connecting words and expressions to their social and historical contexts. By meticulously recording the language's complexity and resilience, this work not only celebrates the Cocopa people's linguistic heritage but also serves as a critical tool for revitalization efforts, ensuring that this invaluable piece of human history endures.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

The Lahu are a hill-dwelling Tibeto-Burman people whose language reflects the influence of Thai and Chinese, yet retains a unique beauty and expressive power of its own. The Dictionary of Lahu is one of the most exhaustive and sophisticated dictionaries yet produced for a Southeast Asian language. Together with the author's The Grammar of Lahu (UCPL vol. 75, 1973/1982), it places Lahu among the best documented minority languages of the world.


The Lahu are a hill-dwelling Tibeto-Burman people whose language reflects the influence of Thai and Chinese, yet retains a unique beauty and expressive power of its own. The Dictionary of Lahu is one of the most exhaustive and sophisticated dictionaries y

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.