Huehuetla Tepehua Language Documentation Collection

Colección de Documentación Lingüística del Tepehua de Huehuetla

Object Details

Collection LanguageTepehua, Huehuetla
Language PIDailla:119527
Title [Indigenous]
Language of Indigenous Title
TitleHuehuetla Tepehua Language Documentation Collection
Country(ies)Mexico
Collector(s)Kung, Susan Smythe
Depositor(s)Kung, Susan Smythe
Project/Collector Website
Description [Indigenous]
Language of Indigenous Description
DescriptionHuehuetla Tepehua is an endangered language spoken in Huehuetla, Hidalgo, Mexico. It belongs to the Totonac-Tepehua language family. In 2007, there were approximately 1500 fluent and semi-fluent speakers. Children were not learning the language.

While a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, Susan Smythe Kung started working on Huehuetla Tepehua in June 1999, as part of Terrence Kaufman's Project for the Documentation of the Languages of MesoAmerica (PDLMA). A PDLMA field season consisted of 8 weeks of fieldwork during June, July and August. Kung continued documentation work on Huehuetla Tepehua during two more field summers for the PDLMA (2000 and 2005). Additionally, she spent 10 months in Huehuetla, Hidalgo, from September 2000 through June 2001 with funding from a Fulbright Institute of International Education fellowship and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant (BCS-0078453, Anthony C. Woodbury, Principal Investigator). Kung finished her dissertation, "A descriptive grammar of Huehuetla Tepephua", in 2007, and this manuscript won the Mary R. Haas Book Award from the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) in 2008. Kung returned to the field in June and July 2008 and November 2011 to conduct cognitive linguistic experiments about spatial language in Tepehua (MesoSpace Project, NSF BCS-0723694, Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Principal Investigator).

The audio and video recordings in this collection come from all of these different field trips and represent a range of discourse genres. Most of the audio recordings are accompanied by audio recordings of Spanish free translations or summaries. Additionally, the collection contains some transcriptions, translations, analysis and photographs. Kung’s doctoral dissertation is included.
References