Documentation of the Mayoruna languages of western Amazonia: A compilation of recordings of oral history narratives and other speech genres

Dr David Fleck, University of Oregon

Project Details:

Major Documentation Project. Duration: 2010-2013. £100,078

Project Summary:

Of the five extant languages in the Mayoruna branch of the Panoan family, only Matses and Matis have been described, but even for these no archived recordings or text databases are available. Kulina, Demushbo and Chankueshbo are spoken by people who the Matses captured 45-70 years ago. I propose to record, transcribe, and translate a total of 165 hours of Matses, Kulina, Chankueshbo and Demushbo speech (2500, 30, 2 and 1 speakers, respectively; Amazonian Peru and Brazil, 73°9'W, 5°17'S), of which 30% will be parsed and annotated, to be archived and to produce a book and dictionary for the Matses.