A Chemehuevi Language Archive:

1970s Fieldwork and Analysis by Margaret L. Press

In the early 1970s, Margaret L. Press was a graduate student in Linguistics at UCLA. Her Ph.D. thesis was a study of the Chemehuevi language, based on her own field work with native Chemehuevi speakers and informed by the then-new Chomskian linguistic principles. Margaret's principal Chemehuevi speaker was Mary Hanks Molino, who is pictured on this page. Additional speakers included Pearl Eddy, Moses Hanks, Gertrude Leivas, and Eileen Waco White. Margaret also benefitted from interactions with Georgia Laird Culp and Carobeth Laird. She received her Ph.D. in 1974.

A scan of Margaret's out-of-print monograph, Chemehuevi: A Grammar and Lexicon, is available here (or click on the cover image) as a 1.5 MB PDF file.

Margaret's complete Ph.D. dissertation, on which the monograph is based, but including additional details, is available here as a 4.0 MB PDF file.

 

Margaret's complete field notes, in two bound notebooks, have been scanned, and can be viewed as PDF files:

Vol. 1, pp. 1-30 Vol. 2, pp. 1-50
Vol. 1, pp. 31-52 Vol. 2, pp. 51-100
Vol. 1, pp. 53-86 Vol. 2, pp. 101-150
Vol. 1, pp. 87-126 Vol. 2, pp. 151-248
Vol. 1, pp. 127-172 Vol. 2, pp. 249-300
Vol. 1, pp. 173-222
Vol. 1, pp. 223-262
Vol. 1, pp. 263-300

Margaret recorded only a small fraction of her field work on audio tape. Surviving audio recordings are archived here as .mpg files. (Click on the speaker icon to listen, or right-click to save the file to disk.)

Photo album from 1973-1974: (Click on the small images for high resolution versions.)








  
Mary Hanks Molino, Hanks Village, AZ, 7 August 1973:
  • her biography (in Chemehuevi) part 1 (10:41)
  • her biography (in Chemehuevi) part 2 (6:48)
Mary Hanks Molino, Hanks Village, AZ, 13 August 1974:
  • interview part 1 (10:17)
  • interview part 2 (16:00)
  • interview part 3 (5:25)
  • interview part 4 (15:12)
Mary Hanks Molino, Hanks Village, AZ, 6 August 1973:
  • verbs A-G (10:24)
  • verbs G-S (9:59)
  • verbs S-Z (4:49)
  • nouns A-D (3:11)
  • nouns D-H (3:48)
  • nouns H-Z (7:36)
Pearl Eddy, 14 August 1974:
  • interview part 1 (18:59)
  • interview part 2 (12:50)

Some friends have asked for links to the Billie Kallick Press memorial pages: