College of Fine Arts and Communications

Tim Thornes, assistant professor of linguistics in the Department of Writing, spent six weeks teaching and participating as part of the Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation (InField) this past summer at the University of Oregon in Eugene. http://logos.uoregon.edu/infield2010/home/index.php. He co-taught two workshops–Life in the Field and Blurring the Lines–and conducted an intensive month-long Field Training session involving members of three different Northern Paiute communities.  Northern Paiute is an endangered Native North American language with fewer than 400 speakers. He was also awarded a grant from the Sven and Astrid Liljeblad Foundation to conduct archival research at the University of Nevada at Reno.  Material at the archive includes audio recordings and handwritten notes on all known varieties of the Northern Paiute language, gathered over the past several decades.