This Online Phrasicon contains phrases and sentences from the Northern Pomo language. Each phrasicon entry contains a sound file of the phrase. Most entries are spoken by fluent speakers Edna Campbell Guerrero and Elenor Stevenson Gonzales. For more on the language, click here. There are currently 6790 entries in the phrasicon.
How to use
There are three ways to look for words in the phrasicon:
One way is by selecting an English letter (A-Z) category (located under ‘English Word Lookup’) which shows all the English words that begin with that letter. These are the words that appear as part of the translation or gloss of the phrases and sentences in the phrasicon. Clicking on a word will bring you to a page with entries containing that English word.
You can also select a Northern Pomo letter (ʔ-Y) category (located under ‘Northern Pomo Word Lookup’) which shows all the Northern Pomo words that begin with that letter. Notice that there are no letters that correspond to vowels in the Northern Pomo letter category. This is because in Northern Pomo, all words that seem to begin with a vowel, actually begin with ʔ. Therefore, selecting ʔ will bring you to a page with words where the following letter (after ʔ) is a vowel. The words that that show up on the page appear as part of a phrase in the phrasicon. Clicking on a word will bring you to a new page with entries containing that Northern Pomo word.
Finally, you can enter a word or phrase, in the search bar and click submit. The search bar allows you to search either English or Northern Pomo words or phrases. If you want to search for Northern Pomo, make sure to click on the dropdown menu located to the left of the search bar, and select Northern Pomo.
Each phrasicon entry consists of four layers. The first layer contains the Northern Pomo phrase. In the example provided, the first layer contains bitishna:m, which means 'the body lice'. The second layer then breaks up each word into morphemes. Notice that bitishna:m is presented as a single word. If you look in the dictionary for 'body lice', you will find bitish, but not bitishna:m. This is because bitishna:m consists of two morphemes - bitish and -na:m. See how the morpheme -na:m contains a hyphen. This means that this morpheme is attached to the end of the previous morpheme. Well, what do bitish and -na:m mean? That's the next layer! The third layer presents glosses that explains what each morpheme means. The gloss for bitish is 'body lice', and the gloss for -na:m is 'the'. The fourth layer provides an English translation.
For some phrasicon entries, you will see some morphemes appear as links. In the example above, the morpheme bitish is a green link. Clicking on this link will take you to the dictionary, where you can learn more about the word, and hear a speaker say the word in isolation. To return to the phrasicon from the dictionary, just click on the link in the upper righthand corner.
About the material
These materials include voice recordings of the late Edna Campbell Guerrero and Elenor Stevenson Gonzales, both native speakers of Northern Pomo. These materials would not exist without their patience, dedication, and hard work. The recordings were made by Catherine O'Connor between 1979 and 2005. This phrasicon has been made possible by the diligence of Elodie Paquette, Ethan Rimdzius, and Edwin Ko.
The current project is supported in part by a grant from the NEH/NSF Documenting Endangered Languages program (FN-50107-12) to Catherine O'Connor, which is gratefully acknowledged. Views expressed in this material are the work of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation or the National Endowment for the Humanities. This material may not be sold and no charges may be made for its use.
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