Malcolm Ross tapes

Abstract

Recordings, mainly of wordlists from Oceanic Austronesian languages, most of them in Papua New Guinea, collected as a basis for comparative-historical work, mostly between 1977 and 1982. Consultants were often students training at the then Goroka Teachers' College to be high-school teachers. Some were high-school students. Sometimes, especially with earlier recordings, all or part of the elicitation session was recorded. In other cases a consultant had provided a written list, and s/he was asked to read it for the tape. There were four wordlists, A, B, C and D, plus a phrase list for collecting grammatical structures. The wordlists contain 430 items and were intended for historical linguistic purposes, but only rarely did I collect anywhere near 430 items. Recordings often do not cover all four lists. The recordings are of varying quality, because the equipment was primitive (a battery-driven portable cassette recorder), recording conditions were sometimes difficult, and storage conditions were not always the best.