About R. David Zorc
An outstanding scholar whose work has ranged from Armenian to Zulu, R. David Zorc is best known for his research in Austronesian historical linguistics, and particularly in comparative studies of the languages of the Philippines. | ||||
Formerly Program Manager at the Language Research Center of Dunwoody Press, Zorc was honored for his contributions to linguistics in the Philippines with the Distinguished Professorial Chair in Linguistics and Language Education for 2005. He is now retired, and is working on the reconstruction of proto-Philippino. | ||||
The Zorc Papers are the record of Zorc's fieldwork in the period August 1971 - July 1972.
Never published, they are the basis of his 1975 Cornell University doctoral dissertation,
produced in slightly revised form as The Bisayan Dialects of the Philippines:
Subgrouping and Reconstruction (C-44, 1977 Pacific Linguistics, Canberra).
About the data The materials presented here are the complete contents of 58 envelopes provided by Zorc. In addition to his own hand-written field notes, they contain other relevant publications and notes, as well as occasional illustrations. Typical envelope contents are described below. | ||||
Proto-Austronesian Worksheet This worksheet includes some 500 English items (to be used for elicitation) and proposed Austronesian reconstructions (to aid the field worker in distinguishing cognates from loans). Frequently multiple English items from the same semantic group (allowing for historical shift, e.g. cook, roast, ready, ripe) are provided, as well as addtional proto-level items, including proto-Malay-Polynesian, proto-Philippine, and proto-Tagalic. Sheets include a variety of details about the language, location, and informant's name, age, sex, occupation, and primary, secondary, and tertiary language ability. Each set ends with tables of phonetic/phonemic data. | ||||
Proto-Philippine Worksheet This contains 278 items, split into lists that elicit interrogatives, basic deictics, basic grammar, focus patterns, pronoun forms, markers, discourse particles, numerals and enumeratives, comparisons with adjectives, verbal relations, general phrases and greetings, and (items 172-278) additional vocabulary. | ||||
Expanded Philippine Word List The is a list of 372 items. A blank sample may be found under Giangan. | ||||
Linguistic Checklist These begin with a description of the language, location, and informant, a series of specific language questions (e.g. number of voices, types of markers), then 350 items in separate lists of vocabulary of roots, pronouns and interrogatives, discourse particles, and focus constructions. | ||||
Swadesh List These are 205-item lists that have been cross-indexed to the Proto-Austronesian list of 500 terms. | ||||
Handwritten Notes These may include tables of verb forms, sentence forms, additional vocabulary, mutual intelligibility, transcribed stories, discourse particles, | ||||
Peace Corps Introduction These very useful booklets contain phonological and orthographic sketches, and a combination of vocabulary, expressions, and conversational sentences. | ||||
Seven Group Wordlist This list, found only in the Kagayan materials, contains 212 items. | ||||
Other Materials
A variety of other materials, including articles, published and unpublished
papers and drafts, illustrations, language learning materials, and notes are also included.
Original Names The original names as written on the folders are listed below.
About this site This site is part of CRCL's ongoing effort to preserve and present linguistic source materials. | ||||
All materials were scanned at 600 DPI color and saved in non-lossy PNG format. Blank pages were removed, pages were rotated as necessary, and informal section markers inserted for indexing. No attempt was made to enhance or color-correct the original scans. In many cases the original mimeographed blue has faded, but there are usually many similar sets available for comparison. Hand-written ink quality is good throughout. This site provides both DjVu and PDF renditions, but full-resolution images can be provided for research purposes if necessary. | ||||
The free DjVu plugin can be found at djvu.org. |