Kouros Falati Humanities and Social Science
The Essive Suffix of Karuk
Karuk is an endangered language indigenous to Northern California. One of its most interesting features is its large variety of verbal prefixes and suffixes, expressing everything from person and tense to the direction of motion relative to the Klamath River. For my summer research project, I will be focusing on just one suffix, the essive, which roughly provides the meaning of being in a certain condition. For example, when applied to the verb imus, to see, the result is imus-ahi, to look like. I plan to take a more modern and typological approach to better understand the morphosyntax and semantics of the suffix. I hope to contribute not only to the academic understanding of the language but also to current revitalization efforts of this fascinating language.
Message To Sponsor
I am thrilled to have been chosen for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. This will allow me to gain invaluable independent research experience this summer and will prepare me for writing an honors thesis this upcoming school year as well as for graduate school. I can't thank SURF enough for this opportunity, along with my faculty mentor and everybody else involved with the Karuk language in Berkeley.