Historical information: Sydney M. Lamb is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Yale University (1951) and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley (1957). His doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the Mono language based on fieldwork conducted around North Fork, California in the summers of 1953 and 1954. He was a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958-1964 and Yale University from 1968-1977. He left academia to work in the computer industry from 1977-1981, but subsequently joined the faculty of the Department of Linguistics at Rice University, where he has spent the remainder of his academic career.
Scope and content: The Papers document Lamb's research on Indian languages of California and surrounding areas from 1953-1955. One microfilm reel in the collection also includes copies of Victor Golla's notebooks from his fieldwork on Hupa at Hoopa Valley in the summer of 1963; for more details, see details under the Victor Golla Papers on the Hupa Language.
Repository: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Preferred citation: Lucy Kinsman and Sydney M. Lamb. Sydney M. Lamb Papers on California Indian Languages, SCL Lamb, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley, http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2JW8BTD
Associated materials: Audio recordings associated with the Papers are in the Berkeley Language Center, Berkeley, California (LA 31, LA 60, LA 80, LA 235, LA 236).
Description: Field notebook labeled "M" containing transcriptions of songs in Numic languages and words, phrases, and sentences in Mono (North Fork dialect).
Repository: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Preferred citation: [Numic field notes], Lamb.003.013, in "Sydney M. Lamb Papers on California Indian Languages", Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley, http://cla.berkeley.edu/item/14749
Description: Field notebook labeled "V" containing words and phrases from Salinan, Mono (North Fork and possibly other dialects), and Northern Paiute (Honey Lake variety).
Repository: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Preferred citation: [Salinan and Numic field notes], Lamb.003.022, in "Sydney M. Lamb Papers on California Indian Languages", Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley, http://cla.berkeley.edu/item/14758
We acknowledge with respect the Ohlone people on whose traditional, ancestral, and unceded land we work and whose historical relationships with that land continue to this day.