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« UMMM This Saturday | Main | New Computational Linguistics Master's Program at Brandeis University»
Roger Higgins Colloquium
F. Roger Higgins
UMass Amherst (retired)
Philology's Revenge: Working on John Eliot's Bible, an Introduction
Friday, November 21, 2008, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26
Party after at Barbara Partee's house
Abstract
Philology is to be understood here as the analysis of texts with a view to answering questions about language. After introducing the major known participants, viz., John Eliot (1604-1690) and the language contemporaneously called "Massachuset(t)" or simply "Indian", I sketch the approach that I have taken in producing an e-text version of, principally, the translation of the (protestant) bible that is attributed to him.
The main focus is then on the nature of the material and what its study demands, as far as possible on the basis of copies of original documents. A brief look at the pages on his writing system, as described in his grammar (1666), introduces typical problems of interpretation, and is followed by a slightly more detailed discussion of material that perhaps leads one to certain inferences about the quality of the translation, a matter of considerable controversy at the time. (The printing of the bible was very expensive and the sponsors had to be convinced.) If time permits, some very tentative inferences will follow or be interspersed about the ways in which the translation may have been carried out.
An ulterior motive of the talk may be taken, according to taste, as a way of discouraging members of the audience from considering the undertaking of similar work, or perhaps even, according to temperament, as encouragement, particularly in the digitalization of extant texts and other material.