Linguistics
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Abstract
0001. Berman, J. GEORGE HUNT AND THE KWAK'WALA TEXTS. Anthropological Linguistics. 1994, 36(4):483-514. The vast majority of the Kwak'wala-language texts published by Franz Boas were composed by George Hunt. The child of a British father and a Tlingit mother, Hunt was born an outsider to the Fort Rupert, British Columbia, native community. His Kwak'wala contains errors, and some modem Kwak'wala speakers cannot understand it. These facts raise questions about the reliability of Hunt's materials. However, investigation into Hunt's family, personal, and linguistic history, and into matters of style and language change, shows that despite his foreign origins Hunt became a cultural expert and an important figure in Kwakwaka'wakw society, and he spoke Kwak'wala fluently and for the most part correctly.