Hocak Teaching Materials: Elements of Grammar: Learner's Dictionary

The most comprehensive dictionary of the Hocak language (formerly known as Winncbago) to date, this bidirectional Hocak-English/English-Hocak dictionary contains approximately 4,000 entries. Hocak is a highly endangered North American Indian language spoken by less than two hundred people in different parts of Wisconsin and Nebraska. This dictionary and volume 2 of the Hocak Teaching Materials are the outcome of a large project on the documentation of the Hocak language, which was carried out in close cooperation with the Hocak Language Division, a tribal institution for the stabilization and revitalization of the Hocak language in Mauston, Wisconsin.

The volume contains a lengthy introduction to the basics of the phonology, orthography, and morphology of the Hocak language, written in a learner-friendly, easy-to-access style, explaining linguistic terms so that it can be used by nonlinguists. The individual lexical entries of the words are organized according to the standards of modern lexicography, containing all necessary phonetic, grammatical, and semantic information for the use of the Hocak words. In addition, every word is provided with about three Hocak example sentences in order to demonstrate the typical use of the words in different contexts. Also of interest are a frequency list of all words in the dictionary counted on the basis of a large corpus of Hocak texts, and a thesaurus of all Hocak words in the dictionary.

A valuable source of information on the Hocak language and culture, this work will appeal to linguists in general, and specialists in Native American languages, as well as anthropologists and all learners of the Hocak language.

Johannes Helmbrecht is Chair of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Christian Lehmann is Chair of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Erfurt, Germany.