Born in Germany on September 30, 1899, the linguist Walter Dyk emigrated to Gloversville, N.Y., as a young child. After receiving his bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1928, he pursued graduate work in linguistics under Edward Sapir, receiving his MA at Chicago for "Verb Types in Wishram" (1931) and his dissertation at Yale for "A Grammar of Wishram" (1933).

Following completion of his doctorate, Dyk turned from Chinookan languages to Navajo, doing intensive fieldwork in Arizona in 1934 on a grant from the National Research Council that he had secured with the support of Sapir. His analysis of clan and kinship informed his two most influential works, Son of Old Man Hat (New York, 1938), an "autobiographical" narrative written with his consultant Left Handed, and A Navaho Autobiography (New York, 1948), concerning Old Mexican. Dyk's Notes and Illustrations of Navaho Sex Behavior was similarly influential in its discussion of incest.

Dyk served as a fellow at the Harvard Psychological Clinic and taught at Simmons College and, after 1942, at Brooklyn College. However the progressive effects of Parkinson's disease began increasingly to take effect. Although able to return to Arizona for research in 1947-1948, he was ultimately forced to retire from teaching in 1962. He died in 1972, leaving a wife and two children.

The Walter Dyk Collection consists of 16 folders relating to Dyk's dissertation research on Wishram, 1930-1933, donated to the APS by Dell Hymes in the 1980s (with additions transferred from the Dell H. Hymes Papers in 2019). It includes copies of his masters thesis (Chicago, 1931) and dissertation (Yale, 1933), papers and notes sent to Dell Hymes in the mid-1950s when Hymes was working on the language, including two field notebooks, Hymes' plans for use of these and other materials, and a small but important set of correspondence. The correspondence includes letters to Dyk from Philip Kahclamet, who was Dyk's primary consultant for "Kikct" (which Kahclamet identifies as a broad term for several related varieties), and who later worked with Hymes; from Edward Sapir to Dyk, including a very long and detailed letter commenting on phonology in Dyk's dissertation; and a series of letters to Sapir from Peter McGuff, Sapir's Wishram consultant at Fort Simcoe, Washington, 1906-1908. Sapir described him in Sapir (1909), and Michael Silverstein discussed him in Natural Histories of Discourse (1996), a volume co-edited by Silverstein and Greg Urban.

Physical description

0.5 linear feet

0.5 linear feet

Provenance

Folders 1-13 gift of Dell H. Hymes, 1988. Folders 14-16 transferred from the Dell H. Hymes Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.55) in 2019.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Walter Dyk Collection, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Catalogued rsc 2003. Additional materials moved from the Dell H. Hymes Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.55) Subcollection 2 in 2019.

Related material

Additional material by Walter Dyk is located in the Collection of the American Council of Learned Socities Committee of Native American Languages (Mss.497.3.B63c): Wasco (Pn4a.10) and Wishram (Pn4a.5, Pn 4a6, Pn4a10), and there is Dyk correspondence with Gordonm Marsh (x4a.2).

The Franz Boas Papers (Mss.B.B61) contains a small correspondence with Dyk, and Dyk is mentioned in several letters between Boas and Sapir.

Bibliography

• Dissertations.
• Field notes.
• Masters theses

• Dyk, Walter, 1899-1972
• Haas, Mary R. (Mary Rosamond), 1910-1996
• Hymes, Dell H.
• McGuff, Peter
• Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939
• Voegelin, C. F. (Charles Frederick), 1906-1986
• Wolf, J. G.

• Indians of North America -- Languages
• Wasco language