This data set contains the scans of three text books that form the Datooga corpus compiled by Paul Berger, housed at the “Abteilung für Afrikanistik und Äthiopistik” of the "Asien-Afrika-Institut" of the University of Hamburg. It comprises texts plus supplementary elicitations in the Gisamjanga variety, recorded and translated in Mbulu and Dongobesh (Manyara Region of Northern Tanzania) during the period from May 1935 to February 1936 where Paul Berger stayed after his separation from the German East Africa expedition 1934-36 under Ludwig Kohl-Larsen whom he had accompanied as linguistic adviser. The corpus includes a total of 47 texts exceeding 500 pages of folio size in total, representing a wide range of topics relevant to the study of Datooga oral literature and the reconstruction of the history of the Tanzanian Rift Valley, roughly falling into the following categories: 15 fictional narratives, 15 narratives of historical and mythical content, 10 auto-ethnographic and procedural texts and 7 songs. All texts are supplemented by elicited grammatical paradigms and sentences plus ethnographic field notes.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (KI 529/12-1)