Re: Chemehuevi orthography (was: Re: non-English WEB sites)

On Friday, April 25, 2003, at 04:06  PM, Roger Mills wrote:

> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>
> (A lot of interesting material here, which I've snipped)
>
>> This inventory is pretty straightforwardly represented by the
>> following
>> orthography:
>>
>> p     t     ts     (tc)     k     kw     '
>> v     r                     g     gw
>>              s                            h
>> m        n                  ng
>> m'       n'                 ng'
>>                      y              w
>>                      y'             w'
>>
>> i     ü     u          ii     üü     uu
>>              o                        oo
>>        a                       aa
>>
>> Three comments on the choice of symbols.
>>
>> i.  My original proposal had <q> for [N] and <q'> for [N?]. These were
>> rejected in favor of <ng> and <ng'>. Fine with me; it is an odd
>> mapping.
>
> The only problem I can foresee:  can /N/ and /G/ occur as a cluster?
> (such
> that "ng" could be ambiguous?)  If the language is CVCVCV... (as it
> appears
> from exs.) then there's no problem.
The language isn't quite CVCVCV...; there are NC clusters. I originally
had <q> for /N/ because I wanted to avoid this very ambiguity. However,
the native speakers and the semi-speaker were very uncomfortable with
it. I figured that /NG/ was an unlikely cluster in any language, not
just Chemehuevi, so using <ng> shouldn't cause any undue hardships.

> And how about indicating /?/ with something that shows up a little more
> clearly in typescript?  Maybe "q" here?
There are many precedents (as you might suspect) for <'> as /?/,
including the practical orthographies of the other Numic languages. So
the <'> gives a little uniformity across the language family. I do
foresee problems if there is a register which involves any kind of
elision; <'> would be unavailable for representing it. The status of
glottals in Central and Southern Numic is very unstable; perhaps best
not to call too much attention to them :-).

>> All word medial vowels which were
>> once voiceless are now fully voiced, and all word final voiceless
>> vowels are now deleted, though they appear upon suffixation. Here's an
>> example:
>>
>> [aipats]   'boy'
>> [aipatsin] 'my boy'
>>
>> The _i_ of /aipatsi/ only emerges when a suffix like /-n/ is attached.
>> We know that _i_ belongs to the noun stem since the quality of the
>> vowel preceding the possessive suffix varies unpredictably with the
>> stem; so for [aipats] the vowel is [i], for [naro?] 'shirt' the vowel
>> is [o] ([naro?on] 'my shirt'), for [paGap] 'shoe' the vowel is [1]
>> ([paGap1n] 'my shoe'), etc.
>
> Does the -n suffix have an underlying final V too?
Etymologically it does. Sapir shows _-nni_, _-mmi_, and _-aNa_ for
first, second, and third person singular enclitic (possessive)
pronouns; these are _-n_, _-m_, and _-N_ in Chemehuevi. However, the
possessives are the very last thing to occur on a noun, so there is no
way to determine what the vowels are now. I'm going to try some
postpositions to see if that will smoke them out, but I'm not too
hopeful.

> Interesting.  Like you, I think I opt for not indicating them in
> writing (of
> course, in a dictionary you'd list something like "aipats(i),
> pagap(ü)").
> Then too, your consultants may have other ideas.........
I am prepared to argue forcefully for their inclusion in a dictionary
in exactly the form you show. For language learners, there needs to be
some way of recovering the vowels so that inflection can be done
properly.

>> This vowel deletion becomes particularly interesting when the
>> accusative suffix is involved. The accusative suffix has the form
>> -(j)a
>
> How do you know it's -(j)a, if the /a/ never appears? Comparative
> evidence?
> Or--
>
>> [aipats]  'boy.NOM' (from /aipatsi/)
>> [aipatsi] 'boy.ACC' (from /aipatsi-a/)
>
> What happens if the -n possessive sfx is added to an acc. form???
> Can you give an ex. of an a-final word?  Would it be:
>  *kapit* '....', kapitan 'my ....',  kapitay ?? '....(acc)'
> and what for 'my .... (acc.)' ???
It's fairly clear that the accusative case suffix is /-a/ and that the
/j/ is inserted following a stem-final /a/. I found a couple of
instances of the accusative suffix appearing in full when followed by a
clitic pronoun (though not a possessive; I would expect the same thing
to happen with a possessive as well -- I just can't find them in the
grammar).

Hagakaya' ivantün ha'üsutuiy?
hagaka -ya  -'   iva     -ntü -n   ha'üsutui -y
which  -ACC -you at.here -PTC -NMZ like      -PRES
'Which one do you like?'

Nüü makayaang küaw magavü.
nüü maka -ya  -ang küaw      maga -vü
I   that -ACC -him yesterday give -PAST
'I gave that to him yesterday.'

Kupiaing tükatüava watsümpa.
kupi   -a   -ing tükatüa -va watsü -mpa
coffee -ACC -he  table   -at put   -FUT
'He will put the coffee on the table.'

These examples pretty clearly show that the vowel of the accusative is
/a/.

> The problem of lost final V occus in an Indonesian lang. of my
> acquaintance.
> The first researcher chose not to indicate them in citation forms, but
> then
> had to include the definite or other context form, where they
> reappear,e.g.--
> "hah" 'pig', "hahkje" def. (/hahi+ke/, regular metathesis; he was
> Dutch,
> hence "j" = [j]).
> "sus" to weave "sustwahar" 'weave thatch" (/susu+tahar/)
So in effect he transferred the notion of principal parts of a lexeme
from the classical languages to this Indonesian language. Hmmm. I like
principal parts where there is a history for them (or no other way to
tease out inflectional classes), but it seems to me that including the
deleted vowel in citation form is a much more efficient way to describe
this.

> But only CVC(V) roots and final /i,u/ were involved, not the whole
> vowel
> inventory as in Chemehuevi.  (Final underlying /a/ was deleted in some
> not
> all cases; I forget offhand how he handled that)
Huh. I suppose that high vowels, being less sonorous, are more prone to
deletion. The irregularly deleted /a/ on the other hand sounds like an
interesting problem!

> More recently, an American in the field proposed writing such words
> with a
> final "y, w", which would not otherwise occur in CVC_# position.  IIRC
> the
> speakers/writers didn't go along with the idea, perhaps because they'd
> already learned to use the Dutch-devised system.
Inertia is difficult to overcome. Do the vowels ever show up as such,
or are they always glides?

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie