Sep. 26th, 2019 10:30 am
In the red
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muckefuckThe reason y'all seldom see any posts about languages here any more is that at least 90% of those end up on a site called Unilang, where I've been an active member for close to a decade. But it's down today and I'm itching to talk a bit about Amerind languages.
First, Osage. I know I've hardly done anything with it in years, but I do submit to the occasional translation challenge. Last night it was "I want someone to help me". As always, there are multiple ways to go about this but in the auxiliary I decided to use a reflexive form with benefactive meaning because it's an unusual form that I don't have a lot of experience with. This involves the prefix hkik which comes between the first point of inflexion and the stem so kǫðá "want" becomes hkihkǫðá "want for oneself". Since kǫðá is a doubly-inflected verb, the 1s form ends up being ahkíhkǫbra.
"Help" is ohką. When you add the patient prefix ą, the o undergoes assimilation, resulting in ąwąhką "helps me". That just leaves the problem of translating "someone". After some debate I went with tąąska which can me any unnamed think. Quintero says it's also used when you can't remember someone's name or want to avoid using it for some reason, so it seems suitable here. Putting it together (with a continuative auxiliary for present tense) yields tąąska ąwąhką ahkíhkǫbra mįkšé.
Part of the reason I'm getting interested in Osage again is all the Choctaw in Shell shaker. As I said, I'm reading it with a Chickasaw dictionary in hand to puzzle out words and phrases and that naturally has me wondering what the Osage would be. The verbal systems in particular seem very similar: active-stative and polypersonal with various derived stems some of which show complicated phonological developments.
Some of the compounds are similar, too. For "cardinal", both languages use "bird-red" with unpredictable modifications of the each element. Osage, for instance, has wažįžue from wažįke "bird" and žuuce "red". Chickasaw has foshhommak (among other variants) from foshi' "bird" and homma' "red". (Yes, the same element as in "Oklahoma".)
But Chickasaw has many interesting developments of its own. One is the semantic extension of chokfi "rabbit" to mean "sheep" as well. (If disambiguation is necessary, a sheep can be called chokfi ishto' "big rabbit".) This has parallels in other North American Indian languages where, for example, "dog" is often extended to mean "horse" because horses came to supplant dogs in such functions as hauling supplies.
First, Osage. I know I've hardly done anything with it in years, but I do submit to the occasional translation challenge. Last night it was "I want someone to help me". As always, there are multiple ways to go about this but in the auxiliary I decided to use a reflexive form with benefactive meaning because it's an unusual form that I don't have a lot of experience with. This involves the prefix hkik which comes between the first point of inflexion and the stem so kǫðá "want" becomes hkihkǫðá "want for oneself". Since kǫðá is a doubly-inflected verb, the 1s form ends up being ahkíhkǫbra.
"Help" is ohką. When you add the patient prefix ą, the o undergoes assimilation, resulting in ąwąhką "helps me". That just leaves the problem of translating "someone". After some debate I went with tąąska which can me any unnamed think. Quintero says it's also used when you can't remember someone's name or want to avoid using it for some reason, so it seems suitable here. Putting it together (with a continuative auxiliary for present tense) yields tąąska ąwąhką ahkíhkǫbra mįkšé.
Part of the reason I'm getting interested in Osage again is all the Choctaw in Shell shaker. As I said, I'm reading it with a Chickasaw dictionary in hand to puzzle out words and phrases and that naturally has me wondering what the Osage would be. The verbal systems in particular seem very similar: active-stative and polypersonal with various derived stems some of which show complicated phonological developments.
Some of the compounds are similar, too. For "cardinal", both languages use "bird-red" with unpredictable modifications of the each element. Osage, for instance, has wažįžue from wažįke "bird" and žuuce "red". Chickasaw has foshhommak (among other variants) from foshi' "bird" and homma' "red". (Yes, the same element as in "Oklahoma".)
But Chickasaw has many interesting developments of its own. One is the semantic extension of chokfi "rabbit" to mean "sheep" as well. (If disambiguation is necessary, a sheep can be called chokfi ishto' "big rabbit".) This has parallels in other North American Indian languages where, for example, "dog" is often extended to mean "horse" because horses came to supplant dogs in such functions as hauling supplies.