Jun. 9th, 2005 03:50 pm
Wažaže ie šõõšõwe mãðĩ ðee hkõbra.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckI'm not sure what to make of the fact that no one has bothered to say anything about the completely incomprehensible titles I've been giving some of my posts lately. I guess everyone is afraid that if they ask, I'll tell them--in excruciating and technical detail. If that's the case, then I'll show you: Even though no one asked, I'm going into excruciating and technical detail anyway. But, because I love you all, I'll be hiding it all behind a cut.
The language, Osage, is my new love. I've wanted to learn something about it for years, but--as is the case with far too many Amerind languages--the resources were pretty poor. You can't imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that, not only was a superb new description of the language published last year, but my library actually had it. I was sure I'd have to overcome my repugnance towards ILL. (And I will, if I ever want to see the accompanying dictionary!)
In the past, I've monkeyed about with Lakhota and Mohawk, but they never grabbed me like this language. I'm not sure how much credit to give Carolyn Quintero's excellent analysis and diction and how much to the language itself, but I'll note that I looked up some words and phrases in the Lakhota dictionary last week and they still left me a little cold.
It's not that the feature set of Osage is so terribly distinctive: Five oral and five nasal vowels, (virtually) no voiced stops, incorporating verbs with an active/stative distinction, alienable/inalienable possession, adjectives-as-verbs--in most ways, it's a very typical Amerind languages. It just that some of the ways in which Osage makes use of these features (or in the way Quintero describes them) make me think That's so cool!.
I've mentioned to a couple people now that my favourite Osage verb form is hkõbra "I want [it]". Why? It exhibits some peculiarities unlike any I've seen before. For one thing, it is doubly inflecting. For another, it exhibits wacky morphophonetic alternations. "You want [it]" is škõšta; "s/he wants [it]" is kõða. But wait--one thing at a time.
First, a note on spelling: In Quintero's Siouanist orthography, the ogonek is used to indicate nasalisation. Unfortunately, a lot of character sets can't properly display o-ogonek (ǫ). There is no real standard orthography for Osage, so I've taken the liberty of substituting a tilde, which is an indicator of nasality in IPA and many established orthographies. In the interest of diacritic de-escalation, I've left off all indications of stress (an acute accent in Quintero's transcription).
Now, in polysynthetic languages like Osage, subjects and objects are indicated by prefixes to the verb. For instance, "You love me" is ãðioxta. Oxta is the verbal root; ã is "me" and ði represents "you". This really isn't as exotic as it seems. Modern French, for instance, can be analysed as a polysynthetic language. What's the difference between ãðioxta and tu m'aimes? Fossilied French spelling, which disguises the fact that this is single phonological word pronounced /ty"mEm/ (cf. /i"mEm/ "he loves me", /Z@"tEm/ "I love you", etc.).
For whatever reason, not that many verb forms are as straightforward as ãðioxta, though. For instance, there are no third-person singular prefixes. An intransitive verb standing alone with no prefix is assumed to have third-person reference; a transitive verb with no object prefix is assumed to have a third-person object, which is why hkõbra is more properly glossed as "I want it", with some definite object assumed. Then there are the alternations I spoke of. These are changes to the initial consonant of the verb, the prefix(es), or both, depending on the combination. So-called "syncopating ð-stems" are the worst (or the best, depending on your point of view).
Take the example of a_ðĩ "have". (The underscore indicates where the inflection goes, since some verbs take it at the front and some in the middle--another quirky feature, bzw. annoying bug.) In the first-person singular, the labial agent prefix combines with ð (an interdental fricative, like th in "this" or d in Spanish nada) to yield abrĩ. If that weren't odd enough, neither [b] nor [r] ever appear in Osage except in this cluster! (The cluster itself doesn't just occur in first-person singular verb forms, though; cf. webrãpe "we've had enough [of it/them]", verbal root i_brã.)
It's such a fun irregularity that some verbs have it twice! Remember when I spoke of "doubly inflecting" verbs? A relatively straightforward case is the verb for "taking". This is really two verbs: a_ðĩ "have" plus a_ðee "going there". If you like, you can think of abrĩbree as a compound meaning "I have it and I'm going there" (there's no equivalent in Osage to linking verbs with "and"; they just come one after the other). Similarly, "you're taking it (there)" is ašcĩšcee (or aščĩščee, depending on dialect).
Which brings us back to _kõ_ða "want". Why is this a compound verb? Actually, I don't know that it is; I don't know the first thing about its etymology. All I know is that it inflects twice; the first agent prefix contracts with /k/ to form hk (what Quintero calls a "fortis" or "preaspirated" stop--I'm not sure how to pronounce it my own self). The second does that wacky thing with /ð/ to make them into br. And voilà: hkõbra!
The title of this entry translates as "I want (hkõbra) the Osage (wažaže) language (ie) to go (mãðĩ ðee) on (šõõšõwe)." These are the words of Frances Oberly Holding, one of the last native speakers of the language, who died in 1994.
The language, Osage, is my new love. I've wanted to learn something about it for years, but--as is the case with far too many Amerind languages--the resources were pretty poor. You can't imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that, not only was a superb new description of the language published last year, but my library actually had it. I was sure I'd have to overcome my repugnance towards ILL. (And I will, if I ever want to see the accompanying dictionary!)
In the past, I've monkeyed about with Lakhota and Mohawk, but they never grabbed me like this language. I'm not sure how much credit to give Carolyn Quintero's excellent analysis and diction and how much to the language itself, but I'll note that I looked up some words and phrases in the Lakhota dictionary last week and they still left me a little cold.
It's not that the feature set of Osage is so terribly distinctive: Five oral and five nasal vowels, (virtually) no voiced stops, incorporating verbs with an active/stative distinction, alienable/inalienable possession, adjectives-as-verbs--in most ways, it's a very typical Amerind languages. It just that some of the ways in which Osage makes use of these features (or in the way Quintero describes them) make me think That's so cool!.
I've mentioned to a couple people now that my favourite Osage verb form is hkõbra "I want [it]". Why? It exhibits some peculiarities unlike any I've seen before. For one thing, it is doubly inflecting. For another, it exhibits wacky morphophonetic alternations. "You want [it]" is škõšta; "s/he wants [it]" is kõða. But wait--one thing at a time.
First, a note on spelling: In Quintero's Siouanist orthography, the ogonek is used to indicate nasalisation. Unfortunately, a lot of character sets can't properly display o-ogonek (ǫ). There is no real standard orthography for Osage, so I've taken the liberty of substituting a tilde, which is an indicator of nasality in IPA and many established orthographies. In the interest of diacritic de-escalation, I've left off all indications of stress (an acute accent in Quintero's transcription).
Now, in polysynthetic languages like Osage, subjects and objects are indicated by prefixes to the verb. For instance, "You love me" is ãðioxta. Oxta is the verbal root; ã is "me" and ði represents "you". This really isn't as exotic as it seems. Modern French, for instance, can be analysed as a polysynthetic language. What's the difference between ãðioxta and tu m'aimes? Fossilied French spelling, which disguises the fact that this is single phonological word pronounced /ty"mEm/ (cf. /i"mEm/ "he loves me", /Z@"tEm/ "I love you", etc.).
For whatever reason, not that many verb forms are as straightforward as ãðioxta, though. For instance, there are no third-person singular prefixes. An intransitive verb standing alone with no prefix is assumed to have third-person reference; a transitive verb with no object prefix is assumed to have a third-person object, which is why hkõbra is more properly glossed as "I want it", with some definite object assumed. Then there are the alternations I spoke of. These are changes to the initial consonant of the verb, the prefix(es), or both, depending on the combination. So-called "syncopating ð-stems" are the worst (or the best, depending on your point of view).
Take the example of a_ðĩ "have". (The underscore indicates where the inflection goes, since some verbs take it at the front and some in the middle--another quirky feature, bzw. annoying bug.) In the first-person singular, the labial agent prefix combines with ð (an interdental fricative, like th in "this" or d in Spanish nada) to yield abrĩ. If that weren't odd enough, neither [b] nor [r] ever appear in Osage except in this cluster! (The cluster itself doesn't just occur in first-person singular verb forms, though; cf. webrãpe "we've had enough [of it/them]", verbal root i_brã.)
It's such a fun irregularity that some verbs have it twice! Remember when I spoke of "doubly inflecting" verbs? A relatively straightforward case is the verb for "taking". This is really two verbs: a_ðĩ "have" plus a_ðee "going there". If you like, you can think of abrĩbree as a compound meaning "I have it and I'm going there" (there's no equivalent in Osage to linking verbs with "and"; they just come one after the other). Similarly, "you're taking it (there)" is ašcĩšcee (or aščĩščee, depending on dialect).
Which brings us back to _kõ_ða "want". Why is this a compound verb? Actually, I don't know that it is; I don't know the first thing about its etymology. All I know is that it inflects twice; the first agent prefix contracts with /k/ to form hk (what Quintero calls a "fortis" or "preaspirated" stop--I'm not sure how to pronounce it my own self). The second does that wacky thing with /ð/ to make them into br. And voilà: hkõbra!
The title of this entry translates as "I want (hkõbra) the Osage (wažaže) language (ie) to go (mãðĩ ðee) on (šõõšõwe)." These are the words of Frances Oberly Holding, one of the last native speakers of the language, who died in 1994.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
You guessed!
(I love languages, and obscurity is always a plus. What I can't deal with is impenetrable orthography.)
no subject
ogonekis
I wonder whether that should be "ogonki".
no subject
In the future, I will never write a word without first Googling it.
no subject
no subject
no subject