early vocabularies (was [An-lang] Re: An-lang Digest, Vol 45, Issue 5 )

[Roger Mills]

> My reply inadvertently went to Mr. Parker only; here it is for the rest of
> you :-))-- somewhat superseded by Waruno Mahdi's comments; 18th C. "long 
> s" had slipped my mind. I too suspected that some of the strange vowels 
> represented schwa.
> =======================================================
>
> > Richard Parker wrote:
> >
> > >   I recently found a wordlist of Savu, compiled by Sydney Parkinson, 
> > > Capt Cook's naturalist's draughtsman, in 1773, and compared it with 
> > > the modern Savu list compiled by Robert Blust.
> > >
> > >   Their were several regular S>H changes:
> > >   soofoo (breast) huhu
> > >   sivànga (nose) huwaŋa
> > >   sillaèo (to see) héléo
> > >   lasilai (sand) laha lae
> >
> > The shift of s > h (initially?) over 200 years isn't surprising. 
> > "soofoo" quite likely = [suhu], showing that s already > h medially. 
> > What exactly does
> > -ng- represent? [N] or [Ng] or maybe something else? The old vs. modern 
> > forms to my view simply reflect phone(mt)ic change, not vocab. 
> > replacement.
> > >
> > >   some V>W
> > >   vooe (fruit) wue
> > >   raee, vorai (earth/soil) rai[wawa]
> > >   vàva (below) wawa
> >
> > If Savu /w/ is/was a bilabial fricative [B] or perhaps a labio-dental 
> > approximant (IPA lower case upsilon)--like Ml. and others /w/-- an 
> > Englishman's confusion with "v" is understandable.
> >
> > There is always a problem with wordlists collected by amateurs-- how 
> > good, actually, was their ear? what sort of transcription system (if 
> > any!) were they using? how much contact did they have-- or was their 
> > list the result of a few days in port? did they in fact have hold of a 
> > native speaker, or just some guy of undetermined origin but fluent in 
> > Malay who said, Oh yes, I know bahasa Savu....  etc. etc.  Not to deny 
> > the value of the early documents, of course.
> >
> > Over the last several years I've worked with two Kisar lists-- Earl 1848 
> > and Rinnooy 1886; Earl was apparently just visiting, Rinnooy was a 
> > missionary who clearly had pretty good command of the language (but read 
> > Brandes' introductory notes to the list!!). Their lists match about 80%, 
> > Earl has some oddities that one can attribute to his English-based 
> > transcription (maybe another 15% or maybe a different dialect); perhaps 
> > 5% do not match at all. NEITHER ONE is at all clear on the existence of 
> > glottal stop in the language; some of Earl's forms suggest it (either 
> > with -h- or an apostrophe, not always etymologically expected); but it's 
> > completely lacking in Rinnooy. Yet the Christensen's 1992 paper with 
> > minor exceptions has /?/ exactly where it ought to be etymologically. 
> > What's going on???
> > >
> > >   and some other word changes that I'm not so sure about, like:
> > > teaco (to walk) ta-kako
> > > racäee (skin) kuri
> >
> > "teaco" 'walk' looks misheard, IMO; "skin" is certainly odd; kuri is 
> > certainly what one would expect.
> > >
> > >   Both Savu wordlists are on the AVBD database at:
> > >   http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian
> > >
> > Interesting....I'll have to take a look at those.
> >
> > BTW, I don't know if I ever posted this ref-- a wordlist of 
> > Dawan/Timorese/Atoni compiled by one of my Indonesian students back in 
> > the 70s-- http://cinduworld.tripod.com/timorlist.htm  --with a lot of 
> > added material from Middelkoop and Jonker.
> >
> > The word for "sand" incidentally:
> > snaèn -- sand
>
> also cited in Jonker's Rotinese Dict. s.v. Rot. solokaek, Kup slaen, Savu 
> (la)halae, Bima
> > sarae
>
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