From rankin at ku.edu Sat Dec 1 16:40:22 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 10:40:22 -0600 Subject: Omaha concordances (fwd) Message-ID: I downloaded these along with "StuffIt" and, having expanded the files, it looks like they will be very helpful indeed -- typoes and all. I'm sure I speak for everyone in thanking Matt for a great job. Bob -----Original Message----- Subject: Fwd: Omaha concordances (fwd) These materials were prepared by Matthew Dryer for the use of Ardis Eschenberg, based on the Siouan Archives keying of the Dorsey texts. He's kindly agreed to let me post the information on the list, too, as I thought perhaps others would also be interested. >The three concordances are at the following URL's: > >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.sit >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.rev.sit >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.engl.sit From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 4 21:03:40 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:03:40 -0600 Subject: Silly terminological question. Message-ID: This is a minor but annoying problem I keep encountering when trying to do interlinear glosses in Siouan linguistics papers. We regularly deal with two different types of verb prefixes that we often call "instrumental". One is generic, the prefix /i/ or /i:/, often translated 'with', 'by means of' but sometimes with its meaning pretty much bleached out. Then there are the more specific "instrumentals" like pa-, yu-, ka-, na-, ya-, etc., etc., the familiar 'by hand', 'by mouth', 'by striking', etc. In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 4 21:59:22 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 14:59:22 -0700 Subject: Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of the uN construction in Dakotan. I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, I'm thinking of instances like: i'/bahaN 'to think' i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' but one might also wonder about i- on a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget which (ordinal?). Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Tue Dec 4 22:20:53 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:20:53 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, yu, ya, etc. I have always been comfortable with lumping the i-instrumental with the locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > > In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) > applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal > to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb > (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does > indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of > the uN construction in Dakotan. > > I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the > same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, > > I'm thinking of instances like: > > i'/bahaN 'to think' > i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' > > but one might also wonder about i- on > > a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and > > b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget > which (ordinal?). > > Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. > > How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? > > From jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu Wed Dec 5 03:57:08 2001 From: jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu (John Boyle) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 21:57:08 -0600 Subject: Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob, I gloss the i-/i:- as INST and I gloss the other as more specific instrumentals (i.e. INh - instrumental 'by hand', INf - instrumental 'by foot' etc.). I have found that this helps me keep them straight. John >This is a minor but annoying problem I keep encountering when trying to do >interlinear glosses in Siouan linguistics papers. > >We regularly deal with two different types of verb prefixes that we often >call "instrumental". One is generic, the prefix /i/ or /i:/, often >translated 'with', 'by means of' but sometimes with its meaning pretty much >bleached out. > >Then there are the more specific "instrumentals" like pa-, yu-, ka-, na-, >ya-, etc., etc., the familiar 'by hand', 'by mouth', 'by striking', etc. > >In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do >I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't >a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly >and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to >solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > >Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 04:03:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 21:03:36 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, ROOD DAVID S wrote: > Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's > "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real > locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument > options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of > the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful > abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, > yu, ya, etc. Maybe because the first applicatives I encountered were instrumental I've long had the impression that the core sense of applicative was an affix that introduced an instrumental complement to argument status, and that the wider sense of affix that augments or shuffles the argument structure of the verb was a sort of extension. I've just checked a few general references, however, and it looks like I've had things reversed. Trask (for example) - Crystal was no help on this - defines an applicative as a construction that raises an indirect object or oblique (object) to a direct object. While the Siouan locatives stop a bit short of direct object, because they don't govern concord, at least not that I've noticed so far in OP (Rory? anyone?) - in fact, I think they can co-occur with a direct object - it's clear that they do introduce some sort of secondary argument - at least what I believe Fillmore called an inner locative. So applicative isn't going to work. > locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the > forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. > We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. Returning to Bob's question, which I though was what to gloss i- if one glossed dhi-, ba-, ... (yu-, pa-, ...) as instrumental (or some abbreviation thereof), I'd say there were two cases: - Gloss the locatives (a-, i-, etc.) as locative, LOC, etc. and the instrumentals as instrumental, INS, etc., or - Gloss the individual locatives by sense and the individual instrumentals by sense, but - Not some combination, or, if some combination is needed, use compounds like instrumental locative vs. instrumental or general instrumental vs. hand instrumental. It might be safer to always refer to the locatives as the (something) locative in text. The names I had tentatively come up with for the three locatives, based on Uralic case names, were adessive (a-), superessive (u-), and, well, I'd better call it instrumental (i-). If people prefer to call the first one the locative, then we should probably try to call the class of forms applicatives, because while locative applicative is just long, locative locative is long and awkward. OP udhu (cf. Da iyo-) is pretty close to being perlative (through or at least along). I've never been sure what to make of idha- (cf. Da iya-). There aren't many examples of it. It seems to me that the instrumental function of i- is to introduce specific or maybe non-generic - can I say focussed? - instruments, while the instrumental prefixes indicate non-specific, generic - unfocussed? - instruments. I take it this is implicit in the fact that OP forms like we'base (wa-i-ba-se) indicate a 'saw', but just base' would have to be a 'sawn thing' I think, because the instrument is non-focussed. I don't thibk you can have *wese. This might also be consistent with the tendency to translate instrumentals with 'by ...ing' phrases, i.e., in terms of a pattern of activity instead of a particular instrument. From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Dec 5 08:00:41 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 08:00:41 -0000 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I take David's remark about the difficulty of calling i- a locative. On the other hand I have always had a feeling that it is basically a sort of locative indicating off to one side hence the use as an instrumental 'held in one hand'. It does still have that sort of meaning in some words where it indicates 'colliding with' as in icah^taka 'to have contact with' iwoto, iwoh^taka, iyapha 'bump into'. Even in words like iwaNyaNka 'compare with' one can see soemthing of putting one thing beside another. This is all a bit Andersonian of course as in his Locative deep cases. It maybe helps to ease the use of locative to cover what is in most of its occurrences an instrumental Bruce Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, yu, ya, etc. I have always been comfortable with lumping the i-instrumental with the locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > > In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) > applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal > to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb > (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does > indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of > the uN construction in Dakotan. > > I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the > same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, > > I'm thinking of instances like: > > i'/bahaN 'to think' > i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' > > but one might also wonder about i- on > > a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and > > b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget > which (ordinal?). > > Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. > > How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? > > Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From pustet at babel.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 09:42:13 2001 From: pustet at babel.Colorado.EDU (regina pustet) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 02:42:13 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: <3C0DD429.20696.DC27C@localhost> Message-ID: The instrumental vs. locative issue is a vexing problem indeed. In my recent Lakota text collection, I sort of bypassed the problem, at least at first sight, by glossing any locative prefix as L- (for locative, because the meaning of prefixes in this slot is mostly a locative one), and any "classical" instrumental prefix by INS-. The reader is then referred to the grammar sketch which is part of the book, in which the different types of L-prefixes and INS-prefixes are listed, and where their specific functions are discussed. I think positing two groups of grammatical elements for the L- and INS- positions, without singling out i- as a special instrumental marker, makes sense especially from a morphosyntactic point of view, since the L- and INS-slots are clearly separate grammatically: L- and INS-markers can be combined within a given verb form. Another thing: what should we do with the derivational prefix i- which designates instruments, i.e. nouns, as in i-cha'phe 'dagger' ("??-stab")? This prefix is of course related to the basic locative/instrumental marker i-, but I think it is semantically distinct enough to be treated as a separate marker, and therefore needs a separate gloss. Regina From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 15:29:36 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 09:29:36 -0600 Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: My thanks to everyone who has responded on this question. My immediate question was indeed the less important (but not insignificant) problem of how to communicate the "truth" about Siouan to an audience of general linguists. And in a single 3 or 4 letter abbreviation..... I've decided to settle on INSTR for the more specific yu-, ya-, ka-, etc. sets, both inner and outer, and use LOC for the more general i-. David, Regina, etc. seem to go along with this, and I think I agree that this is the easiest way to handle it. The larger and far more interesting/important matter of the "real" identity of i- is a can of worms I hadn't intended to open just now. My understanding is that there are at least TWO distinct prefixes historically, and probably synchronically, in each Siouan language. One is instrumental i- and the other is locative i-. The locative generally signals 'movement toward'. One has a long vowel and/or is inherently accented. The other is short/unaccented underlyingly. But obviously accent and lengthening/shortening rules in particular languages along with speakers' reanalyses can be expected to mess with this nice scenario. As for the semantic bleaching that affects the i-instrumental, this is a process that routinely affects derivational morphemes in every language. What we always end up with is an affix with a CONTINUUM of meanings/functions that were originally contextually defined. The context is often lost or blurred and the morpheme moves along the continuum that exists between polysemy and homophony, often ending up in the latter camp. One of the points I tried to make in the paper I'm revising is that, because of the very nature of morphosyntactic change, it will sometimes not be possible to make a principled distinction between auxiliaries, enclitics and suffixes in Siouan post-verbal morphology. There will always be cases in which assignment is somewhat arbitrary. For example there are Dakotan enclitics that betray their (former?) AUX status in that they are still marked for number. And in Dhegiha there are enclitics (?) that are still inflected for person -- but only 2nd person. Then there are the various evidential-like constructions built out of /ehe/ 'say' that seem to be both verbs and enclitics. I think everyone is familiar with the sort of phenomenon I'm talking about. This does not, of course, solve the problem of the 2/several i-'s, but it suggests why the problem is thorny, and perhaps insoluble on principled grounds. Like everything else in linguistics that is interesting, it implies a continuum rather than a set of discrete categories. Again, many thanks for the input. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 15:49:03 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 08:49:03 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, regina pustet wrote: > The instrumental vs. locative issue is a vexing problem indeed. In my > recent Lakota text collection, I sort of bypassed the problem, at least at > first sight, by glossing any locative prefix as L- (for locative, because > the meaning of prefixes in this slot is mostly a locative one), and any > "classical" instrumental prefix by INS-. Notice that the glosses are matched in length with the morphemes (approximately). > Another thing: what should we do with the derivational prefix i- which > designates instruments, i.e. nouns, as in i-cha'phe 'dagger' ("??-stab")? > This prefix is of course related to the basic locative/instrumental marker i-, > but I think it is semantically distinct enough to be treated as a separate > marker, and therefore needs a separate gloss. I'm not clear on the difference between this derivational i- and a (grammatical?) one, except in the directional sense Bruce mentions, though his examples sounded pretty derivational to me. What would be an example of the non-derivational i- in Dakotan? I seem to recall that 'to be proud of' might have an i-? From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 16:56:34 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 09:56:34 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John remarks that the so-called locatives in Siouan don't raise an oblique object to direct object status, but I think they do -- in a very peculiar way, at least in Lakhota. Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', but if you use a third person form, you need the postposition, too (phezi kiN akaN achaga 'ice formed on the grass'). Formally the pronouns are direct objects, making the prefix a prototypical applicative, but the prefix seems to be purely derivational with the nouns. I don't know what would happen with a third person animate or human object, but I suspect it would be like the 'grass' example. Does this make the argument structure of the derived verb different for nouns and pronouns? Is there any precedent for something like that in the formal syntax literature? David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Dec 5 17:27:49 2001 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 12:27:49 EST Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: In a message dated 12/05/2001 7:33:36 AM Pacific Standard Time, rankin at ku.edu writes: > The larger and far more interesting/important matter of the "real" identity > of i- is a can of worms I hadn't intended to open just now. My > understanding is that there are at least TWO distinct prefixes > historically, > and probably synchronically, in each Siouan language. One is instrumental > i- and the other is locative i-. The locative generally signals 'movement > toward'. One has a long vowel and/or is inherently accented. The other is > short/unaccented underlyingly. But obviously accent and > lengthening/shortening rules in particular languages along with speakers' > reanalyses can be expected to mess with this nice scenario. > > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii is a postposition, while locative i' is a verbal prefix that patterns with the a'- and o'- instrumentals. The general sense of locative i'- is 'touching, in contact with', e.g. i'hkuluu 'touching', i'kaxxi 'lean on', i'koochi 'hang up, hang over', i'kuxxa 'equal to'. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 18:14:10 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 11:14:10 -0700 Subject: Instrumental/locative. In-Reply-To: <109.9c19dcf.293fb315@aol.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) > 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii > is a postposition, ... That is, the syntax of the instrumental construction is [NP]=ii V? (Or maybe ii isn't enclitic?) That's very nice! I think you've mentioned this before, but somehow it didn't sink in that the ii was not part of the verb. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 18:28:30 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 11:28:30 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, ROOD DAVID S wrote: > John remarks that the so-called locatives in Siouan don't raise an oblique > object to direct object status, but I think they do -- in a very peculiar > way, at least in Lakhota. I remembered hearing something like this from David before, which is one reason I hestitated to make the assertion general. > Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also > achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection > (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a > personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga > 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', but if you use a third person form, > you need the postposition, too (phezi kiN akaN achaga 'ice formed on the > grass'). Formally the pronouns are direct objects, making the prefix a > prototypical applicative, but the prefix seems to be purely derivational > with the nouns. I don't know what would happen with a third person > animate or human object, but I suspect it would be like the 'grass' > example. If the verb agreed with the noun, the incorporated or inflectional pronominal would be zero, right? That makes me wonder what would happen if there were an emphatic first person, etc., pronominal outside the verb. Would it, too, require a postposition? An example might be something like 'It was me who had ice forming on me, so why were you complaining?' If it doesn't, we still have exactly the conundrum David points out, and if it does we have a verb agreeing with a postpositional phrase, which would be just as interesting. > Does this make the argument structure of the derived verb > different for nouns and pronouns? Is there any precedent for something > like that in the formal syntax literature? It seems to me that the first would depend on the treatment of independent pronominal arguments, if those are possible. Can akaN stand alone, too, without the noun, or perhaps with an e demonstrative? From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Dec 5 20:28:59 2001 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:28:59 EST Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: In a message dated 12/05/2001 10:15:19 AM Pacific Standard Time, John.Koontz at colorado.edu writes: > On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) > > 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental > ii > > is a postposition, ... > > That is, the syntax of the instrumental construction is [NP]=ii V? (Or > maybe ii isn't enclitic?) That's very nice! I think you've mentioned > this before, but somehow it didn't sink in that the ii was not part of the > verb. Actually, the ii instrumental is often proclitic on the verb, but it is much more loosely connected to the verb than locative i'-: at times it seems to be a separate word, and I also have examples where it precedes something other than the verb. Locative i'-, on the other hand, patterns with the other locative prefixes and the instrumentals in that the person markers always precede these prefixes in Crow. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 21:42:43 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:42:43 -0600 Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: Thanks, Randy. That's what I was looking for. I recalled that Randy had explained it to me, but I couldn't remember which was which, so I hedged and just mentioned they were different in terms of length/accent. This time I'll save his posting!! The situation is a bit messier than I had hoped it would be. Because one morpheme is long while the other is accented, they'll probably both tend to attract accent in the MVS languages. Oh well ... we have to leave something for the next generation of Siouanists to do! :-) Bob >Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii is a postposition, while locative i' is a verbal prefix that patterns with the a'- and o'- instrumentals. The general sense of locative i'- is 'touching, in contact with', e.g. i'hkuluu 'touching', i'kaxxi 'lean on', i'koochi 'hang up, hang over', i'kuxxa 'equal to'. Randy From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 21:50:35 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:50:35 -0600 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives Message-ID: >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? Bob From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 22:21:22 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:21:22 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Tongue-in-cheek, I would guess amakichaga (ki- 'become'). D. David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also > achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection > (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a > personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga > 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', > > Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were > "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would > say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? > > Bob > From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Dec 6 12:48:43 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 12:48:43 -0000 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For "I turned to ice on it." you could try achah mici'ichage or amakichaga using ic'ichaga 'make oneself into, turn into' or kichaga 'turn to ice', but I'm only guessing. Bruce >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? Bob Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Dec 17 19:35:49 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 12:35:49 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary Message-ID: I have a small sketch of Omaha-Ponca on the web at http://www.spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/op_sketch.htm. This has long lacked a lexical section. It occurred to me this weekend that I could fairly easily convert into NetSiouan the vocabulary I worked up for the text about the 1847 fight between the Omahas and Dakota (also on the site), so I did and posted it there. It's certainly not a comprehensive vocabulary of Omaha-Ponca, but it might be useful in some contexts. JEK From mosind at yahoo.com Mon Dec 17 20:42:15 2001 From: mosind at yahoo.com (Wablenica) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 23:42:15 +0300 Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, John. My browser could not see the page, but when I cut "www" it was OK: http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/lexicon.htm > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Koontz John E > Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 10:36 PM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary > > > I have a small sketch of Omaha-Ponca on the web at > http://www.spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/op_sketch.htm. This has long > lacked a lexical section. It occurred to me this weekend that I could > fairly easily convert into NetSiouan the vocabulary I worked up for the > text about the 1847 fight between the Omahas and Dakota (also on the > site), so I did and posted it there. It's certainly not a comprehensive > vocabulary of Omaha-Ponca, but it might be useful in some contexts. > > JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 04:56:27 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 21:56:27 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer Message-ID: I seem to recall reading somewhere of a French explorer who was an early visitor to the Dakota, probably the Mille Lacs Santee villages, and who has something of a reputation among commentators as being unreliable. I am trying to remember his name. One of his purported stretches, as I recall, was claiming (to Louis XIV) that the Dakota word for 'sun', as in 'Louis the Sun King' was "Louis." Of course, apparently unbeknownst to the amused commentators, the Dakota word for 'sun' (and 'moon') actually is wi, which is a credible match for Louis [lwi]. Does anyone remember this annecdote or the French explorer's name? John From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Dec 18 14:24:57 2001 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (ahartley at d.umn.edu) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 08:24:57 -0600 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: How about Louis Hennepin? From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 18 15:41:43 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:41:43 -0600 Subject: 'Sun'/sun king. Message-ID: >One of his purported stretches, as I recall, was claiming (to Louis XIV) that the Dakota word for 'sun', as in 'Louis the Sun King' was "Louis." Of course, apparently unbeknownst to the amused commentators, the Dakota word for 'sun' (and 'moon') actually is wi, which is a credible match for Louis [lwi]. Yes, more than a credible match, given the relationship between French orthography and actual pronunciation. If you assume he put the definite article before 'sun' they come out the same. 'Louis' is [lwi] (one syllable) and 'the sun' (with the French article) is [lwi]. If you allow him to use the Fr. article, he was right smack on the money. :-) Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Tue Dec 18 16:31:59 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 10:31:59 -0600 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer Message-ID: Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? He was a charlatan of the first order--starting with his title (he was by no means a marquis, and at best dubiously noble-born). Supposedly he had many infamous run-ins with the tribes of the Lake country, although I cannot remember any of them right now. I've heard he was generally not well-received in many societies, be they American or European. It's pure irony that the automobiles bearing his name are so highly prized! From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Dec 18 16:03:08 2001 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 11:03:08 -0500 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <002a01c187e1$85eedde0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: No, Cadillac never went to Siouan country. I think it was Hennepin, if we're talking early. He, along with a fellow named Michel Accault (Aco) were the first Frenchmen to ascend the Mississippi to the falls of St. Anthony (Minneapolis-St.Paul). Michael McCafferty On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? He was a charlatan of the first > order--starting with his title (he was by no means a marquis, and at best > dubiously noble-born). Supposedly he had many infamous run-ins with the > tribes of the Lake country, although I cannot remember any of them right > now. I've heard he was generally not well-received in many societies, be > they American or European. It's pure irony that the automobiles bearing his > name are so highly prized! > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:34:18 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:34:18 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <1008685497.3c1f51b949eb2@webapps.d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 ahartley at d.umn.edu wrote: > How about Louis Hennepin? I'm not sure. I'll have to see if I can relocate the comment based on the name. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:36:26 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:36:26 -0700 Subject: 'Sun'/sun king. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Yes, more than a credible match, given the relationship between French > orthography and actual pronunciation. If you assume he put the definite > article before 'sun' they come out the same. 'Louis' is [lwi] (one > syllable) and 'the sun' (with the French article) is [lwi]. If you allow > him to use the Fr. article, he was right smack on the money. :-) Yes! Moral: sometimes the ridiculous is correct. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:38:21 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:38:21 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <002a01c187e1$85eedde0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? I'm pretty sure it wasn't Cadillac, but thanks for the suggestion! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 19:35:01 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:35:01 -0700 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: This is about proverbs as opposed to preverbs. I apologize in advance for a topic that is perhaps more literary than linguistic, though a lot depends on where you draw the line. I've occasionally field questions about Siouan proverbs, i.e., analogs of things like "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Or maybe I should say, I've tried to field such questions, but, frankly, I haven't noticed any proverbs in Omaha-Ponca. Am I missing something? Or is there no native proverb genre in Siouan (and adjacent?) languages? Catherine Rudin may want to take note of this nested question construction! If there is no proverb genre, that would be interesting. From a European standpoint proverbs are about as indispensible to a language as adjectives and "good bye." I know how to get along without adjectives or "good bye", of course. But how do people get along without proverbs? If Siouan speakers are doing so, then they must be doing it right under my nose, but I can't say that I've figured out how. Does it have something to do with Trickster (OP Monkey) stories? Or quotatives? It might be harder to make your own opinions sound like universal truths if you have to append a quotative to them. Maybe not - there seems to be a clear quotative on proverbs, manifested as zero, and it can even be made explicit with paraphrases (or periphrasis) like "(You know what) they say, ..." JEK From munro at ucla.edu Tue Dec 18 20:34:12 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:34:12 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Like John, I am often asked for proverb-analogues in the (Siouan and non-Siouan) languages I work on, and I actually feel that this is definitely a genre that is not highly represented in the Americas. One of my students has been getting some aphoristic things in Pima, but they are mainly of the form "Marry a ___ (fill in tribe) and your ____ (fill in body part) will _____ (fill in verb with negative consequences)" -- this doesn't seem completely like a proverb to me! But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best case I know of being Wolof). I hope more people will comment on this. Pam Koontz John E wrote: > This is about proverbs as opposed to preverbs. I apologize in advance for > a topic that is perhaps more literary than linguistic, though a lot > depends on where you draw the line. > > I've occasionally field questions about Siouan proverbs, i.e., analogs of > things like "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Or maybe I should > say, I've tried to field such questions, but, frankly, I haven't noticed > any proverbs in Omaha-Ponca. Am I missing something? Or is there no > native proverb genre in Siouan (and adjacent?) languages? > > Catherine Rudin may want to take note of this nested question > construction! > > If there is no proverb genre, that would be interesting. From a European > standpoint proverbs are about as indispensible to a language as adjectives > and "good bye." I know how to get along without adjectives or "good bye", > of course. But how do people get along without proverbs? If Siouan > speakers are doing so, then they must be doing it right under my nose, but > I can't say that I've figured out how. Does it have something to do with > Trickster (OP Monkey) stories? Or quotatives? It might be harder to make > your own opinions sound like universal truths if you have to append a > quotative to them. Maybe not - there seems to be a clear quotative on > proverbs, manifested as zero, and it can even be made explicit with > paraphrases (or periphrasis) like "(You know what) they say, ..." > > JEK -- Pamela Munro Professor Department of Linguistics UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles Ca 90095-1543 http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Tue Dec 18 20:38:56 2001 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:38:56 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: No one's ever mentioned any Omaha proverbs to me -- doesn't mean they don't exist, of course. I'll try to remember to ask when I get a chance. But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in English, and then usually as a joke. (Dragging kid out of bed for ungodly early band practice I'll tease them about worms for breakfast... not exactly an "indispensible" language function.) Thanks for the cool (and parenthetical) nested question! CR From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 21:09:54 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:09:54 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <3C1FA834.4C35AD5F@ucla.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Pamela Munro wrote: > Like John, I am often asked for proverb-analogues in the (Siouan and > non-Siouan) languages I work on, and I actually feel that this is definitely > a genre that is not highly represented in the Americas. I'm relieved that this impression is not entirely an matter of oversight on my part. . > One of my students has been getting some aphoristic things in Pima, but they > are mainly of the form "Marry a ___ (fill in tribe) and your ____ (fill in > body part) will _____ (fill in verb with negative consequences)" -- this > doesn't seem completely like a proverb to me! I've run into a comment (in English) in the past about the inadvisability of having KkaNze clan members on councils, with the explanation that they were the wind clan and would therefore tend to talk endlessly without coming to any conclusion, but it wasn't presented in any sort of formula. It was as if the proposition was proverbial, but not the form. On the other hand, I'm not sure if the now forgotten source was necessarily fluent in Omaha, and I assumed at the time that it might be a case of factional politics invoking a perhaps traditional canard. Another somewhat comparable belief might be the proposition that a boy excessively exposed to female speakers will probably use female speech forms in error, though this actually comes from Dakota and Osage contexts. Again, I don't know of any formulaic expression of this. > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best > case I know of being Wolof). I think proverbs and proverb-like formulas are fairly well distributed, but I don't have any distributional information. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 21:25:53 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:25:53 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote: > But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and > talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in > English, and then usually as a joke. I don't think I use them particularly frequently myself, but I certainly recognize a long list of them and can produce a fair number off the top of my head if I try to. And you encounter phrases or allusions (often humorous) lifted from them even when you don't hear the full proverb, e.g., "My, you're an early bird today!" or "I was early once, and found out I didn't like worms." However, using proverbs as a source of idioms and basis for allusions is probably no different than making biblical allusions, or, taking a different tack, using naval idioms - also widespread in at least American English. Any domain can be used in this way. It's the existence of the particular domain that seems to be questionable. I can think of a Siouan (or Northern Plains) literary allusion of this sort: the age-grade society name "Little Dogs" referring to 'the little dogs without names', in contrast to the named older puppies and named youngest one, in the basis myth of the dog series of societies. Naturally this would have gone past me completely, except that Lowie, I think it is, happens to mention it, it having been explained to him. As he put it, the full name of the society was 'little dogs without names'. JEK From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Tue Dec 18 22:23:20 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:23:20 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on consequences." He goes to lengths to explain that this is because one has dreams of the thunder being in naps. His sentence summary is in 2 below. Thus, Deloria gives in (8) an explanation of the lost? genre, which doesn't seem proverbial, but akin: (Please excuse my lack of making this all into the right font. Grave accents are nasal vowels.) Hé unwicháxcala thóiyepi kì él "Àpé ishtì'*mapi kì hé shíce ló, kiktáhà unpó, naíchib.Leb. Les ééománi pó; tókshá wí kì hé mahél iyáya chà naké? hehanl wichásha ishtíme ló!" Eyáya wawáhokunkhiyapi?. 2 That/ on account of/ old men/ their words/ the/ in/ "Day sleeping/ the/ that/ bad/ in a waking state/ be!/ Rousing self by foot/ instead/ walk about!/ Later/ sun/ the/that/ in / it goes/ then/ at last/ then/ man/ he sleeps!"/ So saying/ they exhort the people. 7 Wicháxcala thóiyepi 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of teachings. One I heard elsewhere was "Hàhép﷓thani'*ya kì shíce ló; oíyokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza kì thíl awíchaku pó!" (The breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the house.") There were ever so many more. I do not know whether they could be gathered at this late day. With some of these precepts, maxims, or what you will, to serve as texts, the old men would walk around the camp circle uninvited, and preach little sermonettes to the tribe. They were not always carefully attended, but they didn't seem to mind the indifference of the hearers. They would go talking along anyways. Dr. Sara Trechter, Assoc Professor English/Linguistics, CSU, Chico Chico, CA 95929-0830 (530) 898-4449 (office) (530) 898-4450 (fax) strechter at csuchico.edu -----Original Message----- From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 1:26 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Proverbs On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote: > But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and > talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in > English, and then usually as a joke. I don't think I use them particularly frequently myself, but I certainly recognize a long list of them and can produce a fair number off the top of my head if I try to. And you encounter phrases or allusions (often humorous) lifted from them even when you don't hear the full proverb, e.g., "My, you're an early bird today!" or "I was early once, and found out I didn't like worms." However, using proverbs as a source of idioms and basis for allusions is probably no different than making biblical allusions, or, taking a different tack, using naval idioms - also widespread in at least American English. Any domain can be used in this way. It's the existence of the particular domain that seems to be questionable. I can think of a Siouan (or Northern Plains) literary allusion of this sort: the age-grade society name "Little Dogs" referring to 'the little dogs without names', in contrast to the named older puppies and named youngest one, in the basis myth of the dog series of societies. Naturally this would have gone past me completely, except that Lowie, I think it is, happens to mention it, it having been explained to him. As he put it, the full name of the society was 'little dogs without names'. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 23:36:39 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 16:36:39 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire > introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the > speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on > consequences." > Hé unwicháxcala thóiyepi kì él "Àpé ishtì'*mapi kì ... This comes out pretty well traashed in pine, but may work with Windows email programs. > 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer > heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of This certainly sounds like a description of a body of proverbs. > One I heard elsewhere was "Hàhép﷓thani'*ya kì shíce ló; > oíyokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza kì thíl awíchaku pó!" (The > breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the > house.") And this, plus "Napping brings consequences." are presumably actual Dakota proverbs. In both cases there's no use of the sort of metaphorical language that is common in English proverbs, but a proverb like "Feed a cold; starve a (or, originally, I gather, of) fever." isn't particularly metaphorical, either, just an obscure way of saying "Eat sparingly when you're sick." Actually, the Omaha-Ponca texts are full of exhortations to "be active" and "travel" which sound a lot like some of Deloria's sample exhortation. There's even a text that represents a sort of homily on the subject that must be relevant to the issue of proverbs. Maybe my problem with recognizing proverbs is recognizing them as stock phrases. A new proverb sounds fresh. From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Wed Dec 19 00:16:05 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 16:16:05 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. Dr. Sara Trechter, Assoc Professor English/Linguistics, CSU, Chico Chico, CA 95929-0830 (530) 898-4449 (office) (530) 898-4450 (fax) strechter at csuchico.edu From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 19 00:18:49 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 18:18:49 -0600 Subject: fonts. Message-ID: Sorry I don't have anything to offer on proverbs except to add my voice to those who haven't encountered any. I did want to note that Sara's Siouan font came through in Windows perfectly. The way to get this effect (i.e., the way I do it) is to specify the Siouan (SIL) SSDoulos font as the DEFAULT font for Windows and leave it that way. (I THINK I did this through MSOffice) All the accented V's were properly accented and all the nasal vowels had their hooks. She used digraphs for nasal U and the necessary consonants. We must be getting somewhere close to the point where we can actually use the real characters instead of "net Siouan". I haven't checked Eudora, but it must work the same way Netscape and Explorer do. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Trechter, Sara To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' Sent: 12/18/01 4:23 PM Subject: RE: Proverbs I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on consequences." He goes to lengths to explain that this is because one has dreams of the thunder being in naps. His sentence summary is in 2 below. Thus, Deloria gives in (8) an explanation of the lost? genre, which doesn't seem proverbial, but akin: (Please excuse my lack of making this all into the right font. Grave accents are nasal vowels.) Hé unwicháxcala thóiyepi kì él "Àpé ishtì'*mapi kì hé shíce ló, kiktáhà unpó, naíchib.Leb. Les ééománi pó; tókshá wí kì hé mahél iyáya chà naké? hehanl wichásha ishtíme ló!" Eyáya wawáhokunkhiyapi?. 2 That/ on account of/ old men/ their words/ the/ in/ "Day sleeping/ the/ that/ bad/ in a waking state/ be!/ Rousing self by foot/ instead/ walk about!/ Later/ sun/ the/that/ in / it goes/ then/ at last/ then/ man/ he sleeps!"/ So saying/ they exhort the people. 7 Wicháxcala thóiyepi 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of teachings. One I heard elsewhere was "Hàhép?thani'*ya kì shíce ló; oíyokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza kì thíl awíchaku pó!" (The breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the house.") There were ever so many more. I do not know whether they could be gathered at this late day. With some of these precepts, maxims, or what you will, to serve as texts, the old men would walk around the camp circle uninvited, and preach little sermonettes to the tribe. They were not always carefully attended, but they didn't seem to mind the indifference of the hearers. They would go talking along anyways. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Dec 19 03:35:16 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:35:16 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: > Pamela wrote: > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best > case I know of being Wolof). I seem to recall running into an enormous body of proverbs a few years ago when I was looking at Igbo. Is West Africa in general an area particularly rich in this genre? > I hope more people will comment on this. Here's my two cents (cheap at the price!): I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to be metaphorical? If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. Suppose I live in a relatively egalitarian society where intra-group conflict is frowned upon, and where strong people will surely lose respect and power if they assault their compatriots simply for disagreeing with them. Here, if I have a disagreement with my neighbor, I can speak my mind plainly (if politely), without fear of serious consequences. In this scenario, I don't need a proverb; I just need to state my views about the concrete issue at hand. On the other hand, suppose I live in a socially stratified society where group solidarity takes a back seat to cutthroat competition for status and power among its members. Here we have a teeming mass of struggling peasants and social nobodies, dominated by castes of chieftains, warriors, clerics and other social-climbing elites, who themselves live in constant terror of falling back into the black hole of social nullity over which they rule. To these elites, honor is of the essence. Being bearded to their face is an embarrassment, and embarrassment signals weakness and brings unwelcome attention from ambitious rivals. If I state my disagreement to a person in this position, I force him either to be embarrassed or to squish me like a bug, and I can easily guess which route he will be inclined to take. So I suffer my resentments in silence along with everyone else, until one day a diabolically inspired raconteur tells us an amusing story he has made up that metaphorically nails the very behavior we are all so frustrated with. We listeners enjoy a catharsis of hysterical laughter, and pass the fable along. Soon our ruler is losing credibility by the bucketload, but can't very well punish anybody without first acknowledging that the lampoon applies to him, which would bring him even greater embarrassment and dishonor. Eventually the story is so well known that it doesn't bear repeating. To express devastating social criticism, we need only reference the title bar of the appropriate story. The party being criticized cannot easily respond, because doing so would require him to assert that he is being criticized, which in turn would mean that he must assume the logic of the metaphor. And it is not only tyrants that can be caught in this rhetorical Catch-22; it can be quite effective in winning arguments within your family and local neighborhood as well. When it reaches this stage of usage, I think we have a true proverb. If this model for the origin of proverbs is valid, then we should predict that they are a fairly recent development in human history, and that they will be richly represented in chiefdom, feudal and state-form societies, but rare or absent in band- or tribal-type societies, including most of aboriginal North America. I would expect them to be present in Mexico and Central America, and likely in the societies of the Pacific Northwest coast. Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 05:54:24 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 22:54:24 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > be metaphorical? I guess it would also be worth while knowing if there are any typological or distributional studies of proverbs. For myself, I wouldn't think that any standard saying (or idiom of sentence length?) would be a proverb. Some might be simply admired formulations, like "Give me liberty or give me death!" as opposed, say, to "Live free or die!" Many of these might be fragmentary quotations of some larger work, as in this case. I suppose some might be more or less anonymous or at least unquoted - customary formulations like "I'm glad to see you." or lengthy idioms - no good example occurs! I would think, however, that it would have to be, if not admonitory, at least advisory or procedural, and if not metaphorical, perhaps normally somewhat obscure. However, I could see obscurity or metaphorical qualities as a stylistic feature that might not be universal. > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural > regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or > absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life > circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases chiefdoms. Their widespread demise seems to have accompanied early contact, with the main early factor being massive die-offs due to mingling of disease pools. I'm sure there's some debate about timing and causation. I've also heard it argued that as contact intensified the fur trade caused a definite shift in the East and Plains away from horticulture and toward hunting, as well as largely eliminating such indigenous industries as flint knapping and pottery. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 06:28:47 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 23:28:47 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I > think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the > "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't > have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an address to the young men." The first sentence is: Ni'ashiNga=mashe, people you the-COLLECTIVE wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] you work for yourselves throat panting udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, you fill very if ONLY e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL "Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern in Omaha-Ponca. The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the free translation. I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as "Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be active!" or "Make an effort!" From munro at ucla.edu Wed Dec 19 07:05:42 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 23:05:42 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: I think (as probably most of you do too) you can have obscure metaphors without proverbs. For instance, in Chickasaw (sorry; I venture a bit outside Siouan) when you see a certain type of cloud / sky formation you can say, "Satan is beating his wife." (Sorry; this is not a family show.) I would not call this a proverb. However, I think it's clearly obscure / metaphorical. Pam Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > > be metaphorical? > > I guess it would also be worth while knowing if there are any typological > or distributional studies of proverbs. > > For myself, I wouldn't think that any standard saying (or idiom of > sentence length?) would be a proverb. Some might be simply admired > formulations, like "Give me liberty or give me death!" as opposed, say, to > "Live free or die!" Many of these might be fragmentary quotations of some > larger work, as in this case. I suppose some might be more or less > anonymous or at least unquoted - customary formulations like "I'm glad to > see you." or lengthy idioms - no good example occurs! I would think, > however, that it would have to be, if not admonitory, at least advisory or > procedural, and if not metaphorical, perhaps normally somewhat obscure. > However, I could see obscurity or metaphorical qualities as a stylistic > feature that might not be universal. > > > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural > > regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or > > absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life > > circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. > > I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it > is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases > chiefdoms. Their widespread demise seems to have accompanied early > contact, with the main early factor being massive die-offs due to mingling > of disease pools. I'm sure there's some debate about timing and > causation. I've also heard it argued that as contact intensified the fur > trade caused a definite shift in the East and Plains away from > horticulture and toward hunting, as well as largely eliminating such > indigenous industries as flint knapping and pottery. -- Pamela Munro Professor, Department of Linguistics, UCLA UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 USA http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From ullrich.j at soupvm.cz Wed Dec 19 10:58:56 2001 From: ullrich.j at soupvm.cz (Jan F. Ullrich) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 11:58:56 +0100 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My comment is concerned with similes rather then proverbs, but I guess there might be some relationship between the two. At least, both can be metaphorical, and similes are often a part of a proverb. In the introduction to her Dakota Texts Deloria says: "These tales [ohuN'kakaN], in which generally some mythological character like Iktomi, Iya, the Crazy Bull, the Witch, or Waziya (the Cold), takes part together with human beings, are part of the common literary stock of the people. CONSTANT ALLUSION IS MADE TO THEM; SIMILES ARE DRAWN FROM THEM WHICH EVERY INTELLIGENT ADULT IS SURE TO UNDERSTAND. "Like shooting off the sacred arrow," or, "They are dancing with eyes shut, to his singing" one hears repeatedly. "He is playing Iktomi" is understood to mean that a person is posing as a very agreeable fellow, simply to get what he wants." Besides, I think there are several sayings within the Dakota Texts. The one that I remembered immediately is from the "Turtle goes to war" story: Phatkasha cha mnil ayapi kte s'e. Just like the turtle when they want to throw it into water. Meaning that one really wants to get something by pretending the opposite. There are lots more similes (and/or sayings) in Buechel, although some of them are just idiomatic sayings, e.g. KhaNgi s?e iyuN'ke. To go to bed in the way of crows. Meaning - to go to bed early (sorry, I don't know how this saying goes in English, in Czech we "go to bed with hens/fowls" :-)) Iktomi s?e chiNca' o'ta la'xcake. He's got as many children as a spider. Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) Phezhi' tho ai'camna. It is snowing on green grass. (Saying when snow fall in late spring.) Shake' nitha'pa kte. Your fingers will change into balls. When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. ShuN'ka themni' t?a'pi kte lo. Dogs will sweat to death. (It is going to be very hot.) MashtiN'ca hiN' yupo'te xce lo'. The rabbit has torn his hair up. (Only few snow flakes have fallen.) This one may as well be derived from a trickster tale in which rabbit shows Iktomi how to cause snowing by tearing rabbit's hair. Talking of proverbs vs. similes: it should be interesting to note that many Indo-European proverbs come from fairytales or from the biblical stories. Most of such tales/stories are concluded with a moral, which is later turned into a proverb. But the Siouan tales/myths (at least the pre-missionary ones) usually don't include any moral. Instead a simile is often derived from the tales' character behavior. Could that be any hint for why Siouan languages lack proverbs? Jan Ullrich From Richard.L.Dieterle-1 at tc.umn.edu Wed Dec 19 11:24:28 2001 From: Richard.L.Dieterle-1 at tc.umn.edu (Richard L. Dieterle) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 05:24:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The Winnebago have sayings, although a mere saying lacks the metaphorical element necessary to proverbs. Here is one from memory in English: "The old people (always) say, 'It is good to die on the warpath'." This is quite often quoted, but it is a far cry from "A stitch in time saves nine," which is hardly ever applied literally to clothing repair. Mention of a political context brings to mind something very similar to a proverb. This is from Foster who collected his material from the Nebraska Winnebago in 1854 and alludes to a myth in which the lesser bird clans come from ancestors who were generated from the feathers of the Thunders, the bigger the feather, the more important the clan -- "Those named from the Thunders or Elements, who 'kindled the fire,' are said to have the most power, and they claim to be superior to the others. ... Those belonging to the First Thunder Family or Elemental Family are not slow to remind even the Second Thunder Family, or Visible-Bird Family, of their right of precedence ... if two whose names are of the First and Second Thunders, get into a dispute with each other, the former will sometimes end the argument contemptuously by saying, 'Why, you are nothing but a feather of mine,' and some will go so far as to say, 'you are nothing but the fuzz of my feathers;' and even the children learn early to retort in this wise." (Thomas Foster, Foster's Indian Record and Historical Data (Washington, D. C.: 1876-1877) vol. 1; #1, p. 4, coll. 1, 4.) The implicit proverb would be, "A Hawk (Clansman) is but a feather of a Thunder (Clansman)"; or "A Pigeon is but the down of a Thunder." However, I am not sure we have an explicit proverb. Richard Dieterle From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 19 16:00:57 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:00:57 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? I think proverbs (which I've always pronounced "praberbs" for some reason) are attested just about as far back as writing, but "fairly recent" is a relative term in any event. I have entire books of them in Romanian, and many of these had precise analogs in classical antiquity. I guess I've always looked upon them as just another literary genre, and, as such, the product of style, fad and rapid diffusability. They're not exactly formal genera like haikus, limericks or sonnets, but there is a semi-formal element to them in that they must be concise, pithy, etc. in order to be catchy enough to take hold, spread and be passed to succeeding generations. Native American music seems to be short on love ballads too, but that doesn't stem from any lack of the feeling of love among/between Indian people; it's just a style of expression that Europeans (and no doubt others) have adopted in order to express those sentiments. They could as easily be expressed linguistically -- in either prose or poetry -- and no doubt are. My misspent years as a literary scholar (?) before I discovered TRVTH suggest to me that these things are matters of fashion, not social politics. Theories that rely on any version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis are nearly impossible to disprove, but they are equally impossible to prove. The evidence, such as it is, admits of too many conflicting interpretations. These sorts of interpretations were very much frowned upon during the '50's and '60's but reappeared in literature and anthropology in the '80's or early '90's. As you can see, I'm a product of the earlier period. :-) Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 16:11:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 09:11:36 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <3C203C44.993B3817@ucla.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Pamela Munro wrote: > I think (as probably most of you do too) you can have obscure metaphors > without proverbs. For instance, in Chickasaw (sorry; I venture a bit outside > Siouan) when you see a certain type of cloud / sky formation you can say, > "Satan is beating his wife." (Sorry; this is not a family show.) I would not > call this a proverb. However, I think it's clearly obscure / metaphorical. I agree. Perhaps what is missing here is the admonition or advisory quality, which is what I meant by saying that "Live free or die!" is a better proverb than "Give me liberty or give me death!" Not that I'm sure it qualifies as a proverb, but I think the issue there might be the lack of metaphor or even generalized obscurity. From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Wed Dec 19 18:01:51 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:01:51 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. However, it seems also to be of great interest. I think that in the western stereotype occurring in movies, etc, there is always some scene where the Native American explains some obscure, wise "saying." This pop culture strategy has also been adopted in more modern 'native American' movies such as Pow Wow Highway, and "Smoke Signals." It's a representation of other cultures common in the Charlie Chan movies many of saw when we were younger. I do wonder if this is just complete western invention, or if there are some language groups that go heavy on the proverbs. The grammatical structure, style, and origin of proverbs (or lack of, however we define them) in Native North America would make an interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with the AAA:New Orleans. If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an organizer and put the word out. sara t -----Original Message----- From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:29 PM To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' Subject: RE: Proverbs On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I > think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the > "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't > have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an address to the young men." The first sentence is: Ni'ashiNga=mashe, people you the-COLLECTIVE wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] you work for yourselves throat panting udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, you fill very if ONLY e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL "Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern in Omaha-Ponca. The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the free translation. I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as "Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be active!" or "Make an effort!" From FurbeeL at missouri.edu Wed Dec 19 20:21:29 2001 From: FurbeeL at missouri.edu (Louanna Furbee) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 14:21:29 -0600 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Regarding Sara's query: Tojolab'al Maya has a ton of proverbs and >admonitions. Susan Knowles-Berry did an honors paper on some of them >for me years ago, and before that, Pierre Venture also made a >collection (Susan augmented Pierre's collection, as I recall, in her >data-gathering phase). She might be interested in picking up an old >interest. Her address is 12618 NE 5th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98685. Louanna >John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some >way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. However, it seems also to be >of great interest. I think that in the western stereotype occurring in >movies, etc, there is always some scene where the Native American explains >some obscure, wise "saying." This pop culture strategy has also been adopted >in more modern 'native American' movies such as Pow Wow Highway, and "Smoke >Signals." It's a representation of other cultures common in the Charlie Chan >movies many of saw when we were younger. I do wonder if this is just >complete western invention, or if there are some language groups that go >heavy on the proverbs. The grammatical structure, style, and origin of >proverbs (or lack of, however we define them) in Native North America would >make an interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with >the AAA:New Orleans. > >If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an organizer and put the word >out. > >sara t > >-----Original Message----- >From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] >Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:29 PM >To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' >Subject: RE: Proverbs > > >On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: >> The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I >> think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the >> "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I >don't >> have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. > >That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure >metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that >if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. > >Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" >pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation >composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey >editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to >George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an >address to the young men." > >The first sentence is: > >Ni'ashiNga=mashe, >people you the-COLLECTIVE > >wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] >you work for yourselves throat panting > >udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, >you fill very if ONLY > >e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! >what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL > >"Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be >only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly >thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) > >The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for >yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle >things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" >is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional >clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern >in Omaha-Ponca. > >The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following >verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even >translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the >free translation. > >I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase >that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the >imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as >"Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be >active!" or "Make an effort!" -- Prof. N. Louanna Furbee Department of Anthropology 107 Swallow Hall University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211 USA Telephones: 573/882-9408 (office) 573/882-4731 (department) 573/446-0932 (home) 573/884-5450 (fax) E-mail: FurbeeL at missouri.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 20:22:40 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 13:22:40 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some > way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. I know some linguists - those of us who are linguists probably all do, I imagine - who would definitely identify it as "not linguistics." I'm sure it qualifies as philology. I think that is is linguistically interesting in the sense that genre clearly influences purely linguistic factors like morphology and syntax. In addition, though the status of the lexicon with purists is somewhat nebulous, texts in such succinct forms tend to verge on idioms, which are presumably lexical entries or on the border of that. > However, it seems also to be of great interest. I think that in the > western stereotype occurring in movies, etc, there is always some > scene where the Native American explains some obscure, wise "saying." > ... The collections of examples of Native American sayings I've seen were isolated, not in movies, and struck me as a mix of new age wisdom and cowboy humor. > The grammatical structure, style, and origin of proverbs (or lack of, > however we define them) in Native North America would make an > interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with the > AAA:New Orleans. If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an > organizer and put the word That would be very interesting! I hope you won't restrict it to Siouanists. And I hope you can get somebody to do some sort of a preliminary survey. Or maybe that could be a non-paper activity? I do think you'll either have to have some sort of reference that defines proverbs, or perhaps characterize it somehow as a session on allusions within one text to another text. "Traditional literary allusions in Native American discourse"? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 20:46:54 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 13:46:54 -0700 Subject: Other Sessions Waiting to Be Organized Message-ID: Sara's suggestion that an AAA SSILA (CAIL) session on proverbs and the lack, perhaps, in some cases of proverbs, should be organized, and her noble offer to organize it, remind me that Robert Rankin and/or myself have at times thought it might be interesting to have a session or even a conference on several other issues, which it might be interesting to post here. One would be (a) cultigen vocabulary and perhaps some other sorts of artifactual or technological vocabulary of interest to archaeologists, probably combined with some sort of attempt at a survey. This came about under the inspiration of an article by archaeologist Patrick Munson, if I recall his name correctly, who attempted to do the survey for Eastern cultigen terms with interesting results that could have been improved upon if it weren't so difficult for a non-specialist to tease the relevant terms out of the literature and make any sense of them linguistically. Also, (b) it would probably be interesting to look at placenames and ethnonyms, and (c) loans and loan translations, which come up immediately as you try to look at the former. Conferences like these are useful consciousness raising exercises, I think, not unlike the paper at the recent Chicago Siouan & Caddoan Conference - I'm sorry I'm forgetting the name of the author - from Kansas? - on the vocabulary of emotion. . From boris at terracom.net Thu Dec 20 01:39:02 2001 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:39:02 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) This is what I would define as a proverb ... a condition and a result.....most of us would probably consider English proverbs as cliches ...a stitch in time saves nine....I guess fits Alan From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Thu Dec 20 05:53:34 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:53:34 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >> Rory said: >> If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural >> regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or >> absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life >> circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. > John replied: > I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it > is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases > chiefdoms. [...] I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to my hypothesis. I can think of at least three possible defenses: 1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed a tradition of proverbs. But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good. I don't want to go this route. 2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. What about the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of when we use that term. I don't mean to imply that they did not have chiefs; after all, so did many of the Plains Indian societies with which we Siouanists are most familiar, but which are not generally called chiefdoms. I also don't mean to imply that the chiefs were not elevated very high, perhaps even to semi-divine status. The one historical account I have heard of, relating to the Natchez, describes a supreme ruler called the Great Sun, who headed an exogamous matrilineal royal clan. Everyone outside of that clan was a Stinker, including, of course, the Great Sun's own father, children and inlaws. (I'm going off memory from a popular rendition; I think this is right.) In temporate European history, the Celtic and Germanic societies around the time of the Roman Empire were pretty certainly what we would consider chiefdoms. But some two to three millennia earlier there had already appeared monumental central places like Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill, which might be reasonably comparable to the temple mounds and other works of the Mississippian period in North America. The societies that built these European monuments are also generally believed to have been chiefdoms. If so, were they sociologically more comparable to the historically recorded chiefdoms of the Roman period two or three millennia later, or to the presumably tribal societies that had immediately preceded them? What I suggest is that "chiefdom" covers a range of societal forms that may span thousands of years of gradual evolution from "tribal" to "feudal" or "state". Its earlier phases would be nearer "tribal" and its later phases would be nearer "feudal" or "state". Its earlier phases might be ethnographically unrecorded due to the accident of no major, undevastated regions of the world happening to be in these phases in the past two hundred years that Westerners have been scientifically researching foreign societies. In this case, use of the term "chiefdom", with all its "late-chiefdom" ethnological connotations, may seriously prejudice our interpretation of archaeologically recorded societies that are in fact "early-chiefdom". How would an "early-chiefdom" compare with a "late-chiefdom"? I would think that in an "early-chiefdom" society, each person would still belong to a discrete band and tribe which moved, foraged and acted together. There would still be unclaimed areas of terrain available to shift to if one's current area became untenable. The chiefdom would initially be a formal, permanent federation for defense, and for the controlled exploitation and redistribution of exotic goods brought into the common territory. The chief at this stage might be primarily a sacred figurehead accepted by the leaders of the various constituent bands, who could always defect to another chiefdom if they wished. The federation would have a central ceremonial site, upon which its members would invest much patriotic labor to make it appear as formidable as possible to all onlookers. Participating bands and individuals would be rewarded in the coin of special honors and rights within the federal community. The chief would have little direct power over his people. Freedom of speech would usually be safe, since most of one's life is spent within one's own band, which can always move if threatened, and within which one's own personal position is secure. A "late-chiefdom" would be a much more rooted society. Virtually all available subsistence terrain would already be owned by someone, so being forced to move would be a serious hardship. Resource exploitation would be intense, and almost everything useful would be owned. Corporate kinship groups, perhaps descended from the original bands, would still exist, but would tend to be extended networks converging on locally important individuals and families rather than discrete units. Closeness of kinship to powerful individuals would be more important than simply belonging to their division. Many people would be mere household hangers-on, living at the tolerance of those who actually owned the resources, and doing their bidding. Some would achieve a measure of independence by specializing in some craft, and bartering their product for their necessities. In this type of society, we would see formalized ownership of terrain, craft specialization, intensive quid-pro-quo commerce, slavery and other household dependency relations, peddlers of charms and superstitions, and probably the development of proverbs, riddles and other genres of cryptical rhetoric. This is what I usually have in mind when I think of chiefdom-level society. It might or might not be headed by a chief. So this is my third, and preferred defense: that Mississippian societies (and 3rd millennium B.C. temperate European societies) are examples of my proposed "early-chiefdom" societies, and despite their chiefs and monumental central places were not any too different sociologically from the Indians found in eastern temperate North America in the last four hundred years. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 06:10:29 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:10:29 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20011219193811.00a2e3f0@mail.terracom.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Alan Knutson wrote: > Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. > Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". > (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) > > > This is what I would define as a proverb ... a condition and a > result.....most of us would probably consider English proverbs as cliches > ...a stitch in time saves nine....I guess fits I'd be willing to accept this as a proverb: it's a sentence with a fixed form encapsulating what could be viewed as a warning or advice. I don't believe it could be called obscure or metaphorical, though the conditional clause falls potentially into that category, even though comparing pains in the body to gnawing is a common enough analogy. It sounds like its application is fairly literal, which is to say that you couldn't use it to mean that the children are quarreling and homelife is bound to take a turn for the worse. It's not clear to me that proverbs necessarily or typically involve a condition and a result, though that is a good way to ecapsulate advice. But consider: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Feed a cold, starve a fever. (The original "Feed a cold, starve of fever." is conditional.) A bird in the hand is worth nine in the bush. Be it never so humble, there's no place like home. You have to break some eggs to make an omelette. Conditions are implicit, however, in proverbs like: Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight. Love me, love my dog. I think that in proverbs conditional formulations are like similes: common but not criterial. Would it be reasonable to say that a proverb is a short text of more or less fixed and memorable form that encapsulates something that a culture knows? It's not necessarily an allusion, except perhaps to the knowledge in question, but you can allude to the proverb, e.g., "It may be time to start stitching." I'm not sure if an allusion to familiar text, as in the case of "it's like when ..." or "he's acting like ..." formulae, explicit or implicit, is a proverb, though as indicated you can clearly allude to a proverb without quoting it. In addition, both proverbs and allusions are ways of using one text within another, and invoke traditional knowledge or cultural context. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 06:42:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:42:36 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to > my hypothesis. I can think of at least three possible defenses: > > 1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed > a tradition of proverbs. > > But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought > to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good. I > don't want to go this route. It's conceivable that enough time and trouble passed between, say, 1600 and 1850 or so, in cultures without written traditions, to forget some important things, though I rather doubt this would hold water either. Proverbs are intended to be remembered, and oral cultures have good memories for some kinds of things. Many of the traditional stories are very widespread. > 2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not > find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may > be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian > chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. What about > the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are > equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. Mississippi Valley Siouan is perhaps questionable as a central participant, but it was clearly immediately peripheral and interacting. > 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American > Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, > I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies > were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of > when we use that term. I've noticed that there's a good deal of argument about what chiefdoms (in a technical sense) are and whether given cultures, directly observed and indirectly (e.g., archaeologically) observed, are chiefdoms in this sense or that. I think there's a lot of argument specifically about whether particular Mississippian cultures were chiefdoms. I really just meant that it's clear that the contact period seems to have been something of a dark age (maybe depression or interregnum would be safer terms!) as far as indigenous culture and industries are concerned. Eastern North American and Plains cultures before contact seem to have been more complexly organized, more sedentary, more horticultural, more populous, better "capitalized," and so on. I agree that there are levels and kinds of chiefdoms, and that a great deal of the culture of Native America in the contact period must preserve the past, but I suspect that the relative paucity of proverbs is more likely to be either chance or a matter of linguistic or literary dynamics we haven't hit upon yet, because, even without a comprehensive survey of the existence of proverbs, it's pretty clear that they exist across a wide variety of social organization patterns in Europe, Africa and the Near East, and very likely over a time depth of millenia. Of course, they may be like tones - once you catch them, it may be hard to get rid of them. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 07:35:13 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:35:13 -0700 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) In-Reply-To: <000001c1887c$28570b80$1801a8c0@soupvm.cz> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Jan F. Ullrich wrote: > Shake' nitha'pa kte. > Your fingers will change into balls. > When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. And I remember a comment in a story that Catherine Rudin showed me that indicates that ghosts are afraid of flapping laundry. This now smacks (cf. schmecken?) to me of some supporting statement along these lines. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 07:42:51 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:42:51 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Richard L. Dieterle wrote: > The Winnebago have sayings, although a mere saying lacks the metaphorical > element necessary to proverbs. Here is one from memory in English: > > "The old people (always) say, 'It is good to die on the warpath'." > > This is quite often quoted, but it is a far cry from "A stitch in time saves > nine," which is hardly ever applied literally to clothing repair. A comparable comment in Omaha, though I don't know of a traditional form, concerns the desirability of dying facing the enemy, which is a conception not alien to Euro-American culture, i.e., making sure the bullet holes or wounds are in the front. > Mention of a political context brings to mind something very similar to a > proverb. This is from Foster who collected his material from the Nebraska > Winnebago in 1854 and alludes to a myth in which the lesser bird clans come from > ancestors who were generated from the feathers of the Thunders, the bigger the > feather, the more important the clan -- ... > > The implicit proverb would be, "A Hawk (Clansman) is but a feather of a Thunder > (Clansman)"; or "A Pigeon is but the down of a Thunder." However, I am not sure > we have an explicit proverb. You could regard this as an idiom, but it's also a traditional form of argument: "I am better than you because I am X and you are Y, and Y is but the feather of or down on an X, i.e., X is much better than Y." JEK From are2 at acsu.buffalo.edu Thu Dec 20 07:58:01 2001 From: are2 at acsu.buffalo.edu (Ardis R Eschenberg) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 02:58:01 -0500 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Omaha has many sets of sayings involving condition-consequence. I feel that they are more admonition than proverb & think that some may relate to clan specific behavior. I can't think of a very metaphorical one offhand that would feel very proverb-y to me. But, there are all sorts of admonitions as to how to behave and the reason/consequence which I've heard in Omaha and English translation. Often, I am told them as my grandmother said x because y. They might be considered more like folkbeliefs or taboos rather than proverbs. Many are probably pan-Siouan (or even pan-Native American) such as taboos against women touching food at their time of cycle. -Ardis From rankin at ku.edu Thu Dec 20 14:57:25 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 08:57:25 -0600 Subject: Other Sessions Waiting to Be Organized Message-ID: >One would be (a) cultigen vocabulary and perhaps some other sorts of artifactual or technological vocabulary of interest to archaeologists, probably combined with some sort of attempt at a survey. Jane Hill and Kay Fowler are definitely interested in this sort of thing and would probably be very supportive. Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Thu Dec 20 16:23:28 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:23:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: > What about > the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are > equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. I'm not sure if they fit the different proverb models that have been sparked by this thread, but Cherokee has a number of proverb-like sayings. They are much more like the folkway aphorisms Ardis mentioned, however, such as "Don't leave dinner sitting out all night, it will attract _____(bad things)" or "If a butterfly lands on something of yours, you'll get a new one soon," and even taboos on gardening without shirts. I've heard these things, or things like them, from any number of folks. But the fact that they are rarely of a standard form between sources and not particularly applicable to things beyond that which is directly mentioned pretty much limits them to quippy expression of belief--or even superstition, in some people's minds--instead of proverbs proper. But I'm wondering how different that is from English or other languages. Do the not stepping on cracks or not kissing toads or not drinking coke while eating pop rocks sayings not count as proverbial? The whole of such a saying--of at least the first two 8^) --is invoked when cited in part, or even in visual gags. If this does fit the proverb model, then I know lots of examples of Osage folkway "superstitions" that get referenced in similar ways by Osages speaking English, at any rate. As far as whether this maybe culturally referential to the Osage world or perhaps more to the Anglo world, I would imagine it's a little of both. Either way, this topic is fairly at least of some interest to linguists--as is apparent from the volume of nodes in the thread. I wonder if this is symptomatic of the program of linguistics as a course of study or tracable perhaps more to the fact that a linguist is necessarily a student of culture. Proving once again, you can't take the primary cultural feature out of the culturally persistent item inventory and expect to analyze it in a vacuum. (If I hear this sentence once, I hear it twenty or thirty times a day--it's probably on deck to be a proverb itself). -jm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 16:01:52 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:01:52 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <006601c18972$ad138820$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > I'm not sure if they fit the different proverb models that have been > sparked by this thread, but Cherokee has a number of proverb-like sayings. > They are much more like the folkway aphorisms Ardis mentioned, however, such > as "Don't leave dinner sitting out all night, it will attract _____(bad > things)" or "If a butterfly lands on something of yours, you'll get a new > one soon," and even taboos on gardening without shirts. I've heard these > things, or things like them, from any number of folks. But the fact that > they are rarely of a standard form ... Is there a term for things like this that have a standard content, but not a standard form? I suppose 'folk belief', but I'm not sure that's entirely appropriate. It's more like a unit of advice than a credo. A Polonianism? (Now there's a literary allusion!) From voorhis at westman.wave.ca Thu Dec 20 16:09:00 2001 From: voorhis at westman.wave.ca (voorhis at westman.wave.ca) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:09:00 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Koontz John E wrote: > Would it be reasonable to say that a proverb is a short text of more or > less fixed and memorable form that encapsulates something that a culture > knows? It's not necessarily an allusion, except perhaps to the knowledge in question, E. C. Rowlands in "Teach Yourself Yoruba", English Universities Press, London, 1969, p. 54 writes: "... like English proverbs, [Yoruba ones] can be divided into two types: those that make straightforward statements about life, e.g. 'pride comes before a fall', and those that generalise from a particular type of experience, e.g. 'you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink'." Concerning the distribution of proverbs, it seems to be more geographical than sociological, with the centre, at least of cultural importance, apparently in western Africa. Grammars of African languages often give lists of them. Proverbs also exist in Europe but seem to play a less prominent role. Has anyone heard of proverbs in eastern Asia? Chinese proverbs? Japanese? As someone suggested previously in this discussion, the instruction, guidance, and admonition that Africans and Europeans get from proverbs seem to be provided by reference to events and characters in popular myths in traditional Native American communities. Paul From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 16:22:04 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:22:04 -0700 Subject: Language and Culture (was Re: Proverbs) In-Reply-To: <006601c18972$ad138820$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: I thought maybe this might be a good separate thread. On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Either way, this topic is fairly at least of some interest to > linguists--as is apparent from the volume of nodes in the thread. I wonder > if this is symptomatic of the program of linguistics as a course of study or > tracable perhaps more to the fact that a linguist is necessarily a student > of culture. Proving once again, you can't take the primary cultural feature > out of the culturally persistent item inventory and expect to analyze it in > a vacuum. (If I hear this sentence once, I hear it twenty or thirty times a > day--it's probably on deck to be a proverb itself). The Omahas recommended when I was in Macy that I go to the three funerals being held that first week. I know it was partly just to keep me out of their hair while they went to the funerals themselves, but they argued that it it would help me understand them better, and "you can't understand our language if you don't understand us." As a linguist I make an article of faith that to some extent I can construct a grammar in a vacuum, but it's always easier to deal with a sentence when you know what it means, and some things like deixis or vocabulary systems definitely require some contextual or cultural knowledge. That may be why some people want to exclude them as matters of linguistic interest. Apart from that, as a practical matter you can't actually construct useful sentences (for a teaching grammar or even elicitation) without a good cultural grounding. And trying to make sense above the level of a sentence of a text like the Omaha one about the fight with the Dakotas in 1847 has proved impossible for me so far in the absence of a knowledge of the geography and of such factors as the likelihood of the narrator structuring a text in terms of alternative or repeated descriptions of the same events. Even if it might not matter "linguistically" that I can't reconstruct a chronology or itinerary, it does bother me that I can't understand why a given motion verb would be used, or predict the topology of the geography from the ones that are used. From tleonard at prodigy.net Thu Dec 20 16:26:28 2001 From: tleonard at prodigy.net (TLeonard-tulsa.com) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:26:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) Message-ID: JEK wrote: I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. I've heard similar admonishments from older Ponca folks around White Eagle, Oklahoma. The one I always heard was: "Don't whistle while your outside at night. You'll attract ghosts." The one I always loved was: "Don't eat too much fish. They'll make your hair grey." Have recordings of these and others in Ponca. TML From jmcbride at kayserv.net Thu Dec 20 17:30:39 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 11:30:39 -0600 Subject: Language and Culture (was Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: > I thought maybe this might be a good separate thread. > The Omahas recommended when I was in Macy that I go to the three > funerals > being held that first week. I know it was partly just to keep me out of > their hair while they went to the funerals themselves, but they argued > that it it would help me understand them better, and "you can't understand > our language if you don't understand us." Great topic! It reminds me of--and please excuse the level of pop culture in my reference--that "Tanaka at the Bridge" episone of Star Trek: The Next Generation! The aliens spoke English, but even their "universal translator" (don't get me started...) could'nt figure out what they were saying. The idea behind it was that the aliens spoke a language of theatrical metaphors that could not be interpretted out of cultural context. NextGen was one of those rare shows where anthropological linguistics was good material! Paul wrote: > Has anyone heard of proverbs in eastern > Asia? Chinese proverbs? Japanese? The Dhammapada (sp?) is nothing but proverbs. I believe it was written in Pali, a IE Prakrit language. But due to the rich heritage of the Buddhist tradition in the East, I assume there might be an analog there to our Biblical proverbs. I don't know for sure, or anything; it's just speculation on my part. But it also brings up the notion of the Hebrew proverbs as found in the book of... yup... Proverbs. A patriarchical society, true, but not necessarily a chiefdom, and definitely not Missippian! Furthermore, since many Native American languages were first approached by missionaries, and since many such languages may have some Biblical texts translated, I wonder how some of the texts deal with the Proverbs, or even the metaphors. I'm sure 'a camel in the eye of a needle' would be fascinating in Kansa, or even just 'eye of a needle!' From rankin at ku.edu Thu Dec 20 18:06:18 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 12:06:18 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. Yes, we do not know whether ANY Siouan-speaking tribe participated in Mississippian Culture, although some pretty clearly participated in its northern offshoots (the effigy mound and Oneota cultures of Iowa and points North). 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of when we use that term. That may be a reasonable view, but it seems to me to be one of those definitional matters that is hard to resolve and which is quite subject to the orthodoxy of the moment in cultural and social anthropology. The current thinking at Cahokia, as promulgated by the staff there, is that Cahokia, at least, was not only a chiefdom, but that it was multi- cultural", accomodating numerous peoples who spoke different languages. Personally, I don't see the evidence for that sort of thing. Bob From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Thu Dec 20 20:41:19 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 13:41:19 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I have been reading the "proverbs" exchange with interest , thinking I have nothing to say about it. But I'm also grading some text analyses done as course projects by my students this semester, and look what turned up: the end of the story "Turtle", no. 13 in Deloria's published collection, goes like this: "Whenever someone pretends to hold back from the very thing he wants, the Dakota saying runs, "Like a turtle about to be thrown into water." In the Lakhota text, there is a word that would likely be glossed something like "proverb", namely "wo'eye". Deloria's gloss is "(prover ?) saying". I haven't followed very closely the discussion of what constitutes a proverb, and maybe this is more a "cultural insider's allusion to some well-known fact" than a real "proverb", but it's close. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 15:19:37 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 08:19:37 -0700 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <20011221.000223.-78579.1.jggoodtracks@juno.com> Message-ID: Posted for Jimm. Jan's mailer (or site?) is one of those that are set up so that they short circuit the header fields that normally direct replies to the list rather than the original sender. For the reference of subscribers, the From: field encodes the original sender. The Reply-to: field encodes the list and is added by the list server software. Normally this will work to cause replies to come to the list, but the ingenuity of the designers of email programs and the configurers of site mail agents is such that sometimes this simple scheme is confounded. It never hurts to cast a knowing eye over the To: and Cc: fieldS of a letter before you press the send button. On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > John: > I replied back to Jan's EM, but thought it would appear on the lists. It > did not. I've had some PC refurbishing, so some things to work out. > > And since I wrote the few proverbs/ sayings below, I recall some other > admonitions along the same line, as I read what others have to say: > > Dont play ball in the house (where there is a Sacred Bundle), because > ..... (some negative consequence). > Dont sing at the dinner table, or you will marry a crazy person. > Cover the mirrors in the house, during a thunder storm, to avoid > lightning being attracted to the house. > Dont whistle in the night, as it will attract spirits (thinking you want > something of them). > > Perhaps these and the ones below will be of interests to the topic. > Jimm > > --------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Jimm G GoodTracks > To: ullrich.j at soupvm.cz > Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 21:12:20 -0600 > Subject: Re: Proverbs > Message-ID: <20011219.211234.-78579.0.jggoodtracks at juno.com> > > Jan: > I agree with your comments below, to the allusion of comparative real > life situations to those in the traditional stories. However, I do > recall what appears to me as possible proverbs. Several that came to > mind are: > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge (e?e) ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > If a man possesses a sister, he has a second mother > > Ayan' regra'?un ke; Gashun' uyan' ne. > You made your own bed, Now lie in it. > (You created your own predicament/ crisis, so take the consequences). > > Waye're?sun wori'giragesge nanke'rida uki'ruhda re. Tan'dare wama'nyi > je. > If someone tells you something, notice behind him. From where does he > walk? > (When one gives you advise, See if he follows it himself). (Walk your > talk). > > There were others, but these few come to mind. Perhaps the above are as > John says a mix of traditional wisdom with the contemporary thought from > government school education. > > Also, noone has mentioned the Saying & Expressions from LaFlesche's Osage > Dictionary, pp. 399-403. This volume dates the existance of what can be > considered proverbs, it seems. > Jimm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 16:00:52 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 09:00:52 -0700 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > > admonitions along the same line ... > > Dont play ball in the house (where there is a Sacred Bundle), because > > ..... (some negative consequence). > > Dont sing at the dinner table, or you will marry a crazy person. > > Cover the mirrors in the house, during a thunder storm, to avoid > > lightning being attracted to the house. > > Dont whistle in the night, as it will attract spirits (thinking you want > > something of them). We might follow Jimm's implicit suggestion and call some of these things and examples like them already cited "admonitions," especially if they are presented as warnings in conditional form, have a formulaic content, but no fixed wording (or are known only in translation), and lack a metaphorical formulation or application. The admonition concerning mirrors is probably post-Contact, but needn't be especially recent in origin. Were there mirrors pre-contact? I wonder about mica maybe being used in this way. I know it was a pre-Contact trade item, but not why! > > I do recall what appears to me as possible proverbs. Several that came to > > mind are: These definitely qualify as proverbs, to my mind. The one about making one's own bed is so close to a traditional English formulation that I'd wonder if it might be a case of diffusion. I don't recall any parallels for the others, though the thoughts are fairly universal! > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge (e?e) ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > > If a man possesses a sister, he has a second mother > > > > Ayan' regra'?un ke; Gashun' uyan' ne. > > You made your own bed, Now lie in it. > > (You created your own predicament/ crisis, so take the consequences). > > > > Waye're?sun wori'giragesge nanke'rida uki'ruhda re. Tan'dare wama'nyi je. > > If someone tells you something, notice behind him. From where does he walk? > > (When one gives you advise, See if he follows it himself). (Walk your talk). This is metaphorically, though not necessarily intentionally obscurely phrased, but doesn't seem to have a metaphorical application. I'd interpret it as meaning that one should consider the motives or friendships of somebody who offers advice. > > Also, noone has mentioned the Saying & Expressions from LaFlesche's Osage > > Dictionary, pp. 399-403. This volume dates the existance of what can be > > considered proverbs, it seems. I'd forgotten this set, but I recall seeing in some materials Carolyn Quintero showed me a versions of these sayings that I took to be the original. As I recall they were presented there as a coherent monologue. I think the monologue was of Christian missionary origin, but I'm not certain I recall the provenance properly, and I don't know that this would necessily mean that all of the sentiments were of European origin. Certainly there are some clear New Testament parallels, cf., e.g., "No sparrow falls ..." I think that the material simply appealed to LaFlesche philosophically when he encountered it, and,as it was in Osage, that he made use of it as sample Osage sentences. Proverbs, as everyone knows, are contagious. This is what I meant by saying that the genre may be easier for a cultural tradition to acquire than to lose. There's a parallel with computer viruses. (But not with worms, which spread themselves actively.) You might also compare simple, memorable, catchy tunes that stick in your head and go round and round all day - what a computer scientist friend of mine called "song viruses." In effect, proverbs and sayings and admonistions can be thought of as self-perpetuating texts that survive in the environment of human memory, propagated when some one trots one out, and someone else immediately comits it to memory. Like other parasites, some are coincidentally useful, some are not. I suppose some, uncritically applied, might actually be dangerous, though I haven't any particular candidates in mind. ("Have another for the road!"?) Having enough of the right kind inhabiting your mental processes might be a survival trait, just like having the right bacteria in your gut or mitochondria in all your cells. I hope to God this isn't the only real function of intelligence! Aiee! From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Dec 21 16:50:03 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:50:03 -0600 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs Message-ID: > In effect, proverbs and sayings and admonistions can be thought of as > self-perpetuating texts that survive in the environment of human memory, > propagated when some one trots one out, and someone else immediately > comits it to memory. Like other parasites, some are coincidentally > useful, some are not. I suppose some, uncritically applied, might > actually be dangerous, though I haven't any particular candidates in mind. > ("Have another for the road!"?) Having enough of the right kind > inhabiting your mental processes might be a survival trait, just like > having the right bacteria in your gut or mitochondria in all your cells. > I hope to God this isn't the only real function of intelligence! Aiee! > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). It's really fascinating stuff. And then just last week, I was reading that Michael Closs book Native American Mathematics. In it, there is a whole section on the diffusion of the concept of ZERO throughout the world, with specific consideration on Meso-American civilizations. It reminded me of the memetics thing all over again. And now today, it rears its cryptic head once more. Talk of the diffusion of ideas! Does anyone know anything about this? I'd like to check out more information about it. Please excuse me if this field of study may in fact fall into the realm of common knowledge stuff, and I'm just too far behind the times to know. And for all I know, it's just the second coming of phrenology, theosophy, or some other pseudo-science drivel. I am still interested in it, whatever it may be! I know it's not particulary relevent to the technical study of Siouan languages, but it may be germaine to the recent proverb thread. -jm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 18:25:29 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:25:29 -0700 Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) In-Reply-To: <001501c18a3f$8ad56c60$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and > workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called > 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, > but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy > principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, > morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). I'm generally aware of the concept, and I've been meaning to read an article on memes in Scietific American for so long I've misplaced the issue. I thought of mentioning the term in this connection, but decided I had better read the article first, in case meme didn't mean what I thought it did. From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Dec 21 18:54:13 2001 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 13:54:13 EST Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: Hi. Just as an aside- there is actually a mimetics discussion list out there (I can't offhand recall their URL). Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Fri Dec 21 19:45:43 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 13:45:43 -0600 Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: >>On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: >> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and >> workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called >> 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, >> but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy >> principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, >> morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). > John replied: > I'm generally aware of the concept, and I've been meaning to read an > article on memes in Scietific American for so long I've misplaced the > issue. I thought of mentioning the term in this connection, but decided I > had better read the article first, in case meme didn't mean what I thought > it did. I believe the concept of "memes" was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene". The book is basically about the fascinating and completely amoral working of genes in genetic evolution. His last chapter raises the concept of a "meme", which he sees as a unit comparable to a gene operating at a cultural level. I never bought the analogy, which seems grossly reductionist and socio-politically naive to me, but I loved the rest of the book. Try to find a copy if you're interested in this area; it's a fun read! Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sun Dec 23 14:18:46 2001 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 05:18:46 -0900 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The Yoruba language (of the Yoruba in Nigeria, just to the northwest of the Igbo) was and is FULL of proverbs. I was there in 1996 doing research for three months on indigenous knowledge in primary health care. There were dozens of proverbs simply on maintaining health. As a side project and with the assistance of my Yoruba language tutor, I wrote a short book on the daily life of a Yoruba woman based specifically on the use of proverbs. In the traditional Yoruba way of life, all of life was guided by proverbs. Lance rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > Pamela wrote: > > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the > best > > case I know of being Wolof). > > I seem to recall running into an enormous body of proverbs a few years ago > when I was looking at Igbo. Is West Africa in general an area particularly > rich in this genre? > > > I hope more people will comment on this. > > Here's my two cents (cheap at the price!): > > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > be metaphorical? > > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural regions, and > overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or absence is an > indicator > of differences in the historical life circumstances of the people living in > these respective regions. > > Suppose I live in a relatively egalitarian society where intra-group > conflict > is frowned upon, and where strong people will surely lose respect and power > if they assault their compatriots simply for disagreeing with them. Here, > if I > have a disagreement with my neighbor, I can speak my mind plainly (if > politely), > without fear of serious consequences. In this scenario, I don't need a > proverb; I just need to state my views about the concrete issue at hand. > > On the other hand, suppose I live in a socially stratified society where > group solidarity takes a back seat to cutthroat competition for status and > power among its members. Here we have a teeming mass of struggling > peasants > and social nobodies, dominated by castes of chieftains, warriors, clerics > and other social-climbing elites, who themselves live in constant terror of > falling back into the black hole of social nullity over which they rule. > To these elites, honor is of the essence. Being bearded to their face is > an embarrassment, and embarrassment signals weakness and brings unwelcome > attention from ambitious rivals. If I state my disagreement to a person in > this position, I force him either to be embarrassed or to squish me like a > bug, and I can easily guess which route he will be inclined to take. So I > suffer my resentments in silence along with everyone else, until one day a > diabolically inspired raconteur tells us an amusing story he has made up > that metaphorically nails the very behavior we are all so frustrated with. > We listeners enjoy a catharsis of hysterical laughter, and pass the fable > along. Soon our ruler is losing credibility by the bucketload, but can't > very well punish anybody without first acknowledging that the lampoon > applies > to him, which would bring him even greater embarrassment and dishonor. > > Eventually the story is so well known that it doesn't bear repeating. To > express devastating social criticism, we need only reference the title bar > of the appropriate story. The party being criticized cannot easily > respond, > because doing so would require him to assert that he is being criticized, > which in turn would mean that he must assume the logic of the metaphor. > And it is not only tyrants that can be caught in this rhetorical Catch-22; > it can be quite effective in winning arguments within your family and local > neighborhood as well. When it reaches this stage of usage, I think we have > a true proverb. > > If this model for the origin of proverbs is valid, then we should predict > that they are a fairly recent development in human history, and that they > will be richly represented in chiefdom, feudal and state-form societies, > but rare or absent in band- or tribal-type societies, including most of > aboriginal North America. I would expect them to be present in Mexico and > Central America, and likely in the societies of the Pacific Northwest > coast. > Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? > > Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sun Dec 23 14:29:31 2001 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 05:29:31 -0900 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) Message-ID: I was told by the Cheyenne not to whistle at night because that is the language of ghosts and they will come and answer. That is why Austin Two Moon laughed at white people who whistle in the dark whent hey are afraid.. that will bring the exact thing you do not wish to bring! Lance Koontz John E wrote: > On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Jan F. Ullrich wrote: > > Shake' nitha'pa kte. > > Your fingers will change into balls. > > When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. > > I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the > lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding > like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. > > And I remember a comment in a story that Catherine Rudin showed me that > indicates that ghosts are afraid of flapping laundry. This now smacks > (cf. schmecken?) to me of some supporting statement along these lines. > > JEK From rankin at ku.edu Sat Dec 1 16:40:22 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 10:40:22 -0600 Subject: Omaha concordances (fwd) Message-ID: I downloaded these along with "StuffIt" and, having expanded the files, it looks like they will be very helpful indeed -- typoes and all. I'm sure I speak for everyone in thanking Matt for a great job. Bob -----Original Message----- Subject: Fwd: Omaha concordances (fwd) These materials were prepared by Matthew Dryer for the use of Ardis Eschenberg, based on the Siouan Archives keying of the Dorsey texts. He's kindly agreed to let me post the information on the list, too, as I thought perhaps others would also be interested. >The three concordances are at the following URL's: > >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.sit >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.rev.sit >http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/dryer/omaha.conc.engl.sit From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 4 21:03:40 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:03:40 -0600 Subject: Silly terminological question. Message-ID: This is a minor but annoying problem I keep encountering when trying to do interlinear glosses in Siouan linguistics papers. We regularly deal with two different types of verb prefixes that we often call "instrumental". One is generic, the prefix /i/ or /i:/, often translated 'with', 'by means of' but sometimes with its meaning pretty much bleached out. Then there are the more specific "instrumentals" like pa-, yu-, ka-, na-, ya-, etc., etc., the familiar 'by hand', 'by mouth', 'by striking', etc. In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 4 21:59:22 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 14:59:22 -0700 Subject: Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of the uN construction in Dakotan. I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, I'm thinking of instances like: i'/bahaN 'to think' i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' but one might also wonder about i- on a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget which (ordinal?). Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Tue Dec 4 22:20:53 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 15:20:53 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, yu, ya, etc. I have always been comfortable with lumping the i-instrumental with the locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > > In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) > applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal > to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb > (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does > indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of > the uN construction in Dakotan. > > I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the > same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, > > I'm thinking of instances like: > > i'/bahaN 'to think' > i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' > > but one might also wonder about i- on > > a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and > > b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget > which (ordinal?). > > Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. > > How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? > > From jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu Wed Dec 5 03:57:08 2001 From: jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu (John Boyle) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 21:57:08 -0600 Subject: Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob, I gloss the i-/i:- as INST and I gloss the other as more specific instrumentals (i.e. INh - instrumental 'by hand', INf - instrumental 'by foot' etc.). I have found that this helps me keep them straight. John >This is a minor but annoying problem I keep encountering when trying to do >interlinear glosses in Siouan linguistics papers. > >We regularly deal with two different types of verb prefixes that we often >call "instrumental". One is generic, the prefix /i/ or /i:/, often >translated 'with', 'by means of' but sometimes with its meaning pretty much >bleached out. > >Then there are the more specific "instrumentals" like pa-, yu-, ka-, na-, >ya-, etc., etc., the familiar 'by hand', 'by mouth', 'by striking', etc. > >In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do >I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't >a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly >and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to >solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > >Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 04:03:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 21:03:36 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, ROOD DAVID S wrote: > Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's > "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real > locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument > options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of > the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful > abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, > yu, ya, etc. Maybe because the first applicatives I encountered were instrumental I've long had the impression that the core sense of applicative was an affix that introduced an instrumental complement to argument status, and that the wider sense of affix that augments or shuffles the argument structure of the verb was a sort of extension. I've just checked a few general references, however, and it looks like I've had things reversed. Trask (for example) - Crystal was no help on this - defines an applicative as a construction that raises an indirect object or oblique (object) to a direct object. While the Siouan locatives stop a bit short of direct object, because they don't govern concord, at least not that I've noticed so far in OP (Rory? anyone?) - in fact, I think they can co-occur with a direct object - it's clear that they do introduce some sort of secondary argument - at least what I believe Fillmore called an inner locative. So applicative isn't going to work. > locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the > forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. > We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. Returning to Bob's question, which I though was what to gloss i- if one glossed dhi-, ba-, ... (yu-, pa-, ...) as instrumental (or some abbreviation thereof), I'd say there were two cases: - Gloss the locatives (a-, i-, etc.) as locative, LOC, etc. and the instrumentals as instrumental, INS, etc., or - Gloss the individual locatives by sense and the individual instrumentals by sense, but - Not some combination, or, if some combination is needed, use compounds like instrumental locative vs. instrumental or general instrumental vs. hand instrumental. It might be safer to always refer to the locatives as the (something) locative in text. The names I had tentatively come up with for the three locatives, based on Uralic case names, were adessive (a-), superessive (u-), and, well, I'd better call it instrumental (i-). If people prefer to call the first one the locative, then we should probably try to call the class of forms applicatives, because while locative applicative is just long, locative locative is long and awkward. OP udhu (cf. Da iyo-) is pretty close to being perlative (through or at least along). I've never been sure what to make of idha- (cf. Da iya-). There aren't many examples of it. It seems to me that the instrumental function of i- is to introduce specific or maybe non-generic - can I say focussed? - instruments, while the instrumental prefixes indicate non-specific, generic - unfocussed? - instruments. I take it this is implicit in the fact that OP forms like we'base (wa-i-ba-se) indicate a 'saw', but just base' would have to be a 'sawn thing' I think, because the instrument is non-focussed. I don't thibk you can have *wese. This might also be consistent with the tendency to translate instrumentals with 'by ...ing' phrases, i.e., in terms of a pattern of activity instead of a particular instrument. From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Dec 5 08:00:41 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 08:00:41 -0000 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I take David's remark about the difficulty of calling i- a locative. On the other hand I have always had a feeling that it is basically a sort of locative indicating off to one side hence the use as an instrumental 'held in one hand'. It does still have that sort of meaning in some words where it indicates 'colliding with' as in icah^taka 'to have contact with' iwoto, iwoh^taka, iyapha 'bump into'. Even in words like iwaNyaNka 'compare with' one can see soemthing of putting one thing beside another. This is all a bit Andersonian of course as in his Locative deep cases. It maybe helps to ease the use of locative to cover what is in most of its occurrences an instrumental Bruce Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought. John's "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument options, just as i- does. The term "applicative" refers to the function of the morpheme, not its meaning. I think Bob is looking for a meaningful abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka, yu, ya, etc. I have always been comfortable with lumping the i-instrumental with the locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling. We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR. But then what do > > I do with the former type? It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't > > a locative. Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly > > and is confusing to boot. I'm just revising a paper in which I have to > > solve this problem. Anyone have an opinion?? > > In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the) > applicative, it seems to me. I can understand that this might not appeal > to everyone. It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb > (personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does > indicate means. In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of > the uN construction in Dakotan. > > I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the > same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way, > > I'm thinking of instances like: > > i'/bahaN 'to think' > i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise' > > but one might also wonder about i- on > > a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and > > b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget > which (ordinal?). > > Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings. > > How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)? > > Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From pustet at babel.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 09:42:13 2001 From: pustet at babel.Colorado.EDU (regina pustet) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 02:42:13 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: <3C0DD429.20696.DC27C@localhost> Message-ID: The instrumental vs. locative issue is a vexing problem indeed. In my recent Lakota text collection, I sort of bypassed the problem, at least at first sight, by glossing any locative prefix as L- (for locative, because the meaning of prefixes in this slot is mostly a locative one), and any "classical" instrumental prefix by INS-. The reader is then referred to the grammar sketch which is part of the book, in which the different types of L-prefixes and INS-prefixes are listed, and where their specific functions are discussed. I think positing two groups of grammatical elements for the L- and INS- positions, without singling out i- as a special instrumental marker, makes sense especially from a morphosyntactic point of view, since the L- and INS-slots are clearly separate grammatically: L- and INS-markers can be combined within a given verb form. Another thing: what should we do with the derivational prefix i- which designates instruments, i.e. nouns, as in i-cha'phe 'dagger' ("??-stab")? This prefix is of course related to the basic locative/instrumental marker i-, but I think it is semantically distinct enough to be treated as a separate marker, and therefore needs a separate gloss. Regina From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 15:29:36 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 09:29:36 -0600 Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: My thanks to everyone who has responded on this question. My immediate question was indeed the less important (but not insignificant) problem of how to communicate the "truth" about Siouan to an audience of general linguists. And in a single 3 or 4 letter abbreviation..... I've decided to settle on INSTR for the more specific yu-, ya-, ka-, etc. sets, both inner and outer, and use LOC for the more general i-. David, Regina, etc. seem to go along with this, and I think I agree that this is the easiest way to handle it. The larger and far more interesting/important matter of the "real" identity of i- is a can of worms I hadn't intended to open just now. My understanding is that there are at least TWO distinct prefixes historically, and probably synchronically, in each Siouan language. One is instrumental i- and the other is locative i-. The locative generally signals 'movement toward'. One has a long vowel and/or is inherently accented. The other is short/unaccented underlyingly. But obviously accent and lengthening/shortening rules in particular languages along with speakers' reanalyses can be expected to mess with this nice scenario. As for the semantic bleaching that affects the i-instrumental, this is a process that routinely affects derivational morphemes in every language. What we always end up with is an affix with a CONTINUUM of meanings/functions that were originally contextually defined. The context is often lost or blurred and the morpheme moves along the continuum that exists between polysemy and homophony, often ending up in the latter camp. One of the points I tried to make in the paper I'm revising is that, because of the very nature of morphosyntactic change, it will sometimes not be possible to make a principled distinction between auxiliaries, enclitics and suffixes in Siouan post-verbal morphology. There will always be cases in which assignment is somewhat arbitrary. For example there are Dakotan enclitics that betray their (former?) AUX status in that they are still marked for number. And in Dhegiha there are enclitics (?) that are still inflected for person -- but only 2nd person. Then there are the various evidential-like constructions built out of /ehe/ 'say' that seem to be both verbs and enclitics. I think everyone is familiar with the sort of phenomenon I'm talking about. This does not, of course, solve the problem of the 2/several i-'s, but it suggests why the problem is thorny, and perhaps insoluble on principled grounds. Like everything else in linguistics that is interesting, it implies a continuum rather than a set of discrete categories. Again, many thanks for the input. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 15:49:03 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 08:49:03 -0700 Subject: (not so) Silly terminological question. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, regina pustet wrote: > The instrumental vs. locative issue is a vexing problem indeed. In my > recent Lakota text collection, I sort of bypassed the problem, at least at > first sight, by glossing any locative prefix as L- (for locative, because > the meaning of prefixes in this slot is mostly a locative one), and any > "classical" instrumental prefix by INS-. Notice that the glosses are matched in length with the morphemes (approximately). > Another thing: what should we do with the derivational prefix i- which > designates instruments, i.e. nouns, as in i-cha'phe 'dagger' ("??-stab")? > This prefix is of course related to the basic locative/instrumental marker i-, > but I think it is semantically distinct enough to be treated as a separate > marker, and therefore needs a separate gloss. I'm not clear on the difference between this derivational i- and a (grammatical?) one, except in the directional sense Bruce mentions, though his examples sounded pretty derivational to me. What would be an example of the non-derivational i- in Dakotan? I seem to recall that 'to be proud of' might have an i-? From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 16:56:34 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 09:56:34 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John remarks that the so-called locatives in Siouan don't raise an oblique object to direct object status, but I think they do -- in a very peculiar way, at least in Lakhota. Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', but if you use a third person form, you need the postposition, too (phezi kiN akaN achaga 'ice formed on the grass'). Formally the pronouns are direct objects, making the prefix a prototypical applicative, but the prefix seems to be purely derivational with the nouns. I don't know what would happen with a third person animate or human object, but I suspect it would be like the 'grass' example. Does this make the argument structure of the derived verb different for nouns and pronouns? Is there any precedent for something like that in the formal syntax literature? David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Dec 5 17:27:49 2001 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 12:27:49 EST Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: In a message dated 12/05/2001 7:33:36 AM Pacific Standard Time, rankin at ku.edu writes: > The larger and far more interesting/important matter of the "real" identity > of i- is a can of worms I hadn't intended to open just now. My > understanding is that there are at least TWO distinct prefixes > historically, > and probably synchronically, in each Siouan language. One is instrumental > i- and the other is locative i-. The locative generally signals 'movement > toward'. One has a long vowel and/or is inherently accented. The other is > short/unaccented underlyingly. But obviously accent and > lengthening/shortening rules in particular languages along with speakers' > reanalyses can be expected to mess with this nice scenario. > > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii is a postposition, while locative i' is a verbal prefix that patterns with the a'- and o'- instrumentals. The general sense of locative i'- is 'touching, in contact with', e.g. i'hkuluu 'touching', i'kaxxi 'lean on', i'koochi 'hang up, hang over', i'kuxxa 'equal to'. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 18:14:10 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 11:14:10 -0700 Subject: Instrumental/locative. In-Reply-To: <109.9c19dcf.293fb315@aol.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) > 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii > is a postposition, ... That is, the syntax of the instrumental construction is [NP]=ii V? (Or maybe ii isn't enclitic?) That's very nice! I think you've mentioned this before, but somehow it didn't sink in that the ii was not part of the verb. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 5 18:28:30 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 11:28:30 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, ROOD DAVID S wrote: > John remarks that the so-called locatives in Siouan don't raise an oblique > object to direct object status, but I think they do -- in a very peculiar > way, at least in Lakhota. I remembered hearing something like this from David before, which is one reason I hestitated to make the assertion general. > Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also > achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection > (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a > personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga > 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', but if you use a third person form, > you need the postposition, too (phezi kiN akaN achaga 'ice formed on the > grass'). Formally the pronouns are direct objects, making the prefix a > prototypical applicative, but the prefix seems to be purely derivational > with the nouns. I don't know what would happen with a third person > animate or human object, but I suspect it would be like the 'grass' > example. If the verb agreed with the noun, the incorporated or inflectional pronominal would be zero, right? That makes me wonder what would happen if there were an emphatic first person, etc., pronominal outside the verb. Would it, too, require a postposition? An example might be something like 'It was me who had ice forming on me, so why were you complaining?' If it doesn't, we still have exactly the conundrum David points out, and if it does we have a verb agreeing with a postpositional phrase, which would be just as interesting. > Does this make the argument structure of the derived verb > different for nouns and pronouns? Is there any precedent for something > like that in the formal syntax literature? It seems to me that the first would depend on the treatment of independent pronominal arguments, if those are possible. Can akaN stand alone, too, without the noun, or perhaps with an e demonstrative? From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Dec 5 20:28:59 2001 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:28:59 EST Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: In a message dated 12/05/2001 10:15:19 AM Pacific Standard Time, John.Koontz at colorado.edu writes: > On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > > Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) > > 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental > ii > > is a postposition, ... > > That is, the syntax of the instrumental construction is [NP]=ii V? (Or > maybe ii isn't enclitic?) That's very nice! I think you've mentioned > this before, but somehow it didn't sink in that the ii was not part of the > verb. Actually, the ii instrumental is often proclitic on the verb, but it is much more loosely connected to the verb than locative i'-: at times it seems to be a separate word, and I also have examples where it precedes something other than the verb. Locative i'-, on the other hand, patterns with the other locative prefixes and the instrumentals in that the person markers always precede these prefixes in Crow. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 21:42:43 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:42:43 -0600 Subject: Instrumental/locative. Message-ID: Thanks, Randy. That's what I was looking for. I recalled that Randy had explained it to me, but I couldn't remember which was which, so I hedged and just mentioned they were different in terms of length/accent. This time I'll save his posting!! The situation is a bit messier than I had hoped it would be. Because one morpheme is long while the other is accented, they'll probably both tend to attract accent in the MVS languages. Oh well ... we have to leave something for the next generation of Siouanists to do! :-) Bob >Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel) 'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'. Instrumental ii is a postposition, while locative i' is a verbal prefix that patterns with the a'- and o'- instrumentals. The general sense of locative i'- is 'touching, in contact with', e.g. i'hkuluu 'touching', i'kaxxi 'lean on', i'koochi 'hang up, hang over', i'kuxxa 'equal to'. Randy From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 5 21:50:35 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:50:35 -0600 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives Message-ID: >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? Bob From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Wed Dec 5 22:21:22 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 15:21:22 -0700 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Tongue-in-cheek, I would guess amakichaga (ki- 'become'). D. David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also > achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection > (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a > personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga > 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', > > Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were > "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would > say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? > > Bob > From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Dec 6 12:48:43 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 12:48:43 -0000 Subject: syntactic problem with Siouan applicatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For "I turned to ice on it." you could try achah mici'ichage or amakichaga using ic'ichaga 'make oneself into, turn into' or kichaga 'turn to ice', but I'm only guessing. Bruce >Take the word chaga 'ice; for ice to form, freeze'. There is also achaga 'to become ice upon', to use Buechel's definition. My recollection (I can't find my notes at the moment) is that if you use this with a personal pronoun, that pronoun is the object of the locative: amachaga 'ice formed on me (e.g. my eyebrows)', Fascinating. And to think I used to believe that Siouan languages were "real" languages. My immediate reaction, then, is to wonder how one would say "I turned to ice on it." If not amachaga, then what? Bob Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Dec 17 19:35:49 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 12:35:49 -0700 Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary Message-ID: I have a small sketch of Omaha-Ponca on the web at http://www.spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/op_sketch.htm. This has long lacked a lexical section. It occurred to me this weekend that I could fairly easily convert into NetSiouan the vocabulary I worked up for the text about the 1847 fight between the Omahas and Dakota (also on the site), so I did and posted it there. It's certainly not a comprehensive vocabulary of Omaha-Ponca, but it might be useful in some contexts. JEK From mosind at yahoo.com Mon Dec 17 20:42:15 2001 From: mosind at yahoo.com (Wablenica) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 23:42:15 +0300 Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, John. My browser could not see the page, but when I cut "www" it was OK: http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/lexicon.htm > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Koontz John E > Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 10:36 PM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Omaha-Ponca Vocabulary > > > I have a small sketch of Omaha-Ponca on the web at > http://www.spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/omaha/op_sketch.htm. This has long > lacked a lexical section. It occurred to me this weekend that I could > fairly easily convert into NetSiouan the vocabulary I worked up for the > text about the 1847 fight between the Omahas and Dakota (also on the > site), so I did and posted it there. It's certainly not a comprehensive > vocabulary of Omaha-Ponca, but it might be useful in some contexts. > > JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 04:56:27 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 21:56:27 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer Message-ID: I seem to recall reading somewhere of a French explorer who was an early visitor to the Dakota, probably the Mille Lacs Santee villages, and who has something of a reputation among commentators as being unreliable. I am trying to remember his name. One of his purported stretches, as I recall, was claiming (to Louis XIV) that the Dakota word for 'sun', as in 'Louis the Sun King' was "Louis." Of course, apparently unbeknownst to the amused commentators, the Dakota word for 'sun' (and 'moon') actually is wi, which is a credible match for Louis [lwi]. Does anyone remember this annecdote or the French explorer's name? John From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Dec 18 14:24:57 2001 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (ahartley at d.umn.edu) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 08:24:57 -0600 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: How about Louis Hennepin? From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 18 15:41:43 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:41:43 -0600 Subject: 'Sun'/sun king. Message-ID: >One of his purported stretches, as I recall, was claiming (to Louis XIV) that the Dakota word for 'sun', as in 'Louis the Sun King' was "Louis." Of course, apparently unbeknownst to the amused commentators, the Dakota word for 'sun' (and 'moon') actually is wi, which is a credible match for Louis [lwi]. Yes, more than a credible match, given the relationship between French orthography and actual pronunciation. If you assume he put the definite article before 'sun' they come out the same. 'Louis' is [lwi] (one syllable) and 'the sun' (with the French article) is [lwi]. If you allow him to use the Fr. article, he was right smack on the money. :-) Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Tue Dec 18 16:31:59 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 10:31:59 -0600 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer Message-ID: Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? He was a charlatan of the first order--starting with his title (he was by no means a marquis, and at best dubiously noble-born). Supposedly he had many infamous run-ins with the tribes of the Lake country, although I cannot remember any of them right now. I've heard he was generally not well-received in many societies, be they American or European. It's pure irony that the automobiles bearing his name are so highly prized! From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Dec 18 16:03:08 2001 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 11:03:08 -0500 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <002a01c187e1$85eedde0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: No, Cadillac never went to Siouan country. I think it was Hennepin, if we're talking early. He, along with a fellow named Michel Accault (Aco) were the first Frenchmen to ascend the Mississippi to the falls of St. Anthony (Minneapolis-St.Paul). Michael McCafferty On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? He was a charlatan of the first > order--starting with his title (he was by no means a marquis, and at best > dubiously noble-born). Supposedly he had many infamous run-ins with the > tribes of the Lake country, although I cannot remember any of them right > now. I've heard he was generally not well-received in many societies, be > they American or European. It's pure irony that the automobiles bearing his > name are so highly prized! > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:34:18 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:34:18 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <1008685497.3c1f51b949eb2@webapps.d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 ahartley at d.umn.edu wrote: > How about Louis Hennepin? I'm not sure. I'll have to see if I can relocate the comment based on the name. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:36:26 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:36:26 -0700 Subject: 'Sun'/sun king. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Yes, more than a credible match, given the relationship between French > orthography and actual pronunciation. If you assume he put the definite > article before 'sun' they come out the same. 'Louis' is [lwi] (one > syllable) and 'the sun' (with the French article) is [lwi]. If you allow > him to use the Fr. article, he was right smack on the money. :-) Yes! Moral: sometimes the ridiculous is correct. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 16:38:21 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:38:21 -0700 Subject: Query: Name of French Explorer In-Reply-To: <002a01c187e1$85eedde0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Might it have been the Marquis de Cadillac? I'm pretty sure it wasn't Cadillac, but thanks for the suggestion! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 19:35:01 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:35:01 -0700 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: This is about proverbs as opposed to preverbs. I apologize in advance for a topic that is perhaps more literary than linguistic, though a lot depends on where you draw the line. I've occasionally field questions about Siouan proverbs, i.e., analogs of things like "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Or maybe I should say, I've tried to field such questions, but, frankly, I haven't noticed any proverbs in Omaha-Ponca. Am I missing something? Or is there no native proverb genre in Siouan (and adjacent?) languages? Catherine Rudin may want to take note of this nested question construction! If there is no proverb genre, that would be interesting. From a European standpoint proverbs are about as indispensible to a language as adjectives and "good bye." I know how to get along without adjectives or "good bye", of course. But how do people get along without proverbs? If Siouan speakers are doing so, then they must be doing it right under my nose, but I can't say that I've figured out how. Does it have something to do with Trickster (OP Monkey) stories? Or quotatives? It might be harder to make your own opinions sound like universal truths if you have to append a quotative to them. Maybe not - there seems to be a clear quotative on proverbs, manifested as zero, and it can even be made explicit with paraphrases (or periphrasis) like "(You know what) they say, ..." JEK From munro at ucla.edu Tue Dec 18 20:34:12 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:34:12 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Like John, I am often asked for proverb-analogues in the (Siouan and non-Siouan) languages I work on, and I actually feel that this is definitely a genre that is not highly represented in the Americas. One of my students has been getting some aphoristic things in Pima, but they are mainly of the form "Marry a ___ (fill in tribe) and your ____ (fill in body part) will _____ (fill in verb with negative consequences)" -- this doesn't seem completely like a proverb to me! But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best case I know of being Wolof). I hope more people will comment on this. Pam Koontz John E wrote: > This is about proverbs as opposed to preverbs. I apologize in advance for > a topic that is perhaps more literary than linguistic, though a lot > depends on where you draw the line. > > I've occasionally field questions about Siouan proverbs, i.e., analogs of > things like "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Or maybe I should > say, I've tried to field such questions, but, frankly, I haven't noticed > any proverbs in Omaha-Ponca. Am I missing something? Or is there no > native proverb genre in Siouan (and adjacent?) languages? > > Catherine Rudin may want to take note of this nested question > construction! > > If there is no proverb genre, that would be interesting. From a European > standpoint proverbs are about as indispensible to a language as adjectives > and "good bye." I know how to get along without adjectives or "good bye", > of course. But how do people get along without proverbs? If Siouan > speakers are doing so, then they must be doing it right under my nose, but > I can't say that I've figured out how. Does it have something to do with > Trickster (OP Monkey) stories? Or quotatives? It might be harder to make > your own opinions sound like universal truths if you have to append a > quotative to them. Maybe not - there seems to be a clear quotative on > proverbs, manifested as zero, and it can even be made explicit with > paraphrases (or periphrasis) like "(You know what) they say, ..." > > JEK -- Pamela Munro Professor Department of Linguistics UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles Ca 90095-1543 http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Tue Dec 18 20:38:56 2001 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:38:56 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: No one's ever mentioned any Omaha proverbs to me -- doesn't mean they don't exist, of course. I'll try to remember to ask when I get a chance. But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in English, and then usually as a joke. (Dragging kid out of bed for ungodly early band practice I'll tease them about worms for breakfast... not exactly an "indispensible" language function.) Thanks for the cool (and parenthetical) nested question! CR From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 21:09:54 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:09:54 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <3C1FA834.4C35AD5F@ucla.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Pamela Munro wrote: > Like John, I am often asked for proverb-analogues in the (Siouan and > non-Siouan) languages I work on, and I actually feel that this is definitely > a genre that is not highly represented in the Americas. I'm relieved that this impression is not entirely an matter of oversight on my part. . > One of my students has been getting some aphoristic things in Pima, but they > are mainly of the form "Marry a ___ (fill in tribe) and your ____ (fill in > body part) will _____ (fill in verb with negative consequences)" -- this > doesn't seem completely like a proverb to me! I've run into a comment (in English) in the past about the inadvisability of having KkaNze clan members on councils, with the explanation that they were the wind clan and would therefore tend to talk endlessly without coming to any conclusion, but it wasn't presented in any sort of formula. It was as if the proposition was proverbial, but not the form. On the other hand, I'm not sure if the now forgotten source was necessarily fluent in Omaha, and I assumed at the time that it might be a case of factional politics invoking a perhaps traditional canard. Another somewhat comparable belief might be the proposition that a boy excessively exposed to female speakers will probably use female speech forms in error, though this actually comes from Dakota and Osage contexts. Again, I don't know of any formulaic expression of this. > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best > case I know of being Wolof). I think proverbs and proverb-like formulas are fairly well distributed, but I don't have any distributional information. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 21:25:53 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:25:53 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote: > But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and > talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in > English, and then usually as a joke. I don't think I use them particularly frequently myself, but I certainly recognize a long list of them and can produce a fair number off the top of my head if I try to. And you encounter phrases or allusions (often humorous) lifted from them even when you don't hear the full proverb, e.g., "My, you're an early bird today!" or "I was early once, and found out I didn't like worms." However, using proverbs as a source of idioms and basis for allusions is probably no different than making biblical allusions, or, taking a different tack, using naval idioms - also widespread in at least American English. Any domain can be used in this way. It's the existence of the particular domain that seems to be questionable. I can think of a Siouan (or Northern Plains) literary allusion of this sort: the age-grade society name "Little Dogs" referring to 'the little dogs without names', in contrast to the named older puppies and named youngest one, in the basis myth of the dog series of societies. Naturally this would have gone past me completely, except that Lowie, I think it is, happens to mention it, it having been explained to him. As he put it, the full name of the society was 'little dogs without names'. JEK From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Tue Dec 18 22:23:20 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:23:20 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on consequences." He goes to lengths to explain that this is because one has dreams of the thunder being in naps. His sentence summary is in 2 below. Thus, Deloria gives in (8) an explanation of the lost? genre, which doesn't seem proverbial, but akin: (Please excuse my lack of making this all into the right font. Grave accents are nasal vowels.) H? unwich?xcala th?iyepi k? ?l "?p? isht?'*mapi k? h? sh?ce l?, kikt?h? unp?, na?chib.Leb. Les ??om?ni p?; t?ksh? w? k? h? mah?l iy?ya ch? nak?? hehanl wich?sha isht?me l?!" Ey?ya waw?hokunkhiyapi?. 2 That/ on account of/ old men/ their words/ the/ in/ "Day sleeping/ the/ that/ bad/ in a waking state/ be!/ Rousing self by foot/ instead/ walk about!/ Later/ sun/ the/that/ in / it goes/ then/ at last/ then/ man/ he sleeps!"/ So saying/ they exhort the people. 7 Wich?xcala th?iyepi 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of teachings. One I heard elsewhere was "H?h?p?thani'*ya k? sh?ce l?; o?yokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza k? th?l aw?chaku p?!" (The breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the house.") There were ever so many more. I do not know whether they could be gathered at this late day. With some of these precepts, maxims, or what you will, to serve as texts, the old men would walk around the camp circle uninvited, and preach little sermonettes to the tribe. They were not always carefully attended, but they didn't seem to mind the indifference of the hearers. They would go talking along anyways. Dr. Sara Trechter, Assoc Professor English/Linguistics, CSU, Chico Chico, CA 95929-0830 (530) 898-4449 (office) (530) 898-4450 (fax) strechter at csuchico.edu -----Original Message----- From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 1:26 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Proverbs On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote: > But actually I can easily imagine people living a long, full, and > talkative life with no proverbs. I don't think I use them often in > English, and then usually as a joke. I don't think I use them particularly frequently myself, but I certainly recognize a long list of them and can produce a fair number off the top of my head if I try to. And you encounter phrases or allusions (often humorous) lifted from them even when you don't hear the full proverb, e.g., "My, you're an early bird today!" or "I was early once, and found out I didn't like worms." However, using proverbs as a source of idioms and basis for allusions is probably no different than making biblical allusions, or, taking a different tack, using naval idioms - also widespread in at least American English. Any domain can be used in this way. It's the existence of the particular domain that seems to be questionable. I can think of a Siouan (or Northern Plains) literary allusion of this sort: the age-grade society name "Little Dogs" referring to 'the little dogs without names', in contrast to the named older puppies and named youngest one, in the basis myth of the dog series of societies. Naturally this would have gone past me completely, except that Lowie, I think it is, happens to mention it, it having been explained to him. As he put it, the full name of the society was 'little dogs without names'. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Dec 18 23:36:39 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 16:36:39 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire > introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the > speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on > consequences." > H?? unwich??xcala th??iyepi k?? ??l "??p?? isht??'*mapi k?? ... This comes out pretty well traashed in pine, but may work with Windows email programs. > 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer > heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of This certainly sounds like a description of a body of proverbs. > One I heard elsewhere was "H??h??p???thani'*ya k?? sh??ce l??; > o??yokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza k?? th??l aw??chaku p??!" (The > breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the > house.") And this, plus "Napping brings consequences." are presumably actual Dakota proverbs. In both cases there's no use of the sort of metaphorical language that is common in English proverbs, but a proverb like "Feed a cold; starve a (or, originally, I gather, of) fever." isn't particularly metaphorical, either, just an obscure way of saying "Eat sparingly when you're sick." Actually, the Omaha-Ponca texts are full of exhortations to "be active" and "travel" which sound a lot like some of Deloria's sample exhortation. There's even a text that represents a sort of homily on the subject that must be relevant to the issue of proverbs. Maybe my problem with recognizing proverbs is recognizing them as stock phrases. A new proverb sounds fresh. From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Wed Dec 19 00:16:05 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 16:16:05 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. Dr. Sara Trechter, Assoc Professor English/Linguistics, CSU, Chico Chico, CA 95929-0830 (530) 898-4449 (office) (530) 898-4450 (fax) strechter at csuchico.edu From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 19 00:18:49 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 18:18:49 -0600 Subject: fonts. Message-ID: Sorry I don't have anything to offer on proverbs except to add my voice to those who haven't encountered any. I did want to note that Sara's Siouan font came through in Windows perfectly. The way to get this effect (i.e., the way I do it) is to specify the Siouan (SIL) SSDoulos font as the DEFAULT font for Windows and leave it that way. (I THINK I did this through MSOffice) All the accented V's were properly accented and all the nasal vowels had their hooks. She used digraphs for nasal U and the necessary consonants. We must be getting somewhere close to the point where we can actually use the real characters instead of "net Siouan". I haven't checked Eudora, but it must work the same way Netscape and Explorer do. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Trechter, Sara To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' Sent: 12/18/01 4:23 PM Subject: RE: Proverbs I had never really thought about this, but it seems like the entire introduction to "Napping" from Deloria's Autobiographical texts is the speaker trying to explain a proverb but unsuccessfully. "Napping brings on consequences." He goes to lengths to explain that this is because one has dreams of the thunder being in naps. His sentence summary is in 2 below. Thus, Deloria gives in (8) an explanation of the lost? genre, which doesn't seem proverbial, but akin: (Please excuse my lack of making this all into the right font. Grave accents are nasal vowels.) H? unwich?xcala th?iyepi k? ?l "?p? isht?'*mapi k? h? sh?ce l?, kikt?h? unp?, na?chib.Leb. Les ??om?ni p?; t?ksh? w? k? h? mah?l iy?ya ch? nak?? hehanl wich?sha isht?me l?!" Ey?ya waw?hokunkhiyapi?. 2 That/ on account of/ old men/ their words/ the/ in/ "Day sleeping/ the/ that/ bad/ in a waking state/ be!/ Rousing self by foot/ instead/ walk about!/ Later/ sun/ the/that/ in / it goes/ then/ at last/ then/ man/ he sleeps!"/ So saying/ they exhort the people. 7 Wich?xcala th?iyepi 8 Old men's precepts consisted of stock phrases, many of which are no longer heard or even quoted, but which were a definite group or set of teachings. One I heard elsewhere was "H?h?p?thani'*ya k? sh?ce l?; o?yokpaza c'@'4* wakhanheza k? th?l aw?chaku p?!" (The breath of night is evil; when darkness falls, bring the children into the house.") There were ever so many more. I do not know whether they could be gathered at this late day. With some of these precepts, maxims, or what you will, to serve as texts, the old men would walk around the camp circle uninvited, and preach little sermonettes to the tribe. They were not always carefully attended, but they didn't seem to mind the indifference of the hearers. They would go talking along anyways. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Dec 19 03:35:16 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:35:16 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: > Pamela wrote: > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the best > case I know of being Wolof). I seem to recall running into an enormous body of proverbs a few years ago when I was looking at Igbo. Is West Africa in general an area particularly rich in this genre? > I hope more people will comment on this. Here's my two cents (cheap at the price!): I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to be metaphorical? If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. Suppose I live in a relatively egalitarian society where intra-group conflict is frowned upon, and where strong people will surely lose respect and power if they assault their compatriots simply for disagreeing with them. Here, if I have a disagreement with my neighbor, I can speak my mind plainly (if politely), without fear of serious consequences. In this scenario, I don't need a proverb; I just need to state my views about the concrete issue at hand. On the other hand, suppose I live in a socially stratified society where group solidarity takes a back seat to cutthroat competition for status and power among its members. Here we have a teeming mass of struggling peasants and social nobodies, dominated by castes of chieftains, warriors, clerics and other social-climbing elites, who themselves live in constant terror of falling back into the black hole of social nullity over which they rule. To these elites, honor is of the essence. Being bearded to their face is an embarrassment, and embarrassment signals weakness and brings unwelcome attention from ambitious rivals. If I state my disagreement to a person in this position, I force him either to be embarrassed or to squish me like a bug, and I can easily guess which route he will be inclined to take. So I suffer my resentments in silence along with everyone else, until one day a diabolically inspired raconteur tells us an amusing story he has made up that metaphorically nails the very behavior we are all so frustrated with. We listeners enjoy a catharsis of hysterical laughter, and pass the fable along. Soon our ruler is losing credibility by the bucketload, but can't very well punish anybody without first acknowledging that the lampoon applies to him, which would bring him even greater embarrassment and dishonor. Eventually the story is so well known that it doesn't bear repeating. To express devastating social criticism, we need only reference the title bar of the appropriate story. The party being criticized cannot easily respond, because doing so would require him to assert that he is being criticized, which in turn would mean that he must assume the logic of the metaphor. And it is not only tyrants that can be caught in this rhetorical Catch-22; it can be quite effective in winning arguments within your family and local neighborhood as well. When it reaches this stage of usage, I think we have a true proverb. If this model for the origin of proverbs is valid, then we should predict that they are a fairly recent development in human history, and that they will be richly represented in chiefdom, feudal and state-form societies, but rare or absent in band- or tribal-type societies, including most of aboriginal North America. I would expect them to be present in Mexico and Central America, and likely in the societies of the Pacific Northwest coast. Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 05:54:24 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 22:54:24 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > be metaphorical? I guess it would also be worth while knowing if there are any typological or distributional studies of proverbs. For myself, I wouldn't think that any standard saying (or idiom of sentence length?) would be a proverb. Some might be simply admired formulations, like "Give me liberty or give me death!" as opposed, say, to "Live free or die!" Many of these might be fragmentary quotations of some larger work, as in this case. I suppose some might be more or less anonymous or at least unquoted - customary formulations like "I'm glad to see you." or lengthy idioms - no good example occurs! I would think, however, that it would have to be, if not admonitory, at least advisory or procedural, and if not metaphorical, perhaps normally somewhat obscure. However, I could see obscurity or metaphorical qualities as a stylistic feature that might not be universal. > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural > regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or > absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life > circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases chiefdoms. Their widespread demise seems to have accompanied early contact, with the main early factor being massive die-offs due to mingling of disease pools. I'm sure there's some debate about timing and causation. I've also heard it argued that as contact intensified the fur trade caused a definite shift in the East and Plains away from horticulture and toward hunting, as well as largely eliminating such indigenous industries as flint knapping and pottery. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 06:28:47 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 23:28:47 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I > think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the > "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't > have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an address to the young men." The first sentence is: Ni'ashiNga=mashe, people you the-COLLECTIVE wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] you work for yourselves throat panting udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, you fill very if ONLY e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL "Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern in Omaha-Ponca. The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the free translation. I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as "Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be active!" or "Make an effort!" From munro at ucla.edu Wed Dec 19 07:05:42 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 23:05:42 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: I think (as probably most of you do too) you can have obscure metaphors without proverbs. For instance, in Chickasaw (sorry; I venture a bit outside Siouan) when you see a certain type of cloud / sky formation you can say, "Satan is beating his wife." (Sorry; this is not a family show.) I would not call this a proverb. However, I think it's clearly obscure / metaphorical. Pam Koontz John E wrote: > On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > > be metaphorical? > > I guess it would also be worth while knowing if there are any typological > or distributional studies of proverbs. > > For myself, I wouldn't think that any standard saying (or idiom of > sentence length?) would be a proverb. Some might be simply admired > formulations, like "Give me liberty or give me death!" as opposed, say, to > "Live free or die!" Many of these might be fragmentary quotations of some > larger work, as in this case. I suppose some might be more or less > anonymous or at least unquoted - customary formulations like "I'm glad to > see you." or lengthy idioms - no good example occurs! I would think, > however, that it would have to be, if not admonitory, at least advisory or > procedural, and if not metaphorical, perhaps normally somewhat obscure. > However, I could see obscurity or metaphorical qualities as a stylistic > feature that might not be universal. > > > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural > > regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or > > absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life > > circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. > > I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it > is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases > chiefdoms. Their widespread demise seems to have accompanied early > contact, with the main early factor being massive die-offs due to mingling > of disease pools. I'm sure there's some debate about timing and > causation. I've also heard it argued that as contact intensified the fur > trade caused a definite shift in the East and Plains away from > horticulture and toward hunting, as well as largely eliminating such > indigenous industries as flint knapping and pottery. -- Pamela Munro Professor, Department of Linguistics, UCLA UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 USA http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From ullrich.j at soupvm.cz Wed Dec 19 10:58:56 2001 From: ullrich.j at soupvm.cz (Jan F. Ullrich) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 11:58:56 +0100 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My comment is concerned with similes rather then proverbs, but I guess there might be some relationship between the two. At least, both can be metaphorical, and similes are often a part of a proverb. In the introduction to her Dakota Texts Deloria says: "These tales [ohuN'kakaN], in which generally some mythological character like Iktomi, Iya, the Crazy Bull, the Witch, or Waziya (the Cold), takes part together with human beings, are part of the common literary stock of the people. CONSTANT ALLUSION IS MADE TO THEM; SIMILES ARE DRAWN FROM THEM WHICH EVERY INTELLIGENT ADULT IS SURE TO UNDERSTAND. "Like shooting off the sacred arrow," or, "They are dancing with eyes shut, to his singing" one hears repeatedly. "He is playing Iktomi" is understood to mean that a person is posing as a very agreeable fellow, simply to get what he wants." Besides, I think there are several sayings within the Dakota Texts. The one that I remembered immediately is from the "Turtle goes to war" story: Phatkasha cha mnil ayapi kte s'e. Just like the turtle when they want to throw it into water. Meaning that one really wants to get something by pretending the opposite. There are lots more similes (and/or sayings) in Buechel, although some of them are just idiomatic sayings, e.g. KhaNgi s?e iyuN'ke. To go to bed in the way of crows. Meaning - to go to bed early (sorry, I don't know how this saying goes in English, in Czech we "go to bed with hens/fowls" :-)) Iktomi s?e chiNca' o'ta la'xcake. He's got as many children as a spider. Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) Phezhi' tho ai'camna. It is snowing on green grass. (Saying when snow fall in late spring.) Shake' nitha'pa kte. Your fingers will change into balls. When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. ShuN'ka themni' t?a'pi kte lo. Dogs will sweat to death. (It is going to be very hot.) MashtiN'ca hiN' yupo'te xce lo'. The rabbit has torn his hair up. (Only few snow flakes have fallen.) This one may as well be derived from a trickster tale in which rabbit shows Iktomi how to cause snowing by tearing rabbit's hair. Talking of proverbs vs. similes: it should be interesting to note that many Indo-European proverbs come from fairytales or from the biblical stories. Most of such tales/stories are concluded with a moral, which is later turned into a proverb. But the Siouan tales/myths (at least the pre-missionary ones) usually don't include any moral. Instead a simile is often derived from the tales' character behavior. Could that be any hint for why Siouan languages lack proverbs? Jan Ullrich From Richard.L.Dieterle-1 at tc.umn.edu Wed Dec 19 11:24:28 2001 From: Richard.L.Dieterle-1 at tc.umn.edu (Richard L. Dieterle) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 05:24:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The Winnebago have sayings, although a mere saying lacks the metaphorical element necessary to proverbs. Here is one from memory in English: "The old people (always) say, 'It is good to die on the warpath'." This is quite often quoted, but it is a far cry from "A stitch in time saves nine," which is hardly ever applied literally to clothing repair. Mention of a political context brings to mind something very similar to a proverb. This is from Foster who collected his material from the Nebraska Winnebago in 1854 and alludes to a myth in which the lesser bird clans come from ancestors who were generated from the feathers of the Thunders, the bigger the feather, the more important the clan -- "Those named from the Thunders or Elements, who 'kindled the fire,' are said to have the most power, and they claim to be superior to the others. ... Those belonging to the First Thunder Family or Elemental Family are not slow to remind even the Second Thunder Family, or Visible-Bird Family, of their right of precedence ... if two whose names are of the First and Second Thunders, get into a dispute with each other, the former will sometimes end the argument contemptuously by saying, 'Why, you are nothing but a feather of mine,' and some will go so far as to say, 'you are nothing but the fuzz of my feathers;' and even the children learn early to retort in this wise." (Thomas Foster, Foster's Indian Record and Historical Data (Washington, D. C.: 1876-1877) vol. 1; #1, p. 4, coll. 1, 4.) The implicit proverb would be, "A Hawk (Clansman) is but a feather of a Thunder (Clansman)"; or "A Pigeon is but the down of a Thunder." However, I am not sure we have an explicit proverb. Richard Dieterle From rankin at ku.edu Wed Dec 19 16:00:57 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:00:57 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? I think proverbs (which I've always pronounced "praberbs" for some reason) are attested just about as far back as writing, but "fairly recent" is a relative term in any event. I have entire books of them in Romanian, and many of these had precise analogs in classical antiquity. I guess I've always looked upon them as just another literary genre, and, as such, the product of style, fad and rapid diffusability. They're not exactly formal genera like haikus, limericks or sonnets, but there is a semi-formal element to them in that they must be concise, pithy, etc. in order to be catchy enough to take hold, spread and be passed to succeeding generations. Native American music seems to be short on love ballads too, but that doesn't stem from any lack of the feeling of love among/between Indian people; it's just a style of expression that Europeans (and no doubt others) have adopted in order to express those sentiments. They could as easily be expressed linguistically -- in either prose or poetry -- and no doubt are. My misspent years as a literary scholar (?) before I discovered TRVTH suggest to me that these things are matters of fashion, not social politics. Theories that rely on any version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis are nearly impossible to disprove, but they are equally impossible to prove. The evidence, such as it is, admits of too many conflicting interpretations. These sorts of interpretations were very much frowned upon during the '50's and '60's but reappeared in literature and anthropology in the '80's or early '90's. As you can see, I'm a product of the earlier period. :-) Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 16:11:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 09:11:36 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <3C203C44.993B3817@ucla.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Pamela Munro wrote: > I think (as probably most of you do too) you can have obscure metaphors > without proverbs. For instance, in Chickasaw (sorry; I venture a bit outside > Siouan) when you see a certain type of cloud / sky formation you can say, > "Satan is beating his wife." (Sorry; this is not a family show.) I would not > call this a proverb. However, I think it's clearly obscure / metaphorical. I agree. Perhaps what is missing here is the admonition or advisory quality, which is what I meant by saying that "Live free or die!" is a better proverb than "Give me liberty or give me death!" Not that I'm sure it qualifies as a proverb, but I think the issue there might be the lack of metaphor or even generalized obscurity. From STRECHTER at csuchico.edu Wed Dec 19 18:01:51 2001 From: STRECHTER at csuchico.edu (Trechter, Sara) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:01:51 -0800 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. However, it seems also to be of great interest. I think that in the western stereotype occurring in movies, etc, there is always some scene where the Native American explains some obscure, wise "saying." This pop culture strategy has also been adopted in more modern 'native American' movies such as Pow Wow Highway, and "Smoke Signals." It's a representation of other cultures common in the Charlie Chan movies many of saw when we were younger. I do wonder if this is just complete western invention, or if there are some language groups that go heavy on the proverbs. The grammatical structure, style, and origin of proverbs (or lack of, however we define them) in Native North America would make an interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with the AAA:New Orleans. If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an organizer and put the word out. sara t -----Original Message----- From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:29 PM To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' Subject: RE: Proverbs On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I > think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the > "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I don't > have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an address to the young men." The first sentence is: Ni'ashiNga=mashe, people you the-COLLECTIVE wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] you work for yourselves throat panting udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, you fill very if ONLY e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL "Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern in Omaha-Ponca. The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the free translation. I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as "Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be active!" or "Make an effort!" From FurbeeL at missouri.edu Wed Dec 19 20:21:29 2001 From: FurbeeL at missouri.edu (Louanna Furbee) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 14:21:29 -0600 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Regarding Sara's query: Tojolab'al Maya has a ton of proverbs and >admonitions. Susan Knowles-Berry did an honors paper on some of them >for me years ago, and before that, Pierre Venture also made a >collection (Susan augmented Pierre's collection, as I recall, in her >data-gathering phase). She might be interested in picking up an old >interest. Her address is 12618 NE 5th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98685. Louanna >John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some >way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. However, it seems also to be >of great interest. I think that in the western stereotype occurring in >movies, etc, there is always some scene where the Native American explains >some obscure, wise "saying." This pop culture strategy has also been adopted >in more modern 'native American' movies such as Pow Wow Highway, and "Smoke >Signals." It's a representation of other cultures common in the Charlie Chan >movies many of saw when we were younger. I do wonder if this is just >complete western invention, or if there are some language groups that go >heavy on the proverbs. The grammatical structure, style, and origin of >proverbs (or lack of, however we define them) in Native North America would >make an interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with >the AAA:New Orleans. > >If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an organizer and put the word >out. > >sara t > >-----Original Message----- >From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu] >Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:29 PM >To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' >Subject: RE: Proverbs > > >On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: >> The metaphorical usage common with proverbs that John alludes to, is why I >> think the speaker went to great lengths to 'explain' an origin for the >> "no-napping" saying...as if he thought it was a bit obscure. Too bad I >don't >> have a context for this one where the napping is metaphorical. > >That makes sense, and we can at least keep our eyes open for obscure >metaphorical uses of recurring phrases, though I have the impression that >if you go looking for metaphors in language it's hard to stop. > >Incidentally, the homily text is Dorsey 1890 is "Address to the Young Men" >pp. 628-9. The source isn't given, but it may be a sort of immitation >composed by George Miller, who spent some time in Washington with Dorsey >editting the texts. The Notes section for this text reads "According to >George Miller, an Omaha, the old men of his tribe often make such an >address to the young men." > >The first sentence is: > >Ni'ashiNga=mashe, >people you the-COLLECTIVE > >wadha'kkigdhithaN=i nu'de ttaghu'gh[e] >you work for yourselves throat panting > >udhi'zhi=xti= kki=naN, >you fill very if ONLY > >e=da'=daN wiN dhakki'shkaghe= tta=i ha! >what a you make for yourself FUTURE DECL > >"Oh ye people, if you ever accomplish anything for yourselves it will be >only when you work so hard for yourselves that you pant incessantly >thereafter." (Dorsey et al.'s free translation.) > >The essential framework here is "You will [irrealis!] make something for >yourselves, if you only [i.e., exclusively, habitually] work [handle >things] for yourself." The "you very much fill your throat with panting" >is essentially an adverbial phrase of manner inserted in the conditional >clause between the verb and the final conjunction, a fairly common pattern >in Omaha-Ponca. > >The word ttaghu'gh, presumably ttaghu'ghe contracted with the following >verb, is not the usual word for panting, which is gaski'. It's not even >translated in the interlinear version, but corresponds to panting in the >free translation. > >I'm not sure if this is a proverb, or just rhetorical style. The phrase >that recurs in the texts comes a few sentences later, and it's the >imperative washkaN=i=ga, here given as "Try!" in the interlinear and as >"Do your best!" in the free translation. Elsewhere it is often "Be >active!" or "Make an effort!" -- Prof. N. Louanna Furbee Department of Anthropology 107 Swallow Hall University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211 USA Telephones: 573/882-9408 (office) 573/882-4731 (department) 573/446-0932 (home) 573/884-5450 (fax) E-mail: FurbeeL at missouri.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 20:22:40 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 13:22:40 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote: > John's original caveat when introducing this subject was that it is in some > way 'extra-linguistic' or something like that. I know some linguists - those of us who are linguists probably all do, I imagine - who would definitely identify it as "not linguistics." I'm sure it qualifies as philology. I think that is is linguistically interesting in the sense that genre clearly influences purely linguistic factors like morphology and syntax. In addition, though the status of the lexicon with purists is somewhat nebulous, texts in such succinct forms tend to verge on idioms, which are presumably lexical entries or on the border of that. > However, it seems also to be of great interest. I think that in the > western stereotype occurring in movies, etc, there is always some > scene where the Native American explains some obscure, wise "saying." > ... The collections of examples of Native American sayings I've seen were isolated, not in movies, and struck me as a mix of new age wisdom and cowboy humor. > The grammatical structure, style, and origin of proverbs (or lack of, > however we define them) in Native North America would make an > interesting planned session for the next SSILA when it meets with the > AAA:New Orleans. If of any interest at all, I'm willing to be an > organizer and put the word That would be very interesting! I hope you won't restrict it to Siouanists. And I hope you can get somebody to do some sort of a preliminary survey. Or maybe that could be a non-paper activity? I do think you'll either have to have some sort of reference that defines proverbs, or perhaps characterize it somehow as a session on allusions within one text to another text. "Traditional literary allusions in Native American discourse"? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Dec 19 20:46:54 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 13:46:54 -0700 Subject: Other Sessions Waiting to Be Organized Message-ID: Sara's suggestion that an AAA SSILA (CAIL) session on proverbs and the lack, perhaps, in some cases of proverbs, should be organized, and her noble offer to organize it, remind me that Robert Rankin and/or myself have at times thought it might be interesting to have a session or even a conference on several other issues, which it might be interesting to post here. One would be (a) cultigen vocabulary and perhaps some other sorts of artifactual or technological vocabulary of interest to archaeologists, probably combined with some sort of attempt at a survey. This came about under the inspiration of an article by archaeologist Patrick Munson, if I recall his name correctly, who attempted to do the survey for Eastern cultigen terms with interesting results that could have been improved upon if it weren't so difficult for a non-specialist to tease the relevant terms out of the literature and make any sense of them linguistically. Also, (b) it would probably be interesting to look at placenames and ethnonyms, and (c) loans and loan translations, which come up immediately as you try to look at the former. Conferences like these are useful consciousness raising exercises, I think, not unlike the paper at the recent Chicago Siouan & Caddoan Conference - I'm sorry I'm forgetting the name of the author - from Kansas? - on the vocabulary of emotion. . From boris at terracom.net Thu Dec 20 01:39:02 2001 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:39:02 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) This is what I would define as a proverb ... a condition and a result.....most of us would probably consider English proverbs as cliches ...a stitch in time saves nine....I guess fits Alan From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Thu Dec 20 05:53:34 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:53:34 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >> Rory said: >> If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural >> regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or >> absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life >> circumstances of the people living in these respective regions. > John replied: > I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that it > is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases > chiefdoms. [...] I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to my hypothesis. I can think of at least three possible defenses: 1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed a tradition of proverbs. But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good. I don't want to go this route. 2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. What about the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of when we use that term. I don't mean to imply that they did not have chiefs; after all, so did many of the Plains Indian societies with which we Siouanists are most familiar, but which are not generally called chiefdoms. I also don't mean to imply that the chiefs were not elevated very high, perhaps even to semi-divine status. The one historical account I have heard of, relating to the Natchez, describes a supreme ruler called the Great Sun, who headed an exogamous matrilineal royal clan. Everyone outside of that clan was a Stinker, including, of course, the Great Sun's own father, children and inlaws. (I'm going off memory from a popular rendition; I think this is right.) In temporate European history, the Celtic and Germanic societies around the time of the Roman Empire were pretty certainly what we would consider chiefdoms. But some two to three millennia earlier there had already appeared monumental central places like Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill, which might be reasonably comparable to the temple mounds and other works of the Mississippian period in North America. The societies that built these European monuments are also generally believed to have been chiefdoms. If so, were they sociologically more comparable to the historically recorded chiefdoms of the Roman period two or three millennia later, or to the presumably tribal societies that had immediately preceded them? What I suggest is that "chiefdom" covers a range of societal forms that may span thousands of years of gradual evolution from "tribal" to "feudal" or "state". Its earlier phases would be nearer "tribal" and its later phases would be nearer "feudal" or "state". Its earlier phases might be ethnographically unrecorded due to the accident of no major, undevastated regions of the world happening to be in these phases in the past two hundred years that Westerners have been scientifically researching foreign societies. In this case, use of the term "chiefdom", with all its "late-chiefdom" ethnological connotations, may seriously prejudice our interpretation of archaeologically recorded societies that are in fact "early-chiefdom". How would an "early-chiefdom" compare with a "late-chiefdom"? I would think that in an "early-chiefdom" society, each person would still belong to a discrete band and tribe which moved, foraged and acted together. There would still be unclaimed areas of terrain available to shift to if one's current area became untenable. The chiefdom would initially be a formal, permanent federation for defense, and for the controlled exploitation and redistribution of exotic goods brought into the common territory. The chief at this stage might be primarily a sacred figurehead accepted by the leaders of the various constituent bands, who could always defect to another chiefdom if they wished. The federation would have a central ceremonial site, upon which its members would invest much patriotic labor to make it appear as formidable as possible to all onlookers. Participating bands and individuals would be rewarded in the coin of special honors and rights within the federal community. The chief would have little direct power over his people. Freedom of speech would usually be safe, since most of one's life is spent within one's own band, which can always move if threatened, and within which one's own personal position is secure. A "late-chiefdom" would be a much more rooted society. Virtually all available subsistence terrain would already be owned by someone, so being forced to move would be a serious hardship. Resource exploitation would be intense, and almost everything useful would be owned. Corporate kinship groups, perhaps descended from the original bands, would still exist, but would tend to be extended networks converging on locally important individuals and families rather than discrete units. Closeness of kinship to powerful individuals would be more important than simply belonging to their division. Many people would be mere household hangers-on, living at the tolerance of those who actually owned the resources, and doing their bidding. Some would achieve a measure of independence by specializing in some craft, and bartering their product for their necessities. In this type of society, we would see formalized ownership of terrain, craft specialization, intensive quid-pro-quo commerce, slavery and other household dependency relations, peddlers of charms and superstitions, and probably the development of proverbs, riddles and other genres of cryptical rhetoric. This is what I usually have in mind when I think of chiefdom-level society. It might or might not be headed by a chief. So this is my third, and preferred defense: that Mississippian societies (and 3rd millennium B.C. temperate European societies) are examples of my proposed "early-chiefdom" societies, and despite their chiefs and monumental central places were not any too different sociologically from the Indians found in eastern temperate North America in the last four hundred years. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 06:10:29 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:10:29 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20011219193811.00a2e3f0@mail.terracom.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Alan Knutson wrote: > Wablu'shka mayu'ta yelo', oshi'ciN kta se'ce lo'. > Lit.: "Worms are eating me, so the weather is going to be bad". > (Said when someone has a headache or pain in his bones.) > > > This is what I would define as a proverb ... a condition and a > result.....most of us would probably consider English proverbs as cliches > ...a stitch in time saves nine....I guess fits I'd be willing to accept this as a proverb: it's a sentence with a fixed form encapsulating what could be viewed as a warning or advice. I don't believe it could be called obscure or metaphorical, though the conditional clause falls potentially into that category, even though comparing pains in the body to gnawing is a common enough analogy. It sounds like its application is fairly literal, which is to say that you couldn't use it to mean that the children are quarreling and homelife is bound to take a turn for the worse. It's not clear to me that proverbs necessarily or typically involve a condition and a result, though that is a good way to ecapsulate advice. But consider: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Feed a cold, starve a fever. (The original "Feed a cold, starve of fever." is conditional.) A bird in the hand is worth nine in the bush. Be it never so humble, there's no place like home. You have to break some eggs to make an omelette. Conditions are implicit, however, in proverbs like: Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight. Love me, love my dog. I think that in proverbs conditional formulations are like similes: common but not criterial. Would it be reasonable to say that a proverb is a short text of more or less fixed and memorable form that encapsulates something that a culture knows? It's not necessarily an allusion, except perhaps to the knowledge in question, but you can allude to the proverb, e.g., "It may be time to start stitching." I'm not sure if an allusion to familiar text, as in the case of "it's like when ..." or "he's acting like ..." formulae, explicit or implicit, is a proverb, though as indicated you can clearly allude to a proverb without quoting it. In addition, both proverbs and allusions are ways of using one text within another, and invoke traditional knowledge or cultural context. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 06:42:36 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 23:42:36 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to > my hypothesis. I can think of at least three possible defenses: > > 1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed > a tradition of proverbs. > > But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought > to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good. I > don't want to go this route. It's conceivable that enough time and trouble passed between, say, 1600 and 1850 or so, in cultures without written traditions, to forget some important things, though I rather doubt this would hold water either. Proverbs are intended to be remembered, and oral cultures have good memories for some kinds of things. Many of the traditional stories are very widespread. > 2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not > find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may > be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian > chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. What about > the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are > equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. Mississippi Valley Siouan is perhaps questionable as a central participant, but it was clearly immediately peripheral and interacting. > 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American > Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, > I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies > were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of > when we use that term. I've noticed that there's a good deal of argument about what chiefdoms (in a technical sense) are and whether given cultures, directly observed and indirectly (e.g., archaeologically) observed, are chiefdoms in this sense or that. I think there's a lot of argument specifically about whether particular Mississippian cultures were chiefdoms. I really just meant that it's clear that the contact period seems to have been something of a dark age (maybe depression or interregnum would be safer terms!) as far as indigenous culture and industries are concerned. Eastern North American and Plains cultures before contact seem to have been more complexly organized, more sedentary, more horticultural, more populous, better "capitalized," and so on. I agree that there are levels and kinds of chiefdoms, and that a great deal of the culture of Native America in the contact period must preserve the past, but I suspect that the relative paucity of proverbs is more likely to be either chance or a matter of linguistic or literary dynamics we haven't hit upon yet, because, even without a comprehensive survey of the existence of proverbs, it's pretty clear that they exist across a wide variety of social organization patterns in Europe, Africa and the Near East, and very likely over a time depth of millenia. Of course, they may be like tones - once you catch them, it may be hard to get rid of them. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 07:35:13 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:35:13 -0700 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) In-Reply-To: <000001c1887c$28570b80$1801a8c0@soupvm.cz> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Jan F. Ullrich wrote: > Shake' nitha'pa kte. > Your fingers will change into balls. > When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. And I remember a comment in a story that Catherine Rudin showed me that indicates that ghosts are afraid of flapping laundry. This now smacks (cf. schmecken?) to me of some supporting statement along these lines. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 07:42:51 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:42:51 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Richard L. Dieterle wrote: > The Winnebago have sayings, although a mere saying lacks the metaphorical > element necessary to proverbs. Here is one from memory in English: > > "The old people (always) say, 'It is good to die on the warpath'." > > This is quite often quoted, but it is a far cry from "A stitch in time saves > nine," which is hardly ever applied literally to clothing repair. A comparable comment in Omaha, though I don't know of a traditional form, concerns the desirability of dying facing the enemy, which is a conception not alien to Euro-American culture, i.e., making sure the bullet holes or wounds are in the front. > Mention of a political context brings to mind something very similar to a > proverb. This is from Foster who collected his material from the Nebraska > Winnebago in 1854 and alludes to a myth in which the lesser bird clans come from > ancestors who were generated from the feathers of the Thunders, the bigger the > feather, the more important the clan -- ... > > The implicit proverb would be, "A Hawk (Clansman) is but a feather of a Thunder > (Clansman)"; or "A Pigeon is but the down of a Thunder." However, I am not sure > we have an explicit proverb. You could regard this as an idiom, but it's also a traditional form of argument: "I am better than you because I am X and you are Y, and Y is but the feather of or down on an X, i.e., X is much better than Y." JEK From are2 at acsu.buffalo.edu Thu Dec 20 07:58:01 2001 From: are2 at acsu.buffalo.edu (Ardis R Eschenberg) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 02:58:01 -0500 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Omaha has many sets of sayings involving condition-consequence. I feel that they are more admonition than proverb & think that some may relate to clan specific behavior. I can't think of a very metaphorical one offhand that would feel very proverb-y to me. But, there are all sorts of admonitions as to how to behave and the reason/consequence which I've heard in Omaha and English translation. Often, I am told them as my grandmother said x because y. They might be considered more like folkbeliefs or taboos rather than proverbs. Many are probably pan-Siouan (or even pan-Native American) such as taboos against women touching food at their time of cycle. -Ardis From rankin at ku.edu Thu Dec 20 14:57:25 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 08:57:25 -0600 Subject: Other Sessions Waiting to Be Organized Message-ID: >One would be (a) cultigen vocabulary and perhaps some other sorts of artifactual or technological vocabulary of interest to archaeologists, probably combined with some sort of attempt at a survey. Jane Hill and Kay Fowler are definitely interested in this sort of thing and would probably be very supportive. Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Thu Dec 20 16:23:28 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:23:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: > What about > the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez? If they are > equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt. I'm not sure if they fit the different proverb models that have been sparked by this thread, but Cherokee has a number of proverb-like sayings. They are much more like the folkway aphorisms Ardis mentioned, however, such as "Don't leave dinner sitting out all night, it will attract _____(bad things)" or "If a butterfly lands on something of yours, you'll get a new one soon," and even taboos on gardening without shirts. I've heard these things, or things like them, from any number of folks. But the fact that they are rarely of a standard form between sources and not particularly applicable to things beyond that which is directly mentioned pretty much limits them to quippy expression of belief--or even superstition, in some people's minds--instead of proverbs proper. But I'm wondering how different that is from English or other languages. Do the not stepping on cracks or not kissing toads or not drinking coke while eating pop rocks sayings not count as proverbial? The whole of such a saying--of at least the first two 8^) --is invoked when cited in part, or even in visual gags. If this does fit the proverb model, then I know lots of examples of Osage folkway "superstitions" that get referenced in similar ways by Osages speaking English, at any rate. As far as whether this maybe culturally referential to the Osage world or perhaps more to the Anglo world, I would imagine it's a little of both. Either way, this topic is fairly at least of some interest to linguists--as is apparent from the volume of nodes in the thread. I wonder if this is symptomatic of the program of linguistics as a course of study or tracable perhaps more to the fact that a linguist is necessarily a student of culture. Proving once again, you can't take the primary cultural feature out of the culturally persistent item inventory and expect to analyze it in a vacuum. (If I hear this sentence once, I hear it twenty or thirty times a day--it's probably on deck to be a proverb itself). -jm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 16:01:52 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:01:52 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <006601c18972$ad138820$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > I'm not sure if they fit the different proverb models that have been > sparked by this thread, but Cherokee has a number of proverb-like sayings. > They are much more like the folkway aphorisms Ardis mentioned, however, such > as "Don't leave dinner sitting out all night, it will attract _____(bad > things)" or "If a butterfly lands on something of yours, you'll get a new > one soon," and even taboos on gardening without shirts. I've heard these > things, or things like them, from any number of folks. But the fact that > they are rarely of a standard form ... Is there a term for things like this that have a standard content, but not a standard form? I suppose 'folk belief', but I'm not sure that's entirely appropriate. It's more like a unit of advice than a credo. A Polonianism? (Now there's a literary allusion!) From voorhis at westman.wave.ca Thu Dec 20 16:09:00 2001 From: voorhis at westman.wave.ca (voorhis at westman.wave.ca) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:09:00 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: Koontz John E wrote: > Would it be reasonable to say that a proverb is a short text of more or > less fixed and memorable form that encapsulates something that a culture > knows? It's not necessarily an allusion, except perhaps to the knowledge in question, E. C. Rowlands in "Teach Yourself Yoruba", English Universities Press, London, 1969, p. 54 writes: "... like English proverbs, [Yoruba ones] can be divided into two types: those that make straightforward statements about life, e.g. 'pride comes before a fall', and those that generalise from a particular type of experience, e.g. 'you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink'." Concerning the distribution of proverbs, it seems to be more geographical than sociological, with the centre, at least of cultural importance, apparently in western Africa. Grammars of African languages often give lists of them. Proverbs also exist in Europe but seem to play a less prominent role. Has anyone heard of proverbs in eastern Asia? Chinese proverbs? Japanese? As someone suggested previously in this discussion, the instruction, guidance, and admonition that Africans and Europeans get from proverbs seem to be provided by reference to events and characters in popular myths in traditional Native American communities. Paul From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Dec 20 16:22:04 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:22:04 -0700 Subject: Language and Culture (was Re: Proverbs) In-Reply-To: <006601c18972$ad138820$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: I thought maybe this might be a good separate thread. On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Either way, this topic is fairly at least of some interest to > linguists--as is apparent from the volume of nodes in the thread. I wonder > if this is symptomatic of the program of linguistics as a course of study or > tracable perhaps more to the fact that a linguist is necessarily a student > of culture. Proving once again, you can't take the primary cultural feature > out of the culturally persistent item inventory and expect to analyze it in > a vacuum. (If I hear this sentence once, I hear it twenty or thirty times a > day--it's probably on deck to be a proverb itself). The Omahas recommended when I was in Macy that I go to the three funerals being held that first week. I know it was partly just to keep me out of their hair while they went to the funerals themselves, but they argued that it it would help me understand them better, and "you can't understand our language if you don't understand us." As a linguist I make an article of faith that to some extent I can construct a grammar in a vacuum, but it's always easier to deal with a sentence when you know what it means, and some things like deixis or vocabulary systems definitely require some contextual or cultural knowledge. That may be why some people want to exclude them as matters of linguistic interest. Apart from that, as a practical matter you can't actually construct useful sentences (for a teaching grammar or even elicitation) without a good cultural grounding. And trying to make sense above the level of a sentence of a text like the Omaha one about the fight with the Dakotas in 1847 has proved impossible for me so far in the absence of a knowledge of the geography and of such factors as the likelihood of the narrator structuring a text in terms of alternative or repeated descriptions of the same events. Even if it might not matter "linguistically" that I can't reconstruct a chronology or itinerary, it does bother me that I can't understand why a given motion verb would be used, or predict the topology of the geography from the ones that are used. From tleonard at prodigy.net Thu Dec 20 16:26:28 2001 From: tleonard at prodigy.net (TLeonard-tulsa.com) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:26:28 -0600 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) Message-ID: JEK wrote: I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. I've heard similar admonishments from older Ponca folks around White Eagle, Oklahoma. The one I always heard was: "Don't whistle while your outside at night. You'll attract ghosts." The one I always loved was: "Don't eat too much fish. They'll make your hair grey." Have recordings of these and others in Ponca. TML From jmcbride at kayserv.net Thu Dec 20 17:30:39 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 11:30:39 -0600 Subject: Language and Culture (was Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: > I thought maybe this might be a good separate thread. > The Omahas recommended when I was in Macy that I go to the three > funerals > being held that first week. I know it was partly just to keep me out of > their hair while they went to the funerals themselves, but they argued > that it it would help me understand them better, and "you can't understand > our language if you don't understand us." Great topic! It reminds me of--and please excuse the level of pop culture in my reference--that "Tanaka at the Bridge" episone of Star Trek: The Next Generation! The aliens spoke English, but even their "universal translator" (don't get me started...) could'nt figure out what they were saying. The idea behind it was that the aliens spoke a language of theatrical metaphors that could not be interpretted out of cultural context. NextGen was one of those rare shows where anthropological linguistics was good material! Paul wrote: > Has anyone heard of proverbs in eastern > Asia? Chinese proverbs? Japanese? The Dhammapada (sp?) is nothing but proverbs. I believe it was written in Pali, a IE Prakrit language. But due to the rich heritage of the Buddhist tradition in the East, I assume there might be an analog there to our Biblical proverbs. I don't know for sure, or anything; it's just speculation on my part. But it also brings up the notion of the Hebrew proverbs as found in the book of... yup... Proverbs. A patriarchical society, true, but not necessarily a chiefdom, and definitely not Missippian! Furthermore, since many Native American languages were first approached by missionaries, and since many such languages may have some Biblical texts translated, I wonder how some of the texts deal with the Proverbs, or even the metaphors. I'm sure 'a camel in the eye of a needle' would be fascinating in Kansa, or even just 'eye of a needle!' From rankin at ku.edu Thu Dec 20 18:06:18 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 12:06:18 -0600 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: >2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian chiefdoms. Siouan is questionable in this regard. Yes, we do not know whether ANY Siouan-speaking tribe participated in Mississippian Culture, although some pretty clearly participated in its northern offshoots (the effigy mound and Oneota cultures of Iowa and points North). 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly, I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of when we use that term. That may be a reasonable view, but it seems to me to be one of those definitional matters that is hard to resolve and which is quite subject to the orthodoxy of the moment in cultural and social anthropology. The current thinking at Cahokia, as promulgated by the staff there, is that Cahokia, at least, was not only a chiefdom, but that it was multi- cultural", accomodating numerous peoples who spoke different languages. Personally, I don't see the evidence for that sort of thing. Bob From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Thu Dec 20 20:41:19 2001 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 13:41:19 -0700 Subject: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I have been reading the "proverbs" exchange with interest , thinking I have nothing to say about it. But I'm also grading some text analyses done as course projects by my students this semester, and look what turned up: the end of the story "Turtle", no. 13 in Deloria's published collection, goes like this: "Whenever someone pretends to hold back from the very thing he wants, the Dakota saying runs, "Like a turtle about to be thrown into water." In the Lakhota text, there is a word that would likely be glossed something like "proverb", namely "wo'eye". Deloria's gloss is "(prover ?) saying". I haven't followed very closely the discussion of what constitutes a proverb, and maybe this is more a "cultural insider's allusion to some well-known fact" than a real "proverb", but it's close. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 15:19:37 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 08:19:37 -0700 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs In-Reply-To: <20011221.000223.-78579.1.jggoodtracks@juno.com> Message-ID: Posted for Jimm. Jan's mailer (or site?) is one of those that are set up so that they short circuit the header fields that normally direct replies to the list rather than the original sender. For the reference of subscribers, the From: field encodes the original sender. The Reply-to: field encodes the list and is added by the list server software. Normally this will work to cause replies to come to the list, but the ingenuity of the designers of email programs and the configurers of site mail agents is such that sometimes this simple scheme is confounded. It never hurts to cast a knowing eye over the To: and Cc: fieldS of a letter before you press the send button. On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > John: > I replied back to Jan's EM, but thought it would appear on the lists. It > did not. I've had some PC refurbishing, so some things to work out. > > And since I wrote the few proverbs/ sayings below, I recall some other > admonitions along the same line, as I read what others have to say: > > Dont play ball in the house (where there is a Sacred Bundle), because > ..... (some negative consequence). > Dont sing at the dinner table, or you will marry a crazy person. > Cover the mirrors in the house, during a thunder storm, to avoid > lightning being attracted to the house. > Dont whistle in the night, as it will attract spirits (thinking you want > something of them). > > Perhaps these and the ones below will be of interests to the topic. > Jimm > > --------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Jimm G GoodTracks > To: ullrich.j at soupvm.cz > Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 21:12:20 -0600 > Subject: Re: Proverbs > Message-ID: <20011219.211234.-78579.0.jggoodtracks at juno.com> > > Jan: > I agree with your comments below, to the allusion of comparative real > life situations to those in the traditional stories. However, I do > recall what appears to me as possible proverbs. Several that came to > mind are: > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge (e?e) ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > If a man possesses a sister, he has a second mother > > Ayan' regra'?un ke; Gashun' uyan' ne. > You made your own bed, Now lie in it. > (You created your own predicament/ crisis, so take the consequences). > > Waye're?sun wori'giragesge nanke'rida uki'ruhda re. Tan'dare wama'nyi > je. > If someone tells you something, notice behind him. From where does he > walk? > (When one gives you advise, See if he follows it himself). (Walk your > talk). > > There were others, but these few come to mind. Perhaps the above are as > John says a mix of traditional wisdom with the contemporary thought from > government school education. > > Also, noone has mentioned the Saying & Expressions from LaFlesche's Osage > Dictionary, pp. 399-403. This volume dates the existance of what can be > considered proverbs, it seems. > Jimm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 16:00:52 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 09:00:52 -0700 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > > admonitions along the same line ... > > Dont play ball in the house (where there is a Sacred Bundle), because > > ..... (some negative consequence). > > Dont sing at the dinner table, or you will marry a crazy person. > > Cover the mirrors in the house, during a thunder storm, to avoid > > lightning being attracted to the house. > > Dont whistle in the night, as it will attract spirits (thinking you want > > something of them). We might follow Jimm's implicit suggestion and call some of these things and examples like them already cited "admonitions," especially if they are presented as warnings in conditional form, have a formulaic content, but no fixed wording (or are known only in translation), and lack a metaphorical formulation or application. The admonition concerning mirrors is probably post-Contact, but needn't be especially recent in origin. Were there mirrors pre-contact? I wonder about mica maybe being used in this way. I know it was a pre-Contact trade item, but not why! > > I do recall what appears to me as possible proverbs. Several that came to > > mind are: These definitely qualify as proverbs, to my mind. The one about making one's own bed is so close to a traditional English formulation that I'd wonder if it might be a case of diffusion. I don't recall any parallels for the others, though the thoughts are fairly universal! > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge (e?e) ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > > Wa'ng-e wahi'sje iyan' tun'sge ihun' inu'ha tun' ke. > > If a man possesses a sister, he has a second mother > > > > Ayan' regra'?un ke; Gashun' uyan' ne. > > You made your own bed, Now lie in it. > > (You created your own predicament/ crisis, so take the consequences). > > > > Waye're?sun wori'giragesge nanke'rida uki'ruhda re. Tan'dare wama'nyi je. > > If someone tells you something, notice behind him. From where does he walk? > > (When one gives you advise, See if he follows it himself). (Walk your talk). This is metaphorically, though not necessarily intentionally obscurely phrased, but doesn't seem to have a metaphorical application. I'd interpret it as meaning that one should consider the motives or friendships of somebody who offers advice. > > Also, noone has mentioned the Saying & Expressions from LaFlesche's Osage > > Dictionary, pp. 399-403. This volume dates the existance of what can be > > considered proverbs, it seems. I'd forgotten this set, but I recall seeing in some materials Carolyn Quintero showed me a versions of these sayings that I took to be the original. As I recall they were presented there as a coherent monologue. I think the monologue was of Christian missionary origin, but I'm not certain I recall the provenance properly, and I don't know that this would necessily mean that all of the sentiments were of European origin. Certainly there are some clear New Testament parallels, cf., e.g., "No sparrow falls ..." I think that the material simply appealed to LaFlesche philosophically when he encountered it, and,as it was in Osage, that he made use of it as sample Osage sentences. Proverbs, as everyone knows, are contagious. This is what I meant by saying that the genre may be easier for a cultural tradition to acquire than to lose. There's a parallel with computer viruses. (But not with worms, which spread themselves actively.) You might also compare simple, memorable, catchy tunes that stick in your head and go round and round all day - what a computer scientist friend of mine called "song viruses." In effect, proverbs and sayings and admonistions can be thought of as self-perpetuating texts that survive in the environment of human memory, propagated when some one trots one out, and someone else immediately comits it to memory. Like other parasites, some are coincidentally useful, some are not. I suppose some, uncritically applied, might actually be dangerous, though I haven't any particular candidates in mind. ("Have another for the road!"?) Having enough of the right kind inhabiting your mental processes might be a survival trait, just like having the right bacteria in your gut or mitochondria in all your cells. I hope to God this isn't the only real function of intelligence! Aiee! From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Dec 21 16:50:03 2001 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:50:03 -0600 Subject: Fw: Re: Proverbs Message-ID: > In effect, proverbs and sayings and admonistions can be thought of as > self-perpetuating texts that survive in the environment of human memory, > propagated when some one trots one out, and someone else immediately > comits it to memory. Like other parasites, some are coincidentally > useful, some are not. I suppose some, uncritically applied, might > actually be dangerous, though I haven't any particular candidates in mind. > ("Have another for the road!"?) Having enough of the right kind > inhabiting your mental processes might be a survival trait, just like > having the right bacteria in your gut or mitochondria in all your cells. > I hope to God this isn't the only real function of intelligence! Aiee! > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). It's really fascinating stuff. And then just last week, I was reading that Michael Closs book Native American Mathematics. In it, there is a whole section on the diffusion of the concept of ZERO throughout the world, with specific consideration on Meso-American civilizations. It reminded me of the memetics thing all over again. And now today, it rears its cryptic head once more. Talk of the diffusion of ideas! Does anyone know anything about this? I'd like to check out more information about it. Please excuse me if this field of study may in fact fall into the realm of common knowledge stuff, and I'm just too far behind the times to know. And for all I know, it's just the second coming of phrenology, theosophy, or some other pseudo-science drivel. I am still interested in it, whatever it may be! I know it's not particulary relevent to the technical study of Siouan languages, but it may be germaine to the recent proverb thread. -jm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Dec 21 18:25:29 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:25:29 -0700 Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) In-Reply-To: <001501c18a3f$8ad56c60$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and > workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called > 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, > but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy > principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, > morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). I'm generally aware of the concept, and I've been meaning to read an article on memes in Scietific American for so long I've misplaced the issue. I thought of mentioning the term in this connection, but decided I had better read the article first, in case meme didn't mean what I thought it did. From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Dec 21 18:54:13 2001 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 13:54:13 EST Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: Hi. Just as an aside- there is actually a mimetics discussion list out there (I can't offhand recall their URL). Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Fri Dec 21 19:45:43 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 13:45:43 -0600 Subject: Memes (Re: Fw: Re: Proverbs) Message-ID: >>On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Justin McBride wrote: >> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the study of the diffusion and >> workings of such little "memory bugs" and general conecpts like them called >> 'memetics?' It seems I recall reading about this field a few years back, >> but I can't remember where. I believe it operates on a linguistic analogy >> principle, with its smallest units as 'memes' (compare to phon-emes, >> morph-emes, sem-emes, etc.). > John replied: > I'm generally aware of the concept, and I've been meaning to read an > article on memes in Scietific American for so long I've misplaced the > issue. I thought of mentioning the term in this connection, but decided I > had better read the article first, in case meme didn't mean what I thought > it did. I believe the concept of "memes" was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene". The book is basically about the fascinating and completely amoral working of genes in genetic evolution. His last chapter raises the concept of a "meme", which he sees as a unit comparable to a gene operating at a cultural level. I never bought the analogy, which seems grossly reductionist and socio-politically naive to me, but I loved the rest of the book. Try to find a copy if you're interested in this area; it's a fun read! Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sun Dec 23 14:18:46 2001 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 05:18:46 -0900 Subject: Proverbs Message-ID: The Yoruba language (of the Yoruba in Nigeria, just to the northwest of the Igbo) was and is FULL of proverbs. I was there in 1996 doing research for three months on indigenous knowledge in primary health care. There were dozens of proverbs simply on maintaining health. As a side project and with the assistance of my Yoruba language tutor, I wrote a short book on the daily life of a Yoruba woman based specifically on the use of proverbs. In the traditional Yoruba way of life, all of life was guided by proverbs. Lance rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > Pamela wrote: > > But some non-European exotic languages are very rich in proverbs (the > best > > case I know of being Wolof). > > I seem to recall running into an enormous body of proverbs a few years ago > when I was looking at Igbo. Is West Africa in general an area particularly > rich in this genre? > > > I hope more people will comment on this. > > Here's my two cents (cheap at the price!): > > I wonder if we shouldn't try to refine what we mean by a proverb? Is a > proverb just any standard saying? Is it an admonition? Does it have to > be metaphorical? > > If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural regions, and > overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or absence is an > indicator > of differences in the historical life circumstances of the people living in > these respective regions. > > Suppose I live in a relatively egalitarian society where intra-group > conflict > is frowned upon, and where strong people will surely lose respect and power > if they assault their compatriots simply for disagreeing with them. Here, > if I > have a disagreement with my neighbor, I can speak my mind plainly (if > politely), > without fear of serious consequences. In this scenario, I don't need a > proverb; I just need to state my views about the concrete issue at hand. > > On the other hand, suppose I live in a socially stratified society where > group solidarity takes a back seat to cutthroat competition for status and > power among its members. Here we have a teeming mass of struggling > peasants > and social nobodies, dominated by castes of chieftains, warriors, clerics > and other social-climbing elites, who themselves live in constant terror of > falling back into the black hole of social nullity over which they rule. > To these elites, honor is of the essence. Being bearded to their face is > an embarrassment, and embarrassment signals weakness and brings unwelcome > attention from ambitious rivals. If I state my disagreement to a person in > this position, I force him either to be embarrassed or to squish me like a > bug, and I can easily guess which route he will be inclined to take. So I > suffer my resentments in silence along with everyone else, until one day a > diabolically inspired raconteur tells us an amusing story he has made up > that metaphorically nails the very behavior we are all so frustrated with. > We listeners enjoy a catharsis of hysterical laughter, and pass the fable > along. Soon our ruler is losing credibility by the bucketload, but can't > very well punish anybody without first acknowledging that the lampoon > applies > to him, which would bring him even greater embarrassment and dishonor. > > Eventually the story is so well known that it doesn't bear repeating. To > express devastating social criticism, we need only reference the title bar > of the appropriate story. The party being criticized cannot easily > respond, > because doing so would require him to assert that he is being criticized, > which in turn would mean that he must assume the logic of the metaphor. > And it is not only tyrants that can be caught in this rhetorical Catch-22; > it can be quite effective in winning arguments within your family and local > neighborhood as well. When it reaches this stage of usage, I think we have > a true proverb. > > If this model for the origin of proverbs is valid, then we should predict > that they are a fairly recent development in human history, and that they > will be richly represented in chiefdom, feudal and state-form societies, > but rare or absent in band- or tribal-type societies, including most of > aboriginal North America. I would expect them to be present in Mexico and > Central America, and likely in the societies of the Pacific Northwest > coast. > Can anyone shoot down this hypothesis? > > Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sun Dec 23 14:29:31 2001 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 05:29:31 -0900 Subject: Proverbs (whistling) Message-ID: I was told by the Cheyenne not to whistle at night because that is the language of ghosts and they will come and answer. That is why Austin Two Moon laughed at white people who whistle in the dark whent hey are afraid.. that will bring the exact thing you do not wish to bring! Lance Koontz John E wrote: > On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Jan F. Ullrich wrote: > > Shake' nitha'pa kte. > > Your fingers will change into balls. > > When scolding children for pointing at the rainbow. > > I seem to recall a comparable warning for either Dakota or Omaha along the > lines of "Don't whistle, you sound like a ghost." Presumably sounding > like a ghost is bad because one either becomes one or summons one. > > And I remember a comment in a story that Catherine Rudin showed me that > indicates that ghosts are afraid of flapping laundry. This now smacks > (cf. schmecken?) to me of some supporting statement along these lines. > > JEK