Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi

[David Kaufman]

Scott,

I don't have my Tutelo material in front of me, but my gut reaction is that
your sentence would not be natural to a Siouan-speaker; it appears to be a
literal translation of the English.  Rather, I think the more natural
Siouan way, which hopefully some other Siouanists here could chime in on,
would be more like chiko:yo oto: pi mi-yato-ste:kE lit. 'sweetgrass-scent
I-love'.  Not having the Tutelo dictionary with me, I'm not sure about
qekego 'of' (I'm not aware of Siouan having a postposition for 'of') nor am
I sure about the definite article prefix i-.  (In Biloxi and some other
Siouan languages like Lakota and Dhegiha the definite article is after the
noun, either suffixed as in Biloxi -yaN or separate as in Lakota kin.)

Is chiko:yo 'sweet'?  (I'm assuming it probably is since it's Biloxi
ckuye.)  If oto is 'grass' then it seems to me it would be oto: chiko:yo 'sw
eetgrass', since sweet is the adjective modifying 'grass.'  That would then
give: oto: chiko:yo pi mi-yato-ste:kE lit. 'grass-sweet scent I love.'

I hope this makes sense, and maybe other Siouanists can either verify or
correct my analyses....

Dave

On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 10:52 PM, Scott Collins <saponi360 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Verb at end of sentence******
>
> Adjectives follow nouns****
>
> Adverbs and Direct Objects before the Verb
>
> ****
>
> I love the smell of sweetgrass.
>
> ****
>
> I = mi (subject/noun)****
>
> Love = yato-ste:kE (verb)****
>
> The = i- (definite article)****
>
> Smell = pi (you can add an infatic such as –se after the word) (adjective)
> ****
>
> Of = qekego (preposition)****
>
> Sweetgrass = chiko:yo oto: (object/noun)
>
>
>
> My final conjugation:
>
> I- pi qekego  chiko:yo oto:  mi yato-ste:kE. ( I love the smell of
> sweetgrass.)
>
> Is this all correct?
>
>
>
>
> Scott P. Collins
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR
>
> Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle
>
> “Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”
>
> "The greater the denial the greater the awakening."
>
>


-- 
David Kaufman, Ph.C.
University of Kansas
Linguistic Anthropology
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