Sydney Parkinson's Savu list (was An-lang Digest, Vol 45, Issue 5)

[Waruno Mahdi]

>  soofoo (breast) huhu

Thanks for the reference to tha AVRD database, that I just looked up.
And there I indeed discovered further confirmation of what I had
suspected, i.e. that the _f_ in _soofoo_ was actually an _s_.
Parkinson's Savu list in the database has two or more parallel entries
for many of the items, and for "breast[s]" there are two: _soosoo_
and _soofoo_ (besides two more for 'nipples' that involve the same
two "variants").

I had this problem when working with 16th-18th century publications,
because an _s_ in not syllable-final position was typically printed
(and written) like an _f_ without the cross-bar. It is not only very
difficult to distinguish such an _s_ from an _f_ or vice versa, but
even the typesetters got confused sometimes and set an _f_ where the
writer had meant _s_ or vice versa (the famous _fese_, supposedly the
Chinese name of an ape thought to be akin to the orangutan, is
actually Chin. _fei4fei4_ 'baboon', 4 = high-falling tone).

Another item in Parkinson's Savu list where this feature is relevant
is #197 'one' with three entries: _iffe_, _usse_, and _uffe_.
I assume, that the actual intervocalic consonant is _s_, and that the
gemination in the spelling merely served to indicate that the "closed-
syllable" pronunciation of the preceding vowel (in English) is implied.
And when a native speaker of English hesitates beween <i-nodot> as in
_this_ and <v-rotated> as in _thus_, the vowel he means is in all
likelihood the shwa. Comparing this with '5' _lumee_ / _lumme_
that reflects *Lima, it becomes apparent that the word for '1'
reflects *isa. The final vowel in both words was probably as in
English _these_. Bob Blust, indeed, has _ehi_ '1' and _lemi_ '5',
the former with _s_ > _h_ as you pointed out.

Aloha,  Waruno
_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang