CJ phonemes

[Henry Zenk]

Dear Sally and all,
	I've been wanting to share some of my own thoughts about
phonemes, but have been reluctant since some of the issues I feel are
quite involved. So, I'll just close my eyes, take a deep breath, and jump
off of the following as diving board:
>
>
>               p   t        ts    tS    k   kw   q   qw   ?
>
>               p'  t'  tL'  ts'  (tS')  k'  kw'  q'  qw'
>
>               b   d                    g
>
>                        L    s     S    x   xw   X    Xw
>
>               m   n                   (N)
>
>                   r    l
>
>               w                      y
>
>
>
>                     i       u
>
>                     e   @   o
>
>                         a
>


Jacobs has about 50 pages of CJ elicitations from John Hudson in a 1928
field notebook, which dates them to the very beginning of his work with
Hudson (who was mainly Jacobs's Santiam Kalapuya informant).  At this
point, he used a narrower phonetic transcription than later,
distinguishing plain obstruents vs. voiced vs. "intermediate,"
the latter written in his published Santiam material as small upper-case
surd symbols(B, D, G, DJ).  Intermediates seem to be unaspirated
obstruents with some tendency to transitory voicing.  Interestingly (and
one of Henry Kammler's messages provides a very interesting aside to
this), Jacobs remarks on the tendency of intermediates to be confused with
(or be misrecorded for) corresponding glottalized obstruents.  I recorded
CJ from Eula Petite, one of John Hudson's daughters (she didn't know
Kalapuya, only CJ and English).  Eula composed CJ materials using her own
intuitive adaptation of English dictionary orthography:  these show
(though not terribly consistently) a three-way opposition contrasting
plain (p, t, ...), unaspirated or intermediate (whatever you want to call
it) (for which she used doubled letters: pb, td ...), and voiced (b, d
...).  Eula's "intermediates" occur where one would expect glottalized
obstruents, but elsewhere as well.

Anyway, what all this is leading up to:  for older, more fluent
Grand Ronde CJ speakers I found:  (a) glottalized obstruents, which
sometimes sound virtually indistinguishable from corresponding unaspirated
sounds, (b) an independent aspirated : unaspirated distinction,
pretty clear at the phonetic level but difficult to evaluate
phonemically due to inconsistent realizations especially from different
speakers.  (Howard Berman by the way found the same problem in Kalapuyan:
Jacobs's intermediates are hard to pin down phonemically.)

As for a voiced series:  in Jacobs's 1928 Hudson elicitations it is most
interesting that voiced stops are restricted to words with English and
French etymologies.  Jacobs later collapsed his CJ intermediate and voiced
series, simply remarking that Hudson's voiced CJ obstruents "varied" about
a point midway between English voiced and Kalapuyan intermediates.

One thing I am not sure of:  how Kalapuyan intermediates compare to, e.g.,
Chinookan voiced obstruents.  I believe I remember Boas remarking that
sonants and surds are hard to distinguish in Chinookan, the sonants being
less voiced than English sonants.  The latter perception agrees with that
of one of my elderly fluent CJ speakers, Wilson Bobb, with whom I
discussed such matters at some length.  I always recorded, e.g., [basdEn]
from him, but he roundly criticized me when I read the word back with an
"English" [b].  He also remarked that older Indians pronounced it
[pasdEn], with unaspirated [p], note.  My sense is that an idealized
"older-Indian" Grand Ronde CJ phonology would have a glottalized :
non-glottalized contrast (clearly phonemic) AND an aspirated : unaspirated
("intermediate") contrast (clearly phonetic, phonemically problematic).
The matter becomes more complicated as we go down the generations, because
now people clearly are using English voiced obstruents at least in
English and French words.  Yes, there is a plain :  voiced contrast here.
In indigenously derived words a plain : unaspirated contrast is also
evident for these younger speakers, albeit difficult to evaluate.

Well, you see why I've been reluctant to jump into this.  Similar
considerations arise with vowels.  E.g., on my tapes from Wilson Bobb, I
believe I hear (even at the phonetic level) ONE high front vowel:  it
slips around elusively between something closer to [I], or to [i], or to
[e] (except:  [e] is clearly used expressively, e.g. [we::k] 'nooo').  As
we go down the generations, however, we find speakers making much clearer
(English-like) distinctions between vowels.  So whose Jargon are we going
to teach?  That of older Indians, forgetting about the elders still in our
midst?

One more point:

>
>    According to Kaufman, /x/ is pronounced [h] word-initially, [x]
> elsewhere.
>

Kaufman may be right for some speakers in some places, but not for Grand
Ronde.  Consider the following examples supporting /h/ : /x/ : /X/ --

	/h/  ['hEm] 'smelly', ['hihi] 'laugh', [la'haS] 'axe'
	/x/  ['xulxul] 'mouse', [ni'xwa] 'let's ...', ['uIxEt] 'trail'
	/X/  ['XumXum] 'brains', [XE'luIma] 'different', ['saXali] 'high'

There is some murkiness here because [h] is also frequently a variant of
both /x/ and /X/, while /x/ is an infrequent sound especially in initial
position, and /h/ is an unusual sound especially in medial position.
While somewhat "messy," however, I think the evidence is there.

No doubt I've forgotten something important.  But hey, I'm out of time.

--Henry