[Fwd: Re: Another Sahaptin - CJ cognate]

[Dave Robertson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Another Sahaptin - CJ cognate
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:53:32 -0400
From: Dell Hymes <dhh4d at cstone.net>
To: Dave Robertson <tuktiwawa at netscape.net>

As to 'sweet', the situation is more complicated.  Wasco-Wishram has
t'si in words having to do with sweetness.

i-ya-ts'i-mum  'it's sweetness, it's sweet'  (Hiram Smith 7/21/56
cf. a-ts'i-sablal
i-c'ic'i-qwtaks

When Boas began work at the mouth of the Columbia, hje obtained a Clatsop
vocabulary . The original is in the Library of the American Philosophical
Society, where, when I copied it long ago, it was identified as Pn4b.6.
    'Pn" represents Penutian.  These identifications were made by
Morris Swadesh.

The vocabulary at APS is alphabetized by English glosses.
    'sweet'  is   ia:ts'e:mam  (with a small b avove the first m,
indicating the pronunciation at the river mouth in which Boas found it
sometimes difficult to distinguish [m] and [b].  The colons in my typing
represent macrons in Boas' writing.

    So it would seem that forms for sweetness involving ts'i were known
at both ends of Chinookan territory.  And were productive (more than one
form), at least in Wasco-Wishram. I apologize for not digging out thesecond
and third Wasco entries, but -sablal is 'bread'.

    All  best,
            Dell


>Lhush chxi pulakli, khanawi-lhaksta,
>
>The sketch of the grammar of Sahaptin in volume 17 of the Smithsonian
>"Handbook of the North American Indian" includes the word /t'si/ (I'm using
>Grand Ronde email Americanist alphabet here) meaning "sweet".
>
>This is identical, isn't it, to Chinook Jargon /t'si/ "sweet"?
>
>I am being lazy in not referring to my other books as I write this, but I
>seem to recall some vocabulary or vocabularies of CJ having claimed that
>this word is of K'alapuyan origin, not Sahaptian.
>
>Anybody know?
>
>Dave
>
>PS--the Sahaptin word for "black bear" is given as /yaka/, so now I'm
>guessing that the placename Yaka in that region isn't Jargon ("His hill" or
>"his creek" always sounded suspect)!




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