Talapus 'Coyote'

[phil cash cash]

(...i have to admit an error in thought in my earlier post).  maybe,
what is happening here is a bit of Pacific NW folk taxonomy in the
semantics of [talapus] 'coyote,' as indicated in Dave's post Subject:
/it'alapas/ and as suggested in Mike's earlier query.

it does seems that there are two separate semantic domains in operation
here.  the first is common 'coyote,' the critter we all know today and
then there is the myth age 'coyote'.  for many PNW languages, this
semantic distinction is often found to occur in two separate lexical
entries, typically without any similarity in form to the other.  but
this does not occur here in CJ, rather it is the reverse situation.
because of its pattern of lexical reduction, we have instead one lexical
entry retaining two semantic domains based on an old PNW folk taxonomy.

also, i do get the impression that many PNW lelang have a
pronominal/agentive prefixing with front vowels, some of which might
correlate with /i-/.

phil cash cash
cayuse/nez perce


On Saturday, February 2, 2002, at 12:40 PM, Mike Cleven wrote:

> "Ross Clark (FOA LING)" wrote:
>>
>> It's taken me a while to get back to my notes, but I knew I had seen
>> something else like this. Gabriel Franchere's Chinook vocabulary has
>> 'Etalapass' glossed as 'God, or the Supreme Being'. I wondered about
>> the
>> connection with 'coyote' at the time (transformer >> creator?). Is
>> this as
>> far as it goes in CJ? Is there a word like this in Chinook proper?
>
> Does the proclitic [-e] (? is that the right word?) have any function in
> any of the languages where this formation is found, or in the case of
> Cayuse, what it's thought to be related to, e.g. Penutian? - such that
> this function would change the basic meaning of a word like "talapus"?
> e.g. sacred, high, supernatural, great or something else entirely?
>
> MC
>
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