Questions about words

[hzenk at PDX.EDU]

> 1. In Jacobs's "Texts in Chinook Jargon" there is a word, dat'Li, that
> occurs twice:
> In Howard's "A stingy girl is taken away by mountain people", p. 6, 2:
> "dat'Li gagwa yaXga", translated as "So that is what she (has been doing)";
> In Hudson's "Soup Man", p. 16, 5:
> "dat'Li-yaga-uk-ulman yagayu-makmak uk-lasup", translated as "It must be
> this old man who has been eating the soup".
> Now, i'm unable to find out from the context what this "dat'Li" could mean
> (it looks to be an adverb), and I didn't find it in any of the dictionaries
> accessible on-line (Demers, Le Jeune, Gibbs, Shaw, Hale, Philips, Holton,
> etc.etc.), although I was lookig also for variants like tatli, tahtli,
> tatlhi, tathli, etc.; what does it mean?

We have an English translation from one of Hudson's daughters, but I don't have
it handy.  In our dictionary we translate:  "(Indicator of dawning
realization:) so THAT'S (what it is, what's been going on)."  The dictionary
incorporates both Jacobs and what we have recorded from more recent Grand Ronde
elders.  The word is derived from a Chinookan particle, spelled taL! by Boas and
translated variously by him:  'behold', 'see!', 'look!', 'lo!' (and more
formally in his Chinook grammar, p. 636:  'although I did not expect it,
still').  This is one of a number of Chinookan particles recorded from Grand
Ronde community speakers not to be found in the historical sources.

>
> 2. I the texts of Victoria Howard appears a particle, -iwa, added to local
> adverbs:
> In "A dangerous being kills two women", p. 6, 7 (4):
> "alda t'Lunas qa-iwa Lasga Ladwa uk-dilxam", translated as "And so I do not
> know where those people went";
> In " stingy girl is taken away by mountain people", p. 8, 9:
> "wik-maLadwa yawa'iwa", translated as "do not go in yonder direction";
> p. 9, 9 (2):
> "bus-wik-naLadwa yawa'iwa", translated as "I was not to go in yonder
> direction".
> From the context I understand that this particle turns place adverbs into
> directional ones. But if this is the case, isn't such a particle
> superfluous? I knew that qa(X) means where, both "in what place" and "in
> what direction", and similarly yawa means "there", both "in that place" and
> also "in that direction".
>

iwa is another of those Chinookan particles.  Boas (Chinook grammar p. 621)
explains it as "demonstrative position near 3rd person", Sapir (cited p. 626
there) translates 'thus, there'.  We don't have many examples, so it is not so
easy to generalize about now (one of the older fluent speakers I worked with
used qa-iwa, yawa-iwa alongside qa and yawa; he also approved of yakwa-iwa when
I suggested it).  Not entirely superfluous I think, in that it can be used to
disambiguate different senses of these 2 adverbs (or 3, or maybe a fluent
speaker of yesteryear would have been even more "productive"):  e.g. 'where'
vs. 'which way'.  This is about the only true bound form I can think of offhand
in CW.

> 3. Is there a CW word for "to fall (down)", beside the idiom "klatawa
> ilehi"? In Jacobs's Texts, namely in Coquille Thompsons "The origin of
> death" (p. 27, 4) we have:
> "kagwa yaga-Ladwa tLaxani, ili'i yaga t'LuX", translated as "That was how
> he went outside, he fell down on the ground (in a transport of grief)"
> What does the word "t'LuX" mean? Does it mean "to fall"?
>

t'LuX does mean 'to fall'.  I don't have Gibbs etc. handy, but I think this is
in the old dictionaries with spellings like "klugh" and the like.

> 4. Is there a CW word for "jaybird"? I know from a message to this list
> (posted by Don Boucher on 14 Dec. 1998) that "Tehanie" = "Steller's Jay".
> But is there a word for "jay(bird)" in general? Or Steller's jay is the
> only (or the most important) species of jaybird living in the PNW?
>

qisqis 'jaybird', either Stellar's (the blue-crested found in deep forests in
the NW) or California (uncrested, white-bellied, found in open country).  By
the way, contrary to an idea that has seemingly become popular hereabouts, the
"California Jay" is NOT a recent arrival (along with about half of the recent
human population of Oregon) from California.  These jays have different names
in Kalapuyan, and the California jay was common in the native prairies and
savannas of the Willamette, Umpqua, Rogue R. Valleys.

> 5. Is there a CW word for "fox"? I found (don't remember where), that
> talapas means also "fox" and "wolf", and in the dictionary of
> Demers/Blanchet/St.Onge we have: aias oputs = "fox; prairie wolf, coyote"
> (literally: "big tail"); but is there also a specific word for "fox"?
>

We (speaking for the CTGR language program) have been using "plum-uphuch".
Don't know offhand whether we got that from some old source, or improvised it.
Improvisation is of course a lot of the fun of CW.  Henry Z.

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