CSD (privately)

[R. Rankin]

No need to apologize for getting the wrong email
address; everybody does it.

The CSD is the product of several years of work
done with the help of grants between about 1984
and 1992.  David Rood applied for the grants
through his institution, the University of
Colorado, with the understanding that he would be
the PI but that the reconstruction would be in the
hands of the senior editors, myself, Dick Carter
and Wes Jones.  Many of the cognate sets were
assembled during the Summer of 1984 with
participation by the above four, plus John Koontz,
Paul Voorhis, Pat Shaw, Willem DeReuse and I'm
sure another one or two that I'm forgetting.  We
got quite far along before the money ran out, but
a few tasks remain to be completed before we can
publish the results of the research.

The CSD is in a DOS file, but it uses a special
DOS font.  It is the font that needs to be
converted from ASCII to Windows (ANSI).  I think
John, who has done most of the computer work with
the file, has it in a Unix format for formatting
purposes.  I don't think anyone minds giving
people access to information from the files at
this point, but the file itself isn't very
"portable" because of the font problems and the
fact that we use a special Program Editor to read
and search it.  Wes Jones put the PE together for
us as I recall.

What we need to do now, I think, is to convert the
database so that it can be "sucked up" into Doug's
IDD and edited further there.  That should
ultimately produce publishable copy.  Wally Hooper
has a font conversion program that works with IDD,
and I took tutoring in using IDD at Bloomington
last June.  The remaining tasks include a more
thorough work-up of the kinship terminology that
Dick Carter promised to do, some pronominal
reconstruction that needs to be refined and maybe
one or two other things.

The database contains about 1200 cognate sets.
Generally we have insisted that, in order to
qualify as a cognate set, an etymon must be
represented in at least two of the 4 major
subgroups of Siouan -- preferably with some
geographical separation.  The dictionary could be
expanded enormously if words found only in the
Mississippi Valley Siouan subgroup were allowed to
constitute sets.

That's about where things stand today.  David and
John have a published paper in which they talk
about the logistics of the project.  They can
provide the source for you.

If scholars need some particular cognate set, I'm
sure we can provide it, but access to the whole
database is quite cumbersome at the moment.
Hopefully this situation will soon improve.

Bob