Ofologists take note!

[rwd0002 at unt.edu]

Quoting David Kaufman <dvklinguist2003 at yahoo.com>:

> Overall, I do find Native Languages of the Southeastern United States 
> excellent and useful.  I especially like the section on Cherokee 
> which does a good job of summarizing such a complex language.  It is 
> heavily weighted toward the Muskogean languages, which is great for 
> those of us wanting to know more about that family.  It's too bad 
> more of the Southeastern Siouan languages aren't included, but of 
> course that's understandable given the paucity of material available 
> on the languages.  Perhaps, now that I'm working on it, a Biloxi 
> sketch can be included in a future edition.
>
>  Dave
>
> David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net> wrote:
>  By 'omission of Ofo' do we mean omitted from the index, or the fact 
> that Ofo doesn't have a sketch in Native Languages of the 
> Southeastern United States? If it's the fact that it doesn't have a 
> sketch, that certainly seems excusable, since there's such a skimpy 
> corpus on the language.
>
> I'd actually like to say some words in favor of NLSUS -- I think it's 
> a great book. It has EIGHT language sketches in it (plus two pieces 
> on Proto-Muskogean). How many books these days have that many 
> language sketches in them? It has a sketch of every branch of 
> Muskogean except Mikasuki (which I do wish had been included). And, 
> as an Americanist philologist, I have to say that Kimball's sketch of 
> long-extinct Natchez (taken entirely from Haas's old fieldnotes) is 
> brilliant.
>
> The reason why Catawba wasn't included in the book reminds me of the 
> story of why there are no sketches of any Southeastern languages in 
> the Language volume of HNAI. The story as I heard it was that the 
> southeastern language in the book was supposed to be a Creek sketch 
> by Mary Haas. However, by the time Mary was assigned that essay, she 
> was essentially retired and not really doing linguistics anymore, and 
> so the sketch never got written. By the time it became obvious that 
> it wasn't going to happen, it was too late to reassign it to anyone 
> else, hence the rather conspicuous gap in the volume's geographic 
> coverage.
>
> Dave
>
I agree with the two Daves above.  It is a great book, I am really 
looking forawrd in particular to the Caddo, Natchez, and Quapaw 
sketches, and I am pleased that my little Ofo comment started a 
discussion of Southeastern languages here.  Enjoyed the Chitimasha 
discussion.  I remember seeing Gatschet spelling it Shetimasha, which 
confirms Mary Haas's pronunciation.

Willem