Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi

Mon May 27 19:10:09 UTC 2013

I'd say that's getting awfully close.  There are places where we just don't have enough detailed knowledge such as the uses of the definite article in Tutelo, but this looks pretty close to me.

Bob
________________________________
From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of Scott Collins [saponi360 at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 10:27 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi

The correct conjugation of "I love the smell of sweet grass" is
"Sokta:ki-chiko:yo pi  win-yantoste:ke-hiye" ?

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--- On Sun, 5/26/13, David Kaufman <dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

From: David Kaufman <dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Date: Sunday, May 26, 2013, 6:53 PM

Having finally found my Tutelo material, I can now make a few points, I think:

I am not sure what the mi- prefix is in your sentence, Scott.  It looks like the Tutelo first person singular pronouns are wa- and wiN- (N representing nasality), the latter being the 'dative' form that seems to be used with possession of body parts (Oliverio p. 135).  The more I think about your sentence, the more I think using the causative -hiye might be appropriate (Oliverio p. 119), so that the verb part of your sentence would look more like this: wiN-yaNtoste:ke-hiye < wiN- = 1st pers sg pronoun dative; -yaNti = heart; -ste:ke = good; -hiye = causative, thus coming out as literally 'It causes my heart (to be) good.'  This would be like Biloxi aNk-yaNdi-phi-ye < aNk- = 1st pers singular pronoun (subject or possessive); -yaNdi = heart; -phi = good (vs. pi = liver); -ye = causative.  Biloxi lost the active-patient split of other Siouan languages, so aNk- is the only pronoun for 'I' now used, which is actually cognate with Tutelo waNk-/waN- 1st person plural.

Okay, that i- prefix does not show up in Oliverio as a definite article 'the' (Oliverio p. 202).  It does, however, show up as an *indefinite* (= English a, an) article suffix -i.  According to Oliverio (p. 202) the Tutelo *definite* articles are -ki(N) or -se.  The former agrees with Lakota -kiN and the latter I believe is more of an emphatic definite article agreeing with Biloxi -yaN and -di on nouns.  (So, Tutelo yaNti-ki(N) 'the heart' vs. yaNti-i 'a heart' (?); not sure if that last would combine into a long vowel -i: or would remain separate).

Hope this helps.

Dave

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Rory Larson <rlarson1 at unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rlarson1@unl.edu>> wrote:

Hi Scott,

Yes, the word “the” is what we have in mind when we talk about the “definite article”.  We may use this term to refer to certain classifying words in Siouan languages as well when we feel that they are doing about the same thing in those languages that “the” does for us in English.  We should be cautious about this though, because we generally think in English or some other European language, and we may be imposing our language’s logical paradigm on the Siouan language we are trying to understand when we classify things this way.  I think it’s generally safer and more productive to try to understand each element of the language we are trying to learn on its own terms, without worrying too much about abstract universal grammatical classifications.

In any case, I don’t think you should need “articles” of any kind for the simple sentence you are trying to construct.  I don’t know much of anything about Tutelo-Saponi, but in Siouan languages I do have experience with, it should break down first into two basic parts, as follows:

                [The smell of sweetgrass] [I love].

In English, we are required to use “the” a lot.  In some other European languages, it might be required even more.  In German or French, the first clause would probably have to be [The smell of the sweetgrass], with both “smell” and “sweetgrass” getting a definite article.  But in Siouan, insofar as I am familiar with it, classifying “articles” are only used when you are talking about a particular thing rather than a generality.  “The smell that reached my nose coming out of the kitchen last night” is something specific, and might take an “article”.  “The smell of sweetgrass” is a generality that characterizes sweetgrass, not something specific to a particular context that you would be referencing, so it probably would not need an article.  (Languages vary: someone with a different experience may shoot me down here!)  So we can probably rewrite that sentence as:

                [Smell of sweetgrass] [I love].

As Dave and Bob have pointed out, there should probably be no word for “of” in a Siouan language.  They handle it differently, and for that matter, English uses “of” in subtly different ways too.  In this case, our logic makes “smell” something possessed by “sweetgrass”.  That’s reasonable enough, but Siouan probably wouldn’t see it that way.  Another way of handling it is to make “sweetgrass” into a sort of adjective that describes the smell you’re talking about: “sweetgrass smell”.  This works in English too, and in practice it conveys the same meaning as “the smell of sweetgrass”, though the underlying logical conception is different in the two formulations.  Siouan would use the second formulation:

                [Sweetgrass smell] [I love].

As Dave brought out, if you are also coining the word for “sweetgrass” by simply translating “sweet” and “grass”, the order will be to stick the “adjective” (stative verb) “sweet” after the noun, “grass”, which it describes.  Hence, English “sweetgrass” in Siouan would be “grass-sweet”:

                [Grass-sweet smell] [I love].

Next, you need to know how to say “I love it”.  For this, you should just need the I-form conjugation of the verb “love”.  For most verbs, this would be pretty easy.  You would simply look up the verb “love” and then slap the I-form of the affixed pronoun in front of it.  In Omaha, that would be something like a-love, as in “Ah love the smell of sweetgrass.”  Unfortunately, in Siouan, as Bob points out, “love” and “like” formulations tend to be a little more hairy, typically something like “It is good to me”, or “It is good in my heart”.  They also may vary according to just what it is that is loved or liked.  Loving fried chicken is different from loving your girlfriend.  We don’t make the distinction in English.  Siouan languages likely do.

Finally, I would note that Siouan languages commonly have what we might call “emphatic pronouns”.  This is probably what you will find in a dictionary if you look up the word “I”, which is what I suspect your “mi” word is.  In English, we must have a subject in any sentence other than a command.  In Siouan, this is not necessary.  We use an emphatic pronoun as a subject only when we want to emphasize it in contrast to something else.  Compare:

                I love the smell of sweetgrass.                   (I’m just telling you about myself and what I like.)

                *I* love the smell of sweetgrass.             (I do, unlike somebody else we’ve been discussing, who doesn’t.)

If you use “mi” in this sentence, you will probably be conveying the second idea.  So you should probably drop the “mi” and just figure out how to say “I love it” about an odor.

At this point, we have:

                [Grass-sweet smell] [I-love].

where the “I” is part of a conjugated form of the contruction for “love”, not a separate word by itself.

Now we just have to plug in the right translations.

It looks like you have three possible words for ‘grass’:

                sokta:ki

                mukta:ki

                oto:

Have you checked the Tutelo-English side of Oliverio’s dictionary to see what these translate to going the other way?  Hopefully, you could refine the problem by chasing it down from the other direction.

Bob says that oto: means ‘to be blue or green’.  Could that possibly have been extended to mean ‘grass’ in some contexts as we do with vegetation when we say “greenery”?

Can the other two words be broken down into smaller elements?  Are they actually so-kta:ki and mu-kta:ki, as they appear?  If so, what do “so”, “mu” and “kta:ki” mean?

Meuse’s/Dorsey’s sunktagi presumably is the word Oliverio is writing as sokta:ki, so maybe we should go with this one in the way Dave suggested:

                sokta:ki-chiko:yo = ‘sweetgrass’  ?

Then if we are using “pi” to mean ‘smell’, we would have:

                sokta:ki-chiko:yo pi = ‘sweetgrass smell’, or ‘the smell of sweetgrass’.

The problem here is that “smell” in English can be either a noun, a transitive verb, or an intransitive verb.  We are looking for a noun, but it is very likely “pi” is a verb in Tutelo.  Looking in the Biloxi dictionary, both Dorsey-Swanton and Dave’s standardized version, there seem to be several forms listed on the English-Biloxi side, but all of them are verbs.  (Odor, a noun, is also listed, but these are specific types of odor, mostly bad.)  The most salient word for ‘smell’ is “hi”, and I’m wondering if that isn’t cognate to Tutelo “pi”?  If “pi” is a verb, we might be in trouble.  Or not.  Siouan can be flexible.  If it is a transitive verb, then

                sokta:ki-chiko:yo pi [I-love].

might mean

                “I love to smell sweetgrass.”

rather than

                “I love the smell of sweetgrass.”

Again, the logical analysis is different, but it probably won’t affect the end-user.

Bob has a good breakdown of “love” as

                yaⁿt-o-steke       = “heart-in-good”, or “is good in one’s heart”

Biloxi has a comparable word:

                ki-yaⁿdi-pi            = “to-one’s-heart-good”, “is good to one’s heart”, or “be satisfied (from eating)”

This one conjugates with a nasal I/we affixed pronoun before the dative or possessive marker “ki”:

                ⁿki-yaⁿdi-pi          = “I am satisfied”

So, Biloxifying Tutelo enough to finish the sentence, why don’t we try:

                Sokta:ki-chiko:yo pi ⁿki-yaⁿt-osteke.

I’ll leave it to you, Bob and Dave to improve on this.  I’m sure Tutelo doesn’t conjugate in exactly the same way as Biloxi!  :-)

Thank you for sharing your ideas and research with the list.  Perhaps you will be the one to write that comprehensive but readable work on Tutelo-Saponi someday, or perhaps someone else will because of your persistent interest.  It is that constant desire to know and understand that heritage, especially on the part of people who have it as part of their background, that will keep the momentum going to preserve and recover it.  Good luck in all your work!

All the best,

Rory

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>] On Behalf Of Scott Collins
Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2013 8:07 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>

Subject: Re: Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi

Here is what Meuse had for -i :

"-i, articulate state marker, article (definite or indefinite), “a, an, the”. Also -y.
Nominals serving as modifiers are always in the articulate state, and follow the
word being modified, which will be in the construct. Stand-alone nominals can
also be in the articulate, to signify the general article (no real distinction between
indefinite / definite articles.) Spelling “-y” following some vowels is purely
aesthetic, and is interchangeable with -i. However, if the final syllable of the
construct includes a strong nasal and/or glottal quality (generally indicated by
final -n, -n’, or -q), the corresponding articulate will end in a ‘broken’ dipthong
similarly incorporating the nasal and/or glottal, in slightly weaker form. This
sound can be inserted by the speaker at any point within the ‘broken dipthong’;

exactly where would be difficult to discern in rapid pronunciation." ---Meuse, Yesnechi, pg. 18.

Also see Oliverio, pg. 202 for -i and i- usages.

The word "the" is a definite article correct?

Oliverio, pg.323 the word love as yato-ste:kE

Meuse, pg 71, the word love as Yandosteka

Here is one link that has some information on sweetgrass ranges: http://www.ecoseeds.com/sweetgrassinfo.html#anchor504328

However, I do not have a source that tells me one way or the other that the Tutelo, Saponi or Occaneechi utilized it or not. I know that I use it at present. Also sense there are other herbs used as sweetgrass or called sweetgrass I'm sure there was a usage at some piont in the past, but at what level I don't know. I'm not sure any ethnobotanical work has been done in the past that gathered that sort of detail. If there was I would love to read it.

Grass is a word found in Meuse pg. 70, "Grass – Sunktagi"

Grass in Oliverio, pg 319, " grass  mukta:ki, oto:, sokta:ki "

I don't think I'm translating from English into Tutelo-Saponi exactly word for word, but I am trying to get as close as possible so that I can have a good translation of what I'm wishing to say in the language. I'm definitely not a linguist or an English major so alot of help is needed in order to try and utilize my people's language. I use all the availble to me sources/dictionaries on Tutelo-Saponi because none of the individual dictionaries is complete. Some have words the others left out or were unaware of at the time they published. I do rely heavily on Oliverio's dictionary as well as this list here in order to try and get word formations that aren't in any of the dictionaries; based on the way this list says Siouan languages form their words.  Of this I am very greatful, for without it I would be constantly hitting brickwalls in attempting to utilize the language.

The usages of -ki also seem to be variant and have various meanings; (see Oliverio, pg.214 for -ki usages). It gets confusing.

My wish is that someone would do a more comprehensive work on Tutelo-Saponi and a work that would be accessable to people like myself as well being a teaching tool for learning the language. The only extensive interaction I get on the language is here on this list. Not that I haven't tried to get others to join in the discussions on our langauge elsewhere.

Again, I want to thank this list and especially Dave and Robert. Your help has been invaluable. Hopefully if I keep at this long enough I may be able to utilize my ancestors language in better way that is fully correct and truly Siouan as a living language.

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--- On Sat, 5/25/13, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rankin@KU.EDU>> wrote:

From: Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rankin@KU.EDU>>
Subject: Re: Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>
Date: Saturday, May 25, 2013, 3:07 PM

I agree with Willem and Dave that we can’t just translate the English word-for-word into Tutelo-Saponi.  The Siouan way of saying ‘I love the smell of sweetgrass’ would not contain an equivalent for “of”, in fact I’m not at all sure that there is ever much of an equivalent of that preposition in Siouan.  I think the way it would be expressed in a Siouan language would be something close to ‘Sweetgrass-smell to.me-it.is.good’.  And actually, the words translated ‘love’ in the literature are a compound of yaⁿt-‘heart’, o- ‘in it’, and steke ‘good’.

I’ve never heard of William Meuse, but from his spellings, it looks as though he just copied the Dorsey file from the Smithsonian letter for letter.  It’s better to use Oliverio, since she standardized the spellings, included all earlier research and includes context with examples.

I don’t know the range of sweetgrass for certain, but I doubt the Tutelos had it in any quantity and I don’t think it grows that far south.  The term for sweetgrass in Dakota-Lakota matches the word for ‘onion’ in Kansa and Osage.  I don’t know which meaning was the original one, though onions are more widespread.

The Tutelo word ‘oto:’ just means ‘to be blue or green’.  In that sense it probably wouldn’t be used for ‘grass' by itself..  So I don’t know what to do about trying to translate ‘sweetgrass’.

I don't think that i- equates to 'the' in any sense, so I'm not sure where that usage is coming from.  In the Sapir transcriptions of Tutelo it appears that -ki after the noun is used for 'the', and since that matches the definite article in Dakotan, I suspect that's as close as we can get in Tutelo.

Bob
________________________________

From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>] on behalf of Scott Collins [saponi360 at YAHOO.COM<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=saponi360@YAHOO.COM>]
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 10:52 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<http://us.mc1814.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=SIOUAN@listserv.unl.edu>
Subject: Conjugation Of A Sentence in Tutelo-Saponi

Verb at end of sentence

Adjectives follow nouns

Adverbs and Direct Objects before the Verb

I love the smell of sweetgrass.

I = mi (subject/noun)

Love = yato-ste:kE (verb)

The = i- (definite article)

Smell = pi (you can add an infatic such as –se after the word) (adjective)

Of = qekego (preposition)

Sweetgrass = chiko:yo oto: (object/noun)

My final conjugation:

I- pi qekego  chiko:yo oto:  mi yato-ste:kE. ( I love the smell of sweetgrass.)

Is this all correct?

Scott P. Collins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

Evil Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Struggle

“Men and women become accomplices to those evils they fail to oppose.”

"The greater the denial the greater the awakening."

--
David Kaufman, Ph.C.
University of Kansas
Linguistic Anthropology

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