Various "pi" terms.

[Scott Collins]

I'm glad you cleared that up on the various "pi" usages and meanings. I definitely wouldn't want to go around saying I love the farts of sweetgrass. 
 
 
On my request to cross post, thank you for agreeing to it. My intent is only to progress the understanding of Tutelo-Saponi and find everyones input her valuable in that regard. I did have some contact with Meuse for a short time, but I'm not in contact with him at present nor is he involved with the Tutelo-Saponi Language page on Facebook as yet. I do have Lawrence Dunmore on the page and hopefully he will interact in the discussions there. I think I could get Meuse involved though at some piont. The more people that are woking on it, and can get together to bang out all the details, the closer we'll get to standardization. 
 
One of the things there is disagreement on is the spelling system. Some think that the small letter next to the regular letters is too confusing while others feel that double and triple lettering is confusing. Lawrence uses the double and triple lettering method which I tend to find more complicated than the linguist version with the apsirations and dipthongs and such. I'm leaning towards phonetic spellings with the usage of semicolons and dashes like Oliverio. However is easiest for laypersons to learn it. I'm sure there will not be easy answers and I'm sure we will all have to bend and comprimise in order to reach agreement on the best approaches.   
 
 
 


Scott P. Collins
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--- On Mon, 5/27/13, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU> wrote:


From: Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at KU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Various "pi" terms.
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Date: Monday, May 27, 2013, 2:54 PM



#yiv491479619 P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;}



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> Also another question regarding "pi". 





 
> Oliverio has
"pi: good"
"stative V"
piwa 'good' ---pg. 268, Oliverio

I think, after thinking about it, that "pi" meaning 'good' should have the aspirated "ph"  Desiderative mode should have the unaspirated "p". In other words, they sound different.
 
> "-pi desiderative mode"
"V suffix"
"bi 'desiderative form' (H1878b); bi, be 'desiderative form' (H1883a)"
"Ofo: -be 'future' "
"maybe from pi: 'good' ; Hale: 'inserted before the negative suffix na' "

> "pi:kha good, fine"
"V"
"ipikin 'handsome' (H1879)" 

I think it should be "phikha" in Oliverio's spelling.  "phikha" in my spelling here.

> "pi smell"
"V"
"la-ka-pin, la-ka-pinin (Hw)"
"see lakapi 'emit an odor' ; see also uwalahaha:
'smell', wihoxkupsua: 'fishy smell' " ---pg. 269, Oliverio

It looks to me as though 'smell' has a nasal vowel and is therefore different in pronunciation from the other two entries, above. It would be "pin".   It turns out to be instructive to look at 'smell' is some of the other Siouan languages.  I think it turns out that whoever translated "pin" as 'emit an odor' was closest to the same word in related languages.  The word actually means 'to fart': CROW pía ~ pípia ‘fart’, HIDATSA pí(h) ~ pía ‘fart’,MANDAN píh ‘break wind’,  WINNEBAGO wį́į ‘break wind’, and finally TUTELO  lakapįʔį ‘smell, emit an odor’ from the Dorsey slip file.  



There you have it.  All three of our 'pi' words were pronounced differently, but the 'smell' word is the intransitive verb 'to smell', as in 'to stink', so it is probably not the term you want to use for 'a smell'.  So in summary, we have:


phi 'to be good'
pi  'desiderative mode'
pin 'to smell, give off an odor' (probably really meant 'fart', but those fellows a century ago were too polite to say so.)


Bob














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