Tlingit classifier

While pondering the verb “study” and how it could be translated into Tlingit, I realized something neat about the Tlingit classifier in loanwords. There’s a book titled Aan Aduspelled X’úx’ which is a guide to basic Tlingit literacy for native speakers. Notice that aduspelled there. It could be analyzed as a-du-0-spelled which is |3ABS-3PL.ERG-CL[−D,0,−I]-spell|, with a zero classifier. But it could also be analyzed as a-du-s-pelled which is |3abs-3pl.erg-CL[−D,s,−I]-spell|, which has an S classifier.

If this analysis was workable, then maybe “study” could be borrowed similarly. In fact, “study” would be a better potential borrowing because it more closely fits Tlingit phonemics. So perhaps yéi kḵwastádi “I will study”, broken down as yéi-ga-u-ḡa-x̱a-s-tádi |THUS-GA-IRR-GHA-1SG.ERG-CL[−D,s,−I]-study|. I’ll have to run it by a native speaker to see if they like it.

It could be however that I’m abusing the S classifier, and that things like aduspelled have unproductive paradigms. Something more for the fieldwork questions pile.

Orthographic development

I’m writing a paper on the history of written and transcribed Tlingit which I hope to present at this year’s LSA summer conference. It’s been in the works for some time, and I’ve had a lot of fun digging through old texts and ordering weird things through interlibrary loan, feeling like a historian.

One of the fun things about Tlingit is that it’s currently written in three different orthographies, and there are still publications in two other orthographies as well. Hence my desire to develop a chrestomathy of all the various written forms of the language.

Unfortunately now I’m at the stage in the paper where I need to say substantive things about orthography design, and how certain decisions impact readability and learnability. The research on this is pretty hard to find, and very little of it has actual data, mostly being opinion and case studies.

Budgerigar

Veronica got a bird from a friend leaving the island last week, and it’s a cute little sky-blue male budgerigar, also known as a parakeet to North Americans. He hasn’t received a name yet, both of us still persisting in calling him “birdie” or the like, although I occasionally call him ts’íts’k’w in Tlingit. That’s from ts’ítsk’w, which segments out as ts’íts-k’w “bird-DIM”. I add an additional ejective to the final affricate there for euphony, and because I have a hard time not spreading ejectivity gratuitously.

Since Nick Thieberger is now resident in our department at UHM, the Australian name struck me as worthy of a little research. Nick is from Melbourne, and has worked with a number of Australian languages as well as his current research on South Efate in Vanuatu. He recommended an interesting little book, Australian Aboriginal words in English: their origin and meaning by R.M.W. Dixon, W.S. Ramson, and Mandy Thomas. It’s a neat little book, meant to professionally counter the proliferation of inaccurate etymologies of the Australian lexicon. Here’s the entry on “budgerigar” (p. 89).

budgerigar /ˈbʌdʒəriga/

Also betcherrygah, betshiregah, and budgerygah.

[Possibly mispronunciation of Kamilaroi, eastern New South Wales gijirrigaa.]

The small green and yellow parrot Melopsittacus undulatus, occuring in drier mainland areas, often in large flocks. The budgerigar has become extremely popular throughout the world as a cage-bird. It is also called the love-bird, shell parrot, warbling grass parakeet and zebra parrot. The shortened form budgie is very common. [1840]

The “mispronunciation” struck me as highly curious. Why would English speakers, who have a perfectly good voiced velar stop in their phoneme inventories, make such a peculiar substitution of [b] for [g]? I figured it would be worth doing a little more looking. I then stumbled upon this thought provoking entry in the back of the very same book (p. 205).

budgeree /ˈbʌdʒəri/ /ˈbʊdʒəri/

Also with much variety, as boodgery, boojeri, boojery, and budgeri. Australian pidgin.

[Dharuk, Sydney region, adjective bujiri ‘good, right’.]

Good, pretty, fine. [1790]

It doesn’t take much consideration to see that a blend of the two terms gijirigaa and bujiri is easily possible here, what with sharing two syllables. My suspicion is that the folk etymology “good eats” arose after the blend formed, and people familiar with the term “budgeree” applied its meaning. The reason for the blend arising in the first place remains obscure.