Lesson 1b: If I Only Had A Heart

I see that I posted 2b last week rather than 1b. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea minor culpa. I'm going camping tomorrow next to 'at'abihak'a da'aw (a lake with fish), so any angry e-mails will have to wait until Sunday. Now, let us continue.

Although no Washo word is permitted to begin with a vowel, the method is not always as simple as slapping a d- in front. You would fail the oral exam if you stopped there. Certain categories of roots require ť- rather than d-. This is a concept called the alienable/inalienable distinction, although where the line is varies depending on the language. The easiest way for English speakers to understand it is thus: the existence of a son implies the existence of parents. That's inalienability.

There are three categories to which the ť- prefix would apply. The first is bits of the body, which, if separated from the rest, would cause inconvenience or death. The root á:du means "hand", but one assumes unless told otherwise that the hand is still attached to the person. á:du, therefore, becomes ťá:du. In a similar vein, creatures do not live long without a heart, so émlu becomes ťemlu. Creatures with tails can survive their loss, but the tail is an integral part of the beast, so áp'Il "tail" becomes ťáp'Il. Although blood is a vital part of a living organism, one can lose some and live, so ášaŋ becomes dášaŋ rather than ťášaŋ. The form ťášaŋ does exist, but means "his/her/their blood" in reference to an individual.

The second category is family members. The only kinship term in Lesson 1 is íyeš "daughter-in-law", but Washo prefers individual terms for kith and kin rather than cobbled-together constructions such as "daughter-in-law". The English term, nonetheless, provides an opportunity for breaking down the term and understanding why kinship terms are inalienable. The "daughter" element of "daughter-in-law" tells the listener that this person is defined as a female child of other human beings. The "in-law" element tell the listener that this woman is married and that her husband has parents, whose viewpoint is used here. In light of this analysis, it makes sense that íyeš should become ťíyeš.

The last category is body or plant parts that allow identification of the species. Joacobsen does not go into detail here, since the identifying details differ cross-culturally, and Washo is a culture where carrots and turtles can be lumped together (but that discussion is way down the line).
ťapIl "tail" and ťá:daš "meat" are the examples here.

Lesson 1a: Bed and Board, M'Lord

(A brief note before we start: if these posts seem short, they are baby steps to walking in the Washo language.)

Washo words are not allowed to begin with a vowel (and in Washo, the glottal stop qualifies as a consonant). It's just one of the quirks of the language - and you will learn of many quirks if you follow the siren song of The Tahoe Tongue. Many languages, however, have roots whose structures are at odds with the final structure of the word or phrase. If a Washo stem such as áŋal "house" or émlu "food" begins with a vowel, yet the final product may not, what's a speaker to do? The answer involves prefixation. Prefixation occurs when one grammatical element attaches itself to the front of the word root; an Latin example of this is the self-illustrating word "prefix", in which "pre" is a prefix.

So let us suppose that a Washo speaker sees a house (more likely a hogan, in the days before the coming of the White Man) and knows nothing else about it. The root for "house" or "to build is áŋal, but cannot be used by itself. The speaker would have to say dáŋal, using the prefix d-.

What if the speaker knows whose house it is? In the Washo Province of the Land of Grammar, there are only three persons: first (me), second (you), and third (that guy we're talking about). If the speaker wished to indicate his own house, he would say láŋal, "my house" or "our house". If the house in question were not his, but that of his companion, he would say máŋal, "your house". If the house belonged to subject of the conversation, the speaker would say ťáŋal, "his house", in which ť is a glottalized t. (I will defer to the excellent the pronunciation guide, with audio, at The Washo Project - http://washo.uchicago.edu/ ), This process is similar to the "m'lord" and "m'lady" pronunciation of "my lord" and "my lady", if one could also say "y'lord" and "s'lady".

Note that Washo does not care much about gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) or grammatical number (singular, dual, plural); thus ťáŋal can mean "his house", "her house", "their house", "his houses", "her houses", "their houses". There is a way of making things plural, but that lesson is far down the line, beyond Jacobsen.