Leonard Bloomfield's Fox Lexicon : Critical Edition

302 Pages·1994·19.044 MB·English

by  Leonard Bloomfield , Ives Goddard

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Leonard Bloomfield's Fox Lexiconj
Critical Edition
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Memoir 12
ALGONQUIAN AND IROQUOIAN LINGUISTICS
' 1994
ALGONQUIAN AND IROQUOIAN LINGUISTICS
John D. Nichols, Editor
H.C. Wolfart, Associate Editor (Supplements)
Typographical design: A.C. Ogg
Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics
Fletcher Argue Building
28 Trueman Walk
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2
Printed in Canada
Copyright (C) 1994
Note: No royalties are paid to the editor.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bloomfield, Leonard, 1887-1949
Leonard Bloomfield's Fox lexicon
(Memoir / Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics ; 12)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-921064-12-8
I. Fox language - Dictionaries - English. 2. English
language - Dictionaries - Fox. I. Goddard, Ives, 1941-.
II. Title. III. Series: Memoir (Algonquian and Iroquoian
Linguistics) ; 12.
PM1195.Z5B4 1994 497'.3 C94-920177-4
Introduction 1
The Lexicon 9
Appendix: Verbal Inflections 187
Index 209
1 35586 MAIN: C-BKS
99 U/A 08/03/95 5024

i
Introduction
This edition of Leonard Bloomfield's wordlist of Fox consists basically of the entries in
Bloomfield's notebook, with additions from Bloomfield's slip file, on which the notebook was
based. These manuscripts are in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C. The notebook was published in facsimile by Human Relations Area Files, Inc.,
in 1984. The language described is basically the variety of Fox spoken by the Mesquakies of Tama
County, Iowa, but some words of the Sauk dialect are apparently also included.
This wordlist is a compilation based on only the few earliest substantial publications on the
language. It should not be regarded as a complete or final treatment. The words included were
taken from texts published by William Jones (1907 [JT]) and Truman Michelson (1921 [B72], 1925
[AR40]) and Jones's grammatical sketch, which was edited and supplemented with textual
examples by Michelson (Jones 1911 [JS]). Words on pages 46-460 of Michelson (1925 [AR40])
are quite extensively indexed, but few words from pages 462 through 610 are included. A few
forms are cited from Michelson's short papers (Michelson 1913 [M], 1914 [MJ], 1917a [MA],
1917b [M Congr 19], 1919 [M 9]) or from personal communications (M 1/29 '20; TM inf., TM
info). For the abbreviations used, see the list of references below (different abbreviations are
used in Bloomfield 1925-1927,1:219). The wordlist was compiled after "Notes on the Fox
Language" (Bloomfield 1925-1927), which was completed before the appearance of Michelson
(1925).
The purpose of the present edition of Bloomfield's Fox wordlist is to make it more readable,
useful, and reliable as an aid to those interested in the Fox lexicon, particularly those attempting
to read and analyze the published texts. The manuscript version available at the present time in
facsimile can be hard to use because of its sometimes indistinct handwriting and the abbreviation
and classificatory arrangement of words. Bloomfield's subgrouping of words into entries reflects
his determination of the root (stem-initial element) of most verb stems and related nouns and
particles. Within the resulting often lengthy entries that present related stems en bloc, Bloomfield
abbreviated words by citing only the latter part (to be filled out by reference to the head word or
another previous word in the entry) and gave secondary derivatives in sets after the stems on
which they were based. In the present edition the abbreviated words have been written out, with
glosses or labels supplied for those that lacked them, and an attempt has been made to make the
arrangement of the subentries more obvious by the use of indentation. Some abbreviations have
also been expanded. Unusual or problematical words attested only in songs have the notation
"song" or "song word" added to the citation.
On the basis of Bloomfield's slip file, text references have been supplied throughout (generally
with a limit of five per source), a number of entries inadvertently omitted from the wordlist have
been restored, unpredictable and illustrative inflected forms have been included, and Bloomfield's
2 GODDARD
marking of non-quotable citation forms with pointed brackets (<...>) has been added. Category
labels for the inflected and reduplicated forms are given in the citation lists in the order of listing.
For the glosses of the unlabeled inflected forms of dependent nouns, see Bloomfield (1925-1927,
2:181-188).
Bloomfield's glosses of relative roots (with 'there', 'so', 'so many', etc.) and of secondary
objects (with 'smthg') have been left except where other changes or additions were made; glosses
with '(there)', '(it)', etc. are mine. Single quotes ('...') mark glosses; double quotes ("...") mark
direct quotations. By convention the Fox animate singular pronoun is glossed by the English
masculine ('he', 'him', 'his'), except where only the feminine seems culturally or biologically
appropriate; the reference may be to humans, animals, or objects referred to in Fox by
grammatically animate nouns. The Fox inanimate pronoun is glossed by the English neuter ('it',
'its'). Bloomfield cited reciprocal verbs in the plural; this makes them easier to gloss, but they can
in fact be used with grammatically singular subjects. Other verbs generally requiring plural
pronouns are usually given with singular citation forms and glosses, though awkward translations
sometimes result.
Bloomfield's manuscript includes at the end five pages of verbal inflectional affixes. In the
present edition these lists have been replaced by separate paradigms for each of the major modal
types, given in an appendix.
As the original wordlist was worked through, numerous incorrect forms and wrong or
imprecise glosses were encountered. It seemed hardly justifiable simply to leave these errors
uncommented, and I have undertaken to correct them on the basis of fieldwork with native
speakers (1990-1994) and comparison of the published texts with their manuscript sources. Some
common morphemes that were consistently written wrongly have been silently corrected
throughout: reciprocal -(e)ti' has been substituted for Bloomfield's -(e)ti; middle-reflexives are
given with -owa instead of -o'wa; verbs of being are given uniformly with -iwi, -owi AI, II; long
vowels are written before -mikatwi (II formative) and the h of diminutives; long o' is written in
•aho'n, -aho'to' TA, TI 'drag' and their derivatives; short o is written in -nohkataw, -nohkat TA, TI
(applicative finals); h is not written in -we'tamwa '(his) voice sounds'; ay- is written instead of ay-
as the regular reduplication of a- and a'- (Voorhis 1971:65). Other corrections have been
explicitly indicated, except that a few small alterations may have crept through the redaction
unmarked. Forms or glosses containing minor changes are preceded by a number sign (#); other
errors, generally ones that are more serious, more complex, more interesting, or more instructive,
are enclosed in square brackets ([...])»which are followed by the corrections. The glosses supplied
for secondary derivatives are not marked. The bracketing of a text citation together with a word
indicates that the erroneous form is in the source; if the corrected form given after the bracket is
not glossed, the original gloss is acceptable. In a few cases words bracketed as errors actually exist
or may exist; these are marked here for exclusion because they are not the words used in the cited
sources and are therefore undocumented by the materials used. Sometimes subentries have been
added for distinct words that were conflated. Cross-references and various kinds of comments and
information have been placed at the end of entries (after colon, semicolon, or equals sign); some
comments have been added within entries in brackets, sometimes with the label "IG." Notes on
BLOOMFIELD'S FOX LEXICON 3
phonetic notations and manuscript sources have been added where they were noted as significant,
but these have not been searched out for all entries; exact transliterations of forms from
publications and manuscripts are enclosed in shallow-pointed brackets ((...)). Otherwise, words
are ordinarily cited from the sources in corrected, phonemicized form; in a few cases a citation of
a segment or a short sequence is marked with slashes (/.../) to indicate explicitly that it is a
phonemicization of what is in the source. A few interjections and imitative vocables are cited in
broad phonetic notation in the conventional square brackets. Parenthesized queries after
headwords (or subheads) and glosses are Bloomfield's; others are mine. Many of Bloomfield's
queries were, however, removed in editing, such as in the cases where his conjectures were correct.
Curly braces ({...}) mark two added headings that contain explanations.
There are several reasons for the errors in Bloomfield's Fox wordlist. Bloomfield never did
fieldwork on Fox, and the wordlist was based on the published sources, which presented many
inconsistencies and errors. Jones recorded his texts from dictation and later extensively edited
them, adding words, phrases, and even whole sentences, apparently to improve the narrative style
from the perspective of the English translations. These additions contain many dubious forms
which apparently stem from Jones's imperfect knowledge of the language. Manuscript versions
that appear to be fair copies of most of the original dictated versions, with interlinear English
glosses, are in the National Anthropological Archives (these are the Jones manuscripts mentioned
in some of my added notes). Michelson collected texts written by native speakers in the Fox
Syllabary (Jones 1906) and then recorded these phonetically as one of his native assistants read
them out loud. The syllabary, actually an alphabetic system written syllabically, does not indicate
long vowels or h and is written without punctuation and often without word boundaries;
expectably, it is quite difficult for native speakers to read syllabic texts aloud spontaneously with a
consistent and natural pronunciation. In fact, Michelson and his readers introduced quite a
number of changes as they went, mostly as misreadings and mishearings but sometimes
consciously, and copying and printing errors brought the texts even further from the manuscript
originals. (These manuscripts are also in the National Anthropological Archives.) Bloomfield
attempted to deal with the problems he saw by normalization and emendation, basing his
decisions on internal analysis of the Fox materials and in some cases on his knowledge of other
Algonquian languages, notably Menominee and Cree (Goddard 1987:203-205). Thus, the way in
which the texts and later the wordlist based on them were produced probably made the occurrence
of not a few errors inevitable.
In spite of these problems Bloomfield's wordlist is extremely useful. It is quite extraordinary
that he was able to make so much sense out of such difficult materials. This is what makes it
worth editing. To ensure that the wordlist remains useful to those already familiar with it and to
readers of the texts, its order and arrangement have not been changed and the original page
numbers of the manuscript have been indicated in the left margin. Bloomfield's somewhat
idiosyncratic alphabetical order is retained, and in fact made even more opaque by the
substitution of contemporary Algonquianist phonemic symbols. (The alphabetical order used is
given at the bottom of the verso pages.) Incorrectly transcribed words are not realphabetized but
are left where Bloomfield put them, since in most cases this is where readers of the texts will seek
4 GODDARD
them. Also, roots were alphabetized by Bloomfield in their unmutated forms. Hence roots that in
actual words end with /£/ (the mutation of 11|) are alphabetized as ending with /t/, and those
that end with-an /§/ that results from the mutation of | N | are alphabetized as ending with /n/. A
root-final /h/ before a following /p/ may represent either /t/ or |N|. Reduplicated stems are
usually listed in unreduplicated form, even when attested only as reduplicated. Words beginning
with h, which are all exclamatory or imitative vocables, are alphabetized under the following
vowel. The letter (q) representing the velar fricative [x], which is found in two imitative
vocables, was alphabetized as k.
The decision to follow Bloomfield's arrangement as closely as possible concededly places
burdens on the user, and in particular it makes it necessary in many cases to seek words in various
places, under various hypotheses of stem analysis, vowel length, and so forth. The only alternative,
however, would have been to rearrange everything into an entirely different and much larger work
incorporating additional materials. While such a work is contemplated, it is hoped that what is
presented here will be useful in the interim. It was felt to be important to mark explicitly the
incorrect forms and glosses in the original wordlist. For one thing, this is an edition of
Bloomfield's work, and good philological practice demands that deviations from what he wrote be
indicated. There is also the practical matter that, as these errors are now part of the available
.record, having in some cases even appeared as authoritative in other work, to correct or omit them
silently would be to insure their eventual reappearance in the literature. Also, some of the errors
are instructive regarding Bloomfield's practices, such as his penchant for glosses that generalize or
correspond to etymology rather than following the specifics of attested usage. Other corrections
deal with potentially problematical words or are specifically addressed to passages in the texts that
may cause difficulties of interpretation.
Although considerable effort has been devoted to trying to make this edition as accurate as
possible, errors and inconsistencies undoubtedly remain. Entries or parts of entries with no added
comments are accepted as correct and in most cases confirmed by contemporary speakers or
analysis, but there are probably some residual errors among correct-looking entries of this kind. A
few unconfirmed but consistent features in JS are kept here as possible genuine dialectal variants:
(1) the gloss of the AI final -ahoko 'float, be supported by water' as 'swim'; (2) the use of the II
formative -mikat to make verbs of general action (like Mesquakie verbs with -(wen-)ahkiwi II); (3)
perhaps correspondingly the use of a number of AI stems with II inflection (without the addition
of -mikat); (4) and the demonstrative pronouns of the series vnama, vnima. Also, most textual
references are as entered from Bloomfield's slips; they have not been confirmed against the
publications except for words that invited checking of the sources for other reasons. Because of
the elliptical manner in which the citations are sometimes given on the slips, some page references
may have been assigned to the wrong publication. Bloomfield's practice of citing a word by the
line number of the first part of the compound in which it occurs sometimes means that the line
number is one less than the number of the line in which the cited form is actually found; these
misleading numbers were changed when they were noticed, but some must remain.
For notes on the phonology of Fox see Goddard (1991). The transcription is essentially the
same as that of Voorhis (1971), except that a raised dot (•) rather than a colon (:) is used to
BLOOMFIELD'S FOX LEXICON 5
indicate a long vowel. Voorhis (1971:63) explains the correspondences between these symbols
and those used in Bloomfield (1925-1927); the word list differed only in having c for earlier (tc).
Jones and Michelson used the rough breathing (') for h; this is here omitted before s and s, where
it is noncontrastive. Jones used a raised dot after successive vowels to indicate a heterosyllabic
vowel sequence, as opposed to a tautosyllabic diphthong. These sequences result from the
* phonetic loss of an intervocalic semivowel (e.g. {a*e*gi) for ey'vki 'also'), or from the failure (for
whatever reason) to write intervocalic h (e.g. (awcAmetc') for e'h*asameci 'he was fed'). In a
number of cases in the original wordlist such vowel sequences in Jones were incorrectly
phonemicized. The hyphen (-) marks the word boundary after prenoun or preverb (but the
hyphen is omitted in verbs derived from compound nouns); the double hyphen (=) marks a clitic
boundary (some hyphens and all occurrences of * were added by me).
The transcriptions in this edition supersede those in Goddard (1991:177-179) where these
differ. In particular, I now accept Voorhis's (1971) transcriptions of kesiya'wi 'it is cold' and
we'wenetwi 'it is good' (and other forms with we'wen- 'pretty, beautiful') as correct and preferable.
The presence of the highly idiomatic and phonologically irregular negative enclitic particle *ihi
is indicated in such combinations as mecU'hi, kakatamWhWyo, wa'wosa'hu'hU'yo,
wa'wosa'hi*'h*we'(na) and wa'wosa'hi*'*ca'hi (where the lack of elision indicates its presence).
Data entry was by Jane Sandoval (Smithsonian volunteer) and Lucy Thomason (Smithsonian
summer intern), working under my supervision. I provided editorial oversight, reviewed the entire
work, checked problematical entries, prepared the final annotated and corrected text, and
formatted it for publication. A draft of the English index was then prepared by Arden C. Ogg of
the University of Manitoba Department of Linguistics, to whom I am most grateful. I am indebted
to Adeline Wanatee for her many hours of patient help reviewing Mesquakie linguistic materials.
I also thank Amy Dahlstrom for a suggestion to compare certain passives with the Cree relative
(see p. 188) and a list of errata. Remaining errors and inconsistencies are my own responsibility.
Alphabetical Order.
The alphabetical order followed is:
a, a#, e-, 2,6, e, i, r, k, h, m, n, o*, p, r, s, t, o, w, y (corresponding to Bloomfield's:
a, a, a, c, e, e, i, I, g | k, h, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y).
Abbreviations.
(The use of periods is not standardized.)
abs. = absent
AI = animate intransitive
AI+O = transitivized AI (intransitive stem used with a syntactic secondary object)
an, anim = animate '