This was the explosive age of descriptive linguistics, which we shared and which was especially focused on American Indian languages. I asked Paulette Hopple, who worked in Thailand for many years with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, for a comment on Haas. Although delighted and awed by her knowledge and experience in linguistics, what intrigued me about Mary was her personal approachability and humility. In addition, she was vice-president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1956 and president in 1963.
Vowels are normally short, unless in stressed syllables.
In them, a final stressed syllable may be a bit higher than the penultimate one, or the final one may have a falling melody, or it may have a rising one, or a falling-rising one, or may be lower than the preceding syllable. Haas has some morphemic analysis of long words. This is interesting, since there are numerous words with up to six syllables in agglutinative arrangement. Unfortunately, in her presentation it is often very difficult for the beginner to see where morphemes in a word or phrase begin or end. These occur in Tunica in English translation with footnote alternative literal translations or comments.