Talk:Washo language

message: User:IAmTheWalrus89460 is making further unsubstantiated changes to Washo orthography.  He has offered no evidence.  This, although a master's thesis, offers a historical view of the orthography.  At no point is Walrus' orthography found.  In every case in this thesis, p', t', k' is used.  On page 33, the apostrophe, which marks glottalization, is shown above the stop rather than following it as in the Handbook's usage.  But in no case are the stops shown with accent marks over them.  Those are apostrophes.  In his dissertation, Jacobsen used apostrophes after the stop (see page 35 of the aforereferenced master's thesis).  An English-based orthography has been developed, but has not been formally adopted by the tribe or even by all language teachers (pg. 36).  In the previous thread, a link is provided to the Washo language project at U of Chicago:    --Taivo (talk) 17:43, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Just finished reading M. Ryan Bochnak & Alice Rhomieux, 2013, "Limited Noun Incorporation in Washo," in the most recent issue of International Journal of American Linguistics (79:253-282).  All about bipartite verb stems and noun incorporation.  And throughout, they mark the glottalized consonants as p', t', k', c' without a single, solitary variation.  --Taivo (talk) 05:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continuing orthography issue 

message: User:BattleBorn89 has wrongly included two diphthongs (ay and ey) even though not a single linguistic source for Washo includes any diphthongs whatsoever.  This is clearly a case of him including his own misinterpretation of linguistic data as original research.  --Taivo (talk) 21:41, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Taiko constantly ignores sources that disprove his/her beliefes, even though a plethora of sources include this.  In fact the Washoe language center is called Washiw wagayay mangal:  the house where washiw is spoken.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by BattleBorn89 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: And just because there are words in Washo that have an ay or ey sequence in them does not make those diphthongs.  You have no sources which say, "Washo has two diphthongs".  Those are just vowel + consonant sequences, not diphthongs.  They are no different in a linguistic sense than ap or en.  Not a single, solitary description of Washo says that it has any diphthongs.  Not one.  --Taivo (talk) 00:59, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

text: No, there are not "a plethora of sources" that include diphthongs in Washo.  Cite one.  None of the sources I've listed above, which are the definitive sources for Washo, include diphthongs.  Not one.  Even if you only consider Mithun as your "definitive source", she doesn't include diphthongs.  Not one.  --Taivo (talk) 23:28, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I just grabbed William H. Jacobsen, Jr. "Washo Linguistic Studies," The Current Status of Anthropological Research in the Great Basin: 1964 (Desert Research Institute, 1966, pp. 113-136 off the shelf behind me.  No diphthongs in the listed sound system of Washo (pg. 116).  Not one.  (And the symbol for c' is unequivocally a c with an apostrophe over it and not ć.)  --Taivo (talk) 23:35, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

text: Sorry for the late reply, but I don't think Kroeber should be taken as reliable basis for claiming dipthongs for Washo. By his own admission, and despite his incredible talent as a field linguist, his field research for this article consisted of just a few weeks of introductory research for a language that had not previously been the subject of extensive documentation and he never conducted any further research on the language. Although Walter Dyk's research in 1931-32 was much more extensive and continued to perceive dipthongs (Dyk's field notes are accessible as part of the William H. Jacobsen Materials on Indigenous Languages of North America, 2014-21, California Language Archive, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley, available here: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2028PGT), it is with very good reason that William Jacobsen insisted on treating syllables ending in a glide coda (/y/ or /w/) as vowel + consonant combinations, the main reasons being (a) the /-y-/ insertion rule in Washo (all co-occurring vowels must be separated by /-y-/, so a dipthong like /-ai/, /-ei/ etc. would violate that rule; Peter Staroverov's "Washo Onsets and the Revised Sonority Theory" in Open Linguistics, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016 https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2016-0025 provides ample explanation of how this rule works in Washo and why a dipthong would violate the rule) and (b) reduplication rules for formation of plural nouns require treating the /y/ and /w/ as consonants, rather than vowels (Alan C. L. Yu paper in Phonology cited above is the right citation for this, but also see his other published papers on Washo reduplication patterns: https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v34i1.3583 and https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v31i1.892). Washo allows for syllables ending in /y/ or /w/ treated as consonants. But Washo does not allow for dipthong vowels. Salty Saltillo (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  No diphthongs in Washo 

message: What sources should be considered reliable in listing the phonemic inventory of Washo? (A number are listed here on the Talk Page, but there may be others.)  --Taivo (talk) 02:32, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This was part of a larger discussion that was resolved a few weeks ago.  Removing tag.  --Taivo (talk) 08:34, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

text: In my opinion Alan C. L. Yu's paper "Laryngeal schizophrenia in Washo Resonants" (available here: https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/aclyu/files/2012/06/yu_hyman_dec2015.pdf which was published in the book "Revealing Structure by U. of Chicago Press https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/R/bo28217341.html) is the most accurate inventory of phonemes available for Washo. It improves considerably on William Jacobsen's inventory in two important ways: it presents the inventory in IPA, rather than Jacobsen's idiosyncratic "Americanist" approach; and it clarifies (correctly) that there is a series of glottalized resonants that is contrastive with voiced and voiceless resonants (Jacobsen identified a series of voiced and voiceless resonants as phonemes but treated glottalized resonants incorrectly as two-consonant sequences of a glottal stop followed by a voiced resonant; Yu demonstrates rather convincingly why this was an error/ The language is much better understood and many "irregularities" make much more sense if we accept that the language has a 3 way contrast of resonants (voiced, voiceless, glottalized) in the same was as the 3 way contrast in plosives/stops. The only thing missing from Yu's inventory are the sounds that are known to occur with certain speakers or in certain dialects, but that are not actually contrastive: namely, the tendency for some speakers to pronounce a voiceless dental fricative ("th" sound), and the tendency for some speakers to pronounce a vowel-medial voiceless /s/ as a voiced /z/ and a tendency to give voice to voiceless post-alveolar fricative ʃ when it occurs vowel-medial (i.e. it becomes like a French j /ʒ/ but these sounds are not properly phonemic because they are limited to specific speakers or accents, and are not contrastive with other phonemes. Salty Saltillo (talk) 23:55, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonemic inventory and sources 

message: #  In the vowel chart, the cited source does not include the examples that are currently in the article.  When I tried to change the examples to match those in the cited source, User:BattleBorn89 reverted them without any justification or any indication of where he got the examples from.
#  User:BattleBorn89 continues to try to list two diphthongs in Washo without relying on any reliable source whatsoever.  No source on Washo says that there are diphthongs, but BattleBorn89 continues to insert them with examples drawn from nowhere.  His comment "they're everywhere in Washo" shows that he is relying on his own original research (which consists solely of "I see a vowel and glide together, they must be a diphthong").
#  In the consonant chart, User:BattleBorn89 is relying solely on a poor photocopy of his single source for the interpretation of [tsˀ].  The source has a c with an apostrophe over it, which is common among American linguists.  BattleBorn89 can't read his photocopy on the web and thinks it's a ć.  I have provided multiple reliable sources to prove that the transcription should be c', but he continues to ignore his error and ignore any other sources without any justification.
#  In the consonant chart, User:BattleBorn89 uses examples that are not drawn from any source.  When I have tried to insert a complete set of examples drawn from the cited reliable source, he has removed them without any indication of where he gets his examples from.
#  User:BattleBorn89 seems completely incapable of carrying on a discussion here using reliable sources to demonstrate why he is continuing to edit the way he is.  He is presenting no evidence on the Talk Page and using no reliable sources other than a poor photocopy of a single source that he has misinterpreted.
I need some help here, User:Maunus, User:Kwamikagami.  --Taivo (talk) 07:19, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific errors by BattleBorn89 

message: I have not had a chance to look that the sources to make an assessment of the correctness of edits, but I can start by saying that you both need to sop editwarring and respect that the new additions have been reverted untill there is a consensus to include them. That means that the burden is on  to stop adding contested changes to the page and instead come here to the talkpage to make a convincing argument for why their additions and changes should be included. The way wikipedia works you have to gain a consensus to include a contested edit, and the only way you can gain a consensus is by convincing others. There is on way you can simply include an edit by editwarring. So come here to the discussion page, bring the sources and explain why you are right. And if you do so convincingly I will be happy to support changes that better reflect the phonology oif the language - but if you are unwilling or unable to do so then your changes cannot be added to the page.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:45, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit warring

message: Below are the various statements of the sound system of Washo from the most reliable sources:
#  William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Washo Linguistic Studies," The Current Status of Anthropological Research in the Great Basin:  1964, ed. Warren L. d'Azevedo et al., Desert Research Institute Technical Report Series S-H, Social Sciences and Humanities Publications No. 1 (1966, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada, pp. 113-136).  Pages 115-116:  "The phonemes that have been recognized include the voiceless stops /p t k/, the glottal stop /ʔ/, the voiced stops /b d z g/, the glottalized stops /p', t', c', k'/, the oral fricatives /s š/, the glottal fricative /h/, the voiced resonants /m n ŋ l w y/, the voiceless resonants /M Ŋ L W Y/, the vowels /i ɨ u e a o/, length /:/, strong and weak stress, hesitation juncture, and two terminal contours."  There is no mention of diphthongs.  This is the same inventory he uses in his full grammar:  William H. Jacobsen, Jr. "A Grammar of the Washo Language", University of California, Berkeley PhD dissertation (1964).
#  Victor Golla, California Indian Languages (2011, University of California Press, Berkeley, California).  Page 104:  "Washo has a somewhat unusual phonemic inventory (Table 17).  There are three series of stops (p, t, k), each with a plain, glottalized, and fully voiced member; a single apical affricate (c [ts]) that occurs glottalized and voiced, but not plain; two fricatives (s, š); two laryngeals (ʔ, h); and six resonants---three nasals (m, n, ŋ) and three approximants (l, w, y)---all of which except n occur both voiced and voiceless (the latter written by Jacobsen with the corresponding capital letters---M, L, etc.).  There are six vowels (i, e, a, o, u, ï), both short and long.  The high back unrounded vowel (ï) is relatively rare."  There is no mention of diphthongs.
#  Marianne Mithun, The Languages of Native North America, Cambridge Language Surveys (1999, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England).  Page 557:  "The Washo consonant inventory consists of voiced, plain, and ejective obstruents:  b, d, ʑ, g; p, t, k, ʔ; p', t', c', k'; fricatives s, š, h; and voiced and voiceless resonants m, n, ŋ, w, l, y; M, N, W, L, and Y....Vowels are i, ɨ, u, e, o, and a.  Vowel length is distinctive but occurs only in stressed syllables..."  There is no mention of diphthongs.
#  Warren L. d'Azevedo, "Washoe," Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11, Great Basin, ed. Warren L. d'Azevedo (1986, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., pages 466-498).  Page 466:  "The phonemes of Washoe are:  (voiceless stops) p, t, k, ʔ; (voiced stops and affricate) b, d, ʒ, g; (glottalized stops and affricate) p', t', c', k'; (voiceless fricatives) s, š, h; (voiced nasals) m, n, ŋ; (voiceless nasals) M, Ŋ; (voiced semivowels and lateral) w, l, y; (voiceless semivowels and lateral) W, ɫ, Y; (short vowels) i, e, a, o u, ɨ; (long vowels) i:, e:, a:, o:, u:, ɨ:; (stress)..."  There is no mention of diphthongs.
#  This is the description of the sound system of Washo developed by the Washo Project for the tribe.  There is no mention of diphthongs as part of the sound system.
In all these cases, (1) the glottalized series (including c') are typeset with an apostrophe, not an acute accent, over the letter, (2) there is no mention of diphthongs as part of the sound system.  --Taivo (talk) 08:54, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: From Jacobsen with acute accents as well as diphthongs.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~aclyu/papers/BeginningWasho.pdf
BattleBorn89 (talk) 17:06, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not standard practice in linguistics to use acute accents to mark ejective consonants and it is likely to confuse readers familiar with IPA, but if this is the usage of the Washo language educatoin project I think it should be included along with the IPA transcription. However Jacobsen here is describing the sounds of Washoe, not the phonemes - and the diphthongs he is describing are not meant to represent phonemes but to guide in pronunciation. (note that his list of vowel phonemes include no diphthongs) This means that the diphthongs should not be given in the list of phonemes, but the fact that the Vy and Vw "diphthong" pronunciations are common can be mentioned in the text.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:15, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I can agree with that.  As long as the standard we use in Wašiw can be shown.  I would find it absurd to have a page on the Wašiw language and not show how we write it.
BattleBorn89 (talk) 17:36, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for posting Jacobsen's text, but he does not use acute accents to mark ejectives.  Look closely.  Those are apostrophes above p, t, k, c, not acute accents.  That is standard usage as Maunus mentions and is what Jacobsen always used in all his publications.  --Taivo (talk) 18:16, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, the examples in both the vowel and consonant tables need to be replaced with examples out of reliable published sources.  The tables at [this site for the Washo Language Project include good examples for all the sounds.  They are the ones that were originally in the table before you removed all of them.  --Taivo (talk) 18:16, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: If we can agree on this, then I will fix both the vowel and consonant tables so that they clearly reflect 1) the tribe's orthography, 2) American linguistic transcription tradition for Washo, 3) IPA transcription, and 4) examples from This site.  --Taivo (talk) 18:20, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: [EDITCONFLICT]They look very much like acute accents to me and not at all as apostophes I must say. But it really doesnt matter much, can we all agree to use both the IPA/APA transcription AND whichever practical orthography is used by the Washo language project? Then we just need to find the best source for the education materials currently used by the Washoe education project, is that the  uchicago one? Or is there another source for the writing system used by the tribe ? Maybe this one ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:23, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Zoom in to 200% and it's crystal clear that they are raised apostrophes.  --Taivo (talk) 18:26, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is an apostophe shape but used over the consonant instead of after it. I have seen this in some representations of PIE for putative recnstructed palatal stops. But it is not a way I have seen ejectives represnted before. But as I said it doesnt matter since they clearly are meant to be ejectives and should be represented with the IPA signs for ejective consonants. Looking at the Washoe tribal language material it also looks as if they are using apostrophes except for the ć.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:29, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's actually very common (apostrophe over the letter) in the Americanist transcription tradition.  The Handbook of North American Indians and Mithun use it consistently for all ejectives (whether obstruents or continuants).  I'm not sure how far back the practice goes, but Sapir used it in his Southern Paiute description from 1930.  --Taivo (talk) 19:46, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Sound System of Washo 

message: I hope that the changes I've now made to the Consonant and Vowel charts are acceptable to everyone.  I incorporated a clear indication that the first column is the current Washoe orthography (using ć rather than c').  I've also included all the examples from the Chicago Washo Language Project site.  I've included a reference to the tribe's language learning section of their website.  That should clear up all the issues.  I'm a tough negotiator, User:BattleBorn89, and I'm not gentle with novices.  That's why I called User:Maunus for help (thank you, Maunus).  Have we got an acceptable final product?  --Taivo (talk) 19:53, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That can be agreeable. BattleBorn89 (talk) 01:41, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

text: Indeed.  Whoever read Jacobsen's book mistook c̓ for ć.  That's very clear.  But it has apparently stuck and is being used both on the tribal website and for the tribe's language maintenance classes.  It is what it is despite its history.  The last time this was visited, the tribe had no posted language materials and we had to revert ć to c' because of a lack of evidence for the former and the Chicago Washo Language Project site for the latter.  Now we have the evidence for ć at the tribe's website.  We have to assume, without other evidence, that what has been posted on the tribe's website has the authority of the tribe behind it by virtue of its presence on the website.  Remember that "y" in English words like "daisy" and "yellow" is actually an old "g" (dægeseage and geolu as I recall), but the orthography got confused with "real" "y" in words like bryde 'bride' as the front rounded vowel of Old English bryd became unrounded.  "Stuff" happens.  --Taivo (talk) 09:28, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Well for one thing ć is easier to type than adding apostrophes above consonants. I agree with Taivo and BattleBorn89 that the tribal website should be used as a source for tribal orthographic preferences, regardless of the origin of the ortographical choices.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:10, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conclusion for Vowel and Consonant Charts 

message: Should the English translation styling within the vowel and consonant section be modified to match the stylization within the prefix and suffix sections? That is should they all be italicized and within the parentheses?  If not, I would think a uniform style should be used. 2600:1010:B152:B046:A017:6C83:89FD:6C07 (talk) 22:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: English Translations

message: Per this page on the tribal site, it was decided to use a straight apostrophe after all glottalized letters but c, which would take an acute accent. But here  with a curly apostrophe is used. And in the image of the story on that page, though low-res, it's clear that overscript combining apostrophes are used. Thus it would seem that a variety of remedies are used, but that in formal typesetting the Americanist overscript is still found. 
Also, in the html page, monocase  is used as the letter in the chart, but upper-case  is used within words. I think we can assume this is an error. In the graphic at the top of the second link, it's obvious the glottal stop within words is not lower-case. I am going to assume this article is correct in using monocase .
Finally, both pages and AFAICT the image use a half-colon for vowel length, whereas this article uses a full colon. They code it as a mid dot rather than as a combining letter, but that's a coding mistake, not a graphic difference. — kwami (talk) 04:51, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: The tribe doesn't have an "official" orthography as the header on the first link you provided clearly states "These are symbols that are most often found when reading and writing wašiw.  They come from Jacobson’s book “Beginning Wašiw”."  "Most often found" being the key.  I don't have a copy of "Beginning Wašiw", so I can't check it directly, but those symbols match Jacobsen's usage in other sources except for ć, which he has generally written as c' in other works.  There is clearly "free variation" between superscripted curly apostrophe over a voiceless stop and a straight apostrophe following it as evidenced by the low-res image in your second link.  The latter is, obviously, much easier to produce on a typewriter or ASCII keyboard.  This is typical for most First Nations literacy programs.  There aren't any recent changes that would change my opinions from the extensive discussion above from 2016.  (And there is no practical difference between "monocase ʔ" and "upper-case ʔ".  The IPA makes no distinction and I have never seen any linguist make a distinction between them.  As far as the half-colon versus full-colon goes, it just depends on which of the reliable sources listed above you want to give more weight to whether you want to use one or the other.  Americanists in general don't make a serious distinction between them.  --Taivo (talk) 11:53, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthography revisited