In an earlier post, I was uncertain about the right interpretation of the tone orthography used in Hollenbach's (1977) versions of the Sun and Moon myth. Barbara Hollenbach was kind enough to clarify for me that in this previous version of the practical orthography " The three lower patterns (1, 2, 13) were written with a single macron on the final vowel."
So cacaā could represent /kakaa¹, kakaa², kakaa¹³/. The particular line that worried me in the previous post contained the word <cacaā>. In the current orthographic practice, macron is replaced with underscore, so that would translate to cacaa̱ , and <aa̱> = /aa³¹/. However, in the orthography of the 1977 texts, cacaā had a different interpretation, and in this text, the right interpretation is /kakaa²/.
Another way in which it is easy to get confused by the 1977 texts is that 31 tone is not indicated in any special way in that orthography. (It is marked by aa̱ in the current practice, as just mentioned.)
The differences can (I think be summed up this way) for long vowels:
Tone Current Orthog Previous Orthog (1977)
3 aa aa
32 aa aa
31 aa̱ aa
4 aá aá
5 áá aá
1 a̱a̱ aā
2 a̱a̱ aā
13 a̱a aā
The previous orthography thus makes only three distinctions — <a, ā, á> — while the current orthography makes six <aa, aa̱, a̱a, a̱a̱, aá, áá> for long vowels.
This does create a practical problem for entering in the 1977 texts in the FLEx database — at one level, it seems desirable to preserve the original orthography of these texts. On the other hand, it is strongly at variance with the majority of the material, which uses the more recent orthography. I can't necessarily predict the modern orthography of the word from the older orthography without looking it up in the dictionary and understanding the morphology, so there is no way to do it automatically.
So cacaā could represent /kakaa¹, kakaa², kakaa¹³/. The particular line that worried me in the previous post contained the word <cacaā>. In the current orthographic practice, macron is replaced with underscore, so that would translate to cacaa̱ , and <aa̱> = /aa³¹/. However, in the orthography of the 1977 texts, cacaā had a different interpretation, and in this text, the right interpretation is /kakaa²/.
Another way in which it is easy to get confused by the 1977 texts is that 31 tone is not indicated in any special way in that orthography. (It is marked by aa̱ in the current practice, as just mentioned.)
The differences can (I think be summed up this way) for long vowels:
Tone Current Orthog Previous Orthog (1977)
3 aa aa
32 aa aa
31 aa̱ aa
4 aá aá
5 áá aá
1 a̱a̱ aā
2 a̱a̱ aā
13 a̱a aā
The previous orthography thus makes only three distinctions — <a, ā, á> — while the current orthography makes six <aa, aa̱, a̱a, a̱a̱, aá, áá> for long vowels.
This does create a practical problem for entering in the 1977 texts in the FLEx database — at one level, it seems desirable to preserve the original orthography of these texts. On the other hand, it is strongly at variance with the majority of the material, which uses the more recent orthography. I can't necessarily predict the modern orthography of the word from the older orthography without looking it up in the dictionary and understanding the morphology, so there is no way to do it automatically.
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