Clarification on older practical orthography for tone in Copala Triqui

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.

More on causative in Copala Triqui

I wrote a bit about the odd causative construction in Copala Triqui in this post.  To recap, the normal syntax is

[VSO] cause SUBJ.

In the examples cited there, the aspect of the verb 'make' ('yaj) seems to match the aspect of the verb in the complement.  The following example -- if I am interpreting it correctly, seems to show a failure of aspect-matching:

One slight uncertainty -- this text comes from Hollenbach's (1977) version of these texts, published in Tlalocan.  The orthography uses a macron over the vowel to represent low register tone, rather than a line under the vowel.  So the original form of the word that I've retranscribed as cacaa̱ was written cacaā.  

In the usual form of the practical orthography for Triqui tone, cacaa̱ represents only cacaa³¹,  while
cacaa is either cacaa³ or cacaa³².  So as the text is written, it would normally correspond to c-acaa³¹. However, the word for 'burn' in Triqui is acaa³² (practical orthography acaa) and its potential is c-acaa² (c-aca̱a̱).

I'm tentatively guessing that this represents an earlier version of the practical orthography where perhaps both 31 and 32 tones were written vv̱…

If my interpretation is correct, then the two instances of the verb 'burn' are completive, while 'will make' qui'ya̱j is potential.

Update  11/23/2012

Barbara Hollenbach has kindly clarified for me by email the way the older practical orthography for tone worked.  I've tried to summarize my understanding in this post.  That means that my analysis in the earlier post is incorrect in identifying the instances of the verb <cacaā> as cacaa³².  Instead, it is an older way of writing c-acaa², which is the potential aspect form of 'burn'.  Thus the aspect of make (potential)' does match the aspect of the potential, and I don't have a counterexample to the tentative generalization that the two always match.  (A counterexample might still be found, but this doesn't turn out to be a valid counterexample.)

The new analysis of this passage is shown below:

Copala Triqui asa' 'when'

The Triqui complementizer asa' is rather unusual in its syntax.  It means 'when' for future events.  However, it is not followed by a verb in the potential aspect — the usual way to show future in Triqui.

Instead it is usually followed by the completive aspect, as in the following two examples:

This example seems to say literally  'I will speak to you when I arrived…'

The next example is also interesting:

In this example, look at the two instances of the verb 'yaj 'make, do'.  Both refer to future events, and the first instance has the regular morphology of potential aspect — qui'yaj.  The second instance follows asa', so it instead appears in the completive form qui'yaj.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the inversion of normal aspect morphology after the negative particle, when semantic future shows up with completive morphology.  However, after the negative, we also get the reverse — semantic past shows up with potential morphology.  The shift after asa' happens in only one direction.

Possibly we want to think of certain morphemes like asa' as having floating autosegmental material that suppresses the normal low register for the following verb?

Superscript tone numbers in FLEx

My friend Hilaria asked me recently about how to use superscript tone numbers in FLEx.  Since the initial set up is fairly complicated, I thought I would post the steps here.  (Other FLExperts feel free to let me know if there is a simpler way to do some of this...)

To get tone superscripts there are a few steps.  What I did is

a.) Within FLEx, go to Tools | Configure | Set up Writing Systems

b.) Select Copala Triqui (Phonetic)   -- You would use whatever you want to be the main writing system for your language, then click Modify.  Then you will see this screen

c,) One tab says Font.  We are using Doulos SIL, but you can use any Unicode font.  Make sure that you have a phonetic font selected here.

d.) Another tab says Characters.  Click the button that says Valid Characters.

e.)  You'll see a screen that shows the valid characters for you language.  (The ones that you are allowed to use for this language.) Here you want to make sure to add the superscript numerals.

f.) You can find the Unicode values for the superscript numerals in various places.  We use only 1-5, so the values are

superscript 1 = Unicode U+00B9

superscript 2 = Unicode U+00B2

superscript 3 = Unicode U+00B3

superscript 4 = Unicode U+2074

superscript 5 = Unicode U+2075

g.) As for how to enter them, I think it will work to click Unicode value and cut and paste the numbers above, one by one.  After you put the number in, you click the button that says Add.

h.) After you click Add, it is possible that the number will end up in the Numbers group, rather than the Word Forming group.  If this happens, you click on it and then the Up arrow.  (I drew a red arrow next to it in the screenshot.)

i.) After you've done this for all the numbers you need, you click OK.

j.) Now click the tab that says Keyboard.  You need some convenient way to type these numbers, so you probably want a special keyboard setting.  We are using Keyman, and we downloaded a keyboard that comes with it called the BU keyboard.  Other options are possible here.  Keyman is not free, but it is not expensive. http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/

k.) Possibly there is some better way to do this, but for us, it worked best to add a new language in the Windows Keyboard settings and to associate the BU keyboard with that.  We picked Bulgarian because the initial BU is mnemonic for the keyboard name.

To add a new language in Windows, you go to Control Panel | Regional and Language Options |Language tab, and click the button that says Details.  This gives you a screen that says Text Services and Input Languages.  Click the Button that says Add and pick Bulgarian.  Also click the button that says Keyboard Layout and pick BU.

l.) Go back to FLEx and select Bulgarian as the System Language and BU as the Keyman keyboard.

I think at this point, the system will work.

Once Keyman and BU are installed, you can find documentation there with a complete list of the abbreviations  that give you various symbols.  For the superscript numbers, the convention is that you type the number, followed by Ctrl-6.

You can use similar FLEx procedure for selecting the keyboard you want for English and Spanish.  For every field in FLEx, the program wants to know what the writing system is, and then it automatically switches to that keyboard and font for you.