The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Documents Frank Siebert Collection Page 1980 The eP nobscot Dictionary Project: Preferences and Problems of Format, Presentation, and Entry Frank T. Siebert Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/siebertdocuments Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Applied Linguistics Commons, Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, International and Intercultural Communication Commons, Language Description and Documentation Commons, Linguistic Anthropology Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Other Linguistics Commons, Phonetics and Phonology Commons, Semantics and Pragmatics Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Syntax Commons, and the Typological Linguistics and Linguistic Diversity Commons Repository Citation Siebert, Frank T., "The eP nobscot Dictionary Project: Preferences and Problems of Format, Presentation, and Entry" (1980). Documents. 2. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/siebertdocuments/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Documents by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. rr3 IT2 10:3 (April 1949), 65; Simmons, Cautantowwit's House, 60; The Penobscot Dictionary Project: Preferences and Entry Binford, "Mortuary Practices, " American Antiquitv, 36:3, and Problems of Format, Presentation, pL. 2 (July 197L), 12. Frank T. Siebert a I w. Gruber, Dead: The Cemetery at St. Town, Maine Jacob "Champlainrs OId Croix" ( ished paper). Thanks to Professor Gruber for a copy of s paper See also walter Johnson, Byways in British (Cambridge, I9I2) , 243-67. The responsibilities of the lexicographer of a bilingual u' zeis rrs Hi-sto of the Northern American lndj-ans, dictionary are many and onerous. They include the following Jesu 7-59; 7; :33, multiple duties: striving for a relative completeness of B9; 35:95- entry which from a practical point of view is almost u 3 Mass. His. Soc., ColIs,, 3rd ser., 4 (1834) 40. unattainable; a clarity of style of presentation to , q4 rbid. , rl6. qs Danie] Gookin, Historical- Collections of the Indians in New Enqland, ed, Jeffrey H. Fisk (Towtaid, N.J. , I970), J-9. Jesuit Relations, 34:100. q7 Jesuit Relations, 8:253-55; 10:305-7; 2323I; 26:209-ILi 60:3f Jesuit Relations, 302123 who spoke or are still speaking the two languaqes. progress elgonquian lexicography so far has made litLIe ae a Voyage, 22189; Lindestrdm, in this Century despite auspicious beginnings in the nine- Charlevoix, Journal of recognize the Geographia Americae, 250-51. Gabriel Sagard testified that teenth century. Although one is forced to only when "it is cast up at fthe Hurons] that one of their more or less deficient character of the earlier works, the (Long Algonquian language dictionaries of the following relations is dead" did he see them lose self-control printed Journey, 202 . authors come to mind with their dates of first publication, ) (1833) Baraga (1853), watkins (1865) s0 namely: Rasles ' . Lafitau, Customs of the American rndians, 22240-4I. Lacombe (l.874), Cuoq '(1886), Zeisberger (1887), Rand (1888) Brj-nton and Anthony, ' Dencke (attributed author, edited by t wirl- iams, Kev into the Lanquaqe of America, 202. 1BB8), and Tims (1889) . Three others published in the early ' (1903), twentieth century, those of Lemoine (I901), Trumbull Simmons, House, 58. (1915) composed in the Cautantowwit's and Petter ' were cornpletely or largely nineteenth century. Of all these, the Ojibwa dictionary of tt Baron de Lahontan, New Voyages to North-America, ed Baraga and that of Cree by Watkins are the most conmendabl-e Reuben GoLd Thwaites (New York, 1910), 22473. and are stil-l- extremely useful. Both are now considerably OnIy recently has there been a 5l{ over a century o1d. Morton, New Engl-ish Canaan, i-n Force, Tracts , voI. 2 , renaissance of interest in the compilation of adequate no 5, p. 36, dictionaries of the various Algonquian languages, and it is to be hoped that this resurgence will not fafter. "' Kathfeen Bragdon and Ives Goddard, personal communl-ca - The posthumous appearance of Bloonfiefd's lr{enomini tions, OcL.27, 1979. dictionary in 1975, which the author completed about I946, is a very favorable development, and thanks are due to the s6 Nantucket Registry of Deeds,Fk.2, pp. I (1678), 5 editor, Charles Hockett, that it has finally seen the light (f686), Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Mass. of day. Bloomfield modestly called j-t a "lexicon" rather Elizabeth Little kindly drew these deeds to my attention. than a dictionary, although it is as replete as many other works which have been titled as dictionaries. However, there are regretfully some adverse aspects concerning the Menomini lexicon. The publicatj-on format is a paperbound glue-and-paste job in which the leaves are not folded and sewed, and readily fall out when the paste dries or the volume is subjected to use. Some uncertainty and confusion of the short front voweLs /e/e/i/ exists in many forms. There is undoubtedly much Menomini vocabulary which is not recorded. In fact, some vocabulary can be found in - ,'L't{ , - L< Ci t'"\n*\t'i\1 olt{i' bt lr5 tr*i 114 \tj village at which Frank Speck early in this century obtained Bloomfieldrs Menomini texts which cannot be located in some texts from the last sPeaker, , was first the lexicon. Examples are: nehkS'pa-wdt 'when it dissolved' ettled by Sokokis, but later the re Canibas (p. 10), and faint' 1p. 380), unless .' ho started moving there as earlY as 1704. Proper 1y speaking the first rep 'he, it soaks until soft' ' there is no Wawenock dialect, and what he recorded from as given in t ee tihka.pa.we.w 'it Neptune is essentiallY dissolves'), and the second a redupliceEed-Eol-m oE- The three earliest a valuable Abenaki dictionaries a'nawehesow 'he fails, gives up'. In either case, at least, by Jesuits are those of Fathers Sebastien Rasles, Joseph EEe meanlngs require elaboration, or they may be separate ailery, and an anonlrmous manuscript entitl-ed Racines forms. Abnaouises preserved in the Archives of the S6minaire de There are two chief problems in forming a Penobscot 0uE564--Uniiersit6 ^i,ava1, in Qu6bec city. The latter is dictionary, namely: (1) the best approach to the lexical undated but apparentfy older than the works of Rasles and materials found in the older Eastern Abenaki di-ctionaries of the Jesuit missionaries, and (2) the difficulties of efficient dictionary entry that stem from the phenomenon of syncope in some but not al-f manifestations of the same morpheme. Both are more complicated matters than'is apparent on the surface. In recent years some Algonquianists have been disposed to given an excess of due faith and credit to the linguistic materials inherited from the past which have been recorded by missionaries and travell-ers. These have some legitimate interest and usefulness, but should be used with extreme caution and one must not go overboard and attribute virtues to them which they often do not possess. Most of these records are very deficient from the points of view of are not actually the same or nearly so. phonology, dial-ectofogy, and semantics. The main focus of In the light of reports of recent rapid linguistic changes missionaries was proselytism, not linguistics, and many of in other Algonquian languages, for example Menomine, Fox, them were relatively ignorant men whose outstanding virtues Ojibwa, Delaware, and Atsina, the Eastern Abenaki dialects were altruism and devotion. Only in the case of the extinct (Caniba at B6cancour as recorded by Speck, and Penobscot) of languages do the records of the distant past assume major the early twentieth century show little linguistic change importance, simply because that is all there is and ever from the records of the late seventeenth century. However' will be avail-able. there probably has been rninor vocabulary loss. Even the There are several dialects of the Eastern Abenaki ,"*;11 oanwords from French and English which entered the language language, namely Penobscot, Caniba, Aroosagunticook, 6, uring the seventeenth century are the same and few additions Pigwacket (Peguaket), and probably Sokoki. The latter, ave been made in the interim' The conservatism of Eastern once spoken in the upper Connecticut River val.ley, may be benaki is apparent. Modern Penobscot scarcely differs from linguistically identical with Pigwacket, as shown by a eventeenth century Penobscot. study of place-names and other inconclusive historical The writing system employed by the Jesuit missionaries inferences, and was afmost certainly an Eastern Abenaki for recording Eastern Abenaki has the following deficiencies: dialect. Sokokis were the earliest migrants to the Abenaki (1) suprasegmentals which are phonemic are not indicated at bourgades on the St. Lawrence River at Sillery, B6cancour, all; (2) a and aii (tense c) are confused with slight to Three Rivers, St. Francis, and St. Francis de Sales. The moderate Frequency, showing that aii was probably not a Jesuit recorders did not distinguish these dialects and nasalized vowel in any Eastern Abenaki dialect since French- lumped them all as Abenaki, Consequently it is difficuft ' men with nasalized vowel- phonemes in their native speech to disentangJ-e Abenaki. dialectotogy. AIso, beginning in ' would probably