Talk:Tonkawa language

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Contents 1 Tonkawa Phonemes 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 1.3 Comments 2 Coahuilteco and Tonkawa

[edit] Tonkawa Phonemes

I've got a chart from Tonkawa Texts, by Harry Hoijer, which shows the Tonkawa Phonemes. I think the charts currently in this article are gleaned from the resources at Rosetta Project, which I have looked at. Here is the chart, using the orthography that Hoijer used:

[edit] Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Labiopalatal	Glottal
Plosive	p	t	k	kʷ	ʔ
Affricate		c
Fricative		s	x	xʷ	h
Nasal	m	n
Lateral		l
Approximant	w		y

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i:		u, u:
Near-close	i
Close-mid	e:		o:
Open-mid	e		o
Open		a, a:

[edit] Comments

If no one has any objection to this, I'll go ahead and put it on the article sometime...

By the way, these are the phonemes of Tonkawa, and thus are not just a representation of the language's phonemes in a certain orthography. Please note that I didn't use the IPA here, but Hoijer's orthography for Tonkawa. If you have any objections, let me know!

— Benjamin 20:10, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

hi. i am not sure exactly you are adding to the article. do you want to replace what is in the article to symbols that Hoijer uses? (i think that Mithun was used as the source for the article, but of course we should ideally check the originals - there is an early grammar & a later sketch in addition to the collection of texts) peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:17, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Rosetta also uses Mithun (why dont they use the original?). – ishwar  (speak) 22:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

In response to Ish ishwar above: Yeah, I used Mithun for the phoneme chart. As I see it, the two best options would be either to (a) leave the current tables up and describe Hojier's orthography and it's foundations in the phonemes of Tonkawa elsewhere in the article (the article right now has about two sentences on this), or (b) replace the table with Hojier's and make sure the allophonic changes and IPA representations are mentioned in the accompanying text. In theory, it shouldn't really matter which we do. I myself don't have a preference. Take care --Whimemsz 03:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

we should probably stay with IPA since that is what is generally used in wikipedia. Hoijer is using Americanist phonetic notation which is essentially the same as it is now. i personally like Americanist transcription, but using it would be inconsistent with other articles. i dont know that this needs to be discussed at all: almost all literature on American languages uses this system. i think i have a copy of Hoijer's sketch somewhere. i'll see what it says. – ishwar  (speak) 05:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't really saying that we should change the orthography, in fact I don't think it really matters what orthography is used since it's a dead language. However, is seems to me that using the IPA might be a bit awkward (at least for the vowels). The vowel chart in IPA would be as follows:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː		u, uː
Near-close	ɪ
Close-mid	eː		oː
Open-mid	ε		ɔ
Open		a, aː

Anyway, what I was getting at with my first message was that I think the "sounds" tables on the article ought to be tables of the Tonkawa phonemes, not phonemes and a few allophones. Then the info about /ʦ/ being dental to postalveolar could be put in the section currently called "phonology" (as it is), along with anything else that would be about allophones. If I understand right, this is Whimemsz's option (b).

As for the vowels table, I just thought the one supplied by Hoijer would be more accurate as to the position of the vowel phonemes. What I have here is the actual table that Hoijer put in Tonkawa Texts.

Hope we're all on the same page now. Henoxco'. —Benjamin

I'm going to go ahead and put these charts in the article, using the IPA. Ishwar, let me know if you find any of those other materials that you mentioned; I'd like to know if they're any different. Thanks!  – Benjamin 20:14, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

hi. no, i still havent compared the texts to the sketch. I changed palatal to the more accurate velar. Hoijer and many other linguist elders dont always use precise articulatory descriptions via their symbolization which they want to be phonologically structured in a nice and neat way (whatever the phonetics actually). Hoijer says that these sounds are front palatal and back palatal depending on the vowel environment. You will find postalveolar to uvular as "palatal". His early grammar may have the most detailed description of the phonetics, so someone should check that out. peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

orthography: I think it's better to follow the Tonkawa website's orthography. This may be closer to what the tribe uses in language classes (assuming they are holding classes). – ishwar  (speak) 22:58, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks great. About the orthography: the reason I put Hoijer's orthography on there was because the website's isn't quite uniform. The pronunciation key on their website shows what I wrote the notes about, but then if you look at a page on their online dictionary, you'll see that they use a superscript question mark (^?) for the glottal stop. I doubt that they have language classes since the language is dead, but I don't know. You can change the orthography if you want to; it doesn't matter to me.  –Benjamin 23:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

my thinking about using the website stems from Hoijer's audience being mainly linguists & anthropologists. Since the Tonkawa site promises that it will soon have an update to the dictionary with sound files, it looks like people are doing something with the language. Language death is not a dead-end, esp. with a beautiful model of the Jewish language to follow. Maybe they are inconsistent on their site about the glottal stop symbol, or maybe some prefer different symbols (standardization neednt be a necessity). But, we can find out: let's send them an email asking what they prefer. Maybe it will lead to further (interesting) improvements. thanks – ishwar  (speak) 04:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, the article seems to be shaping up quite well; thanks for all your work on it, Ishwar. I just now added a section for a text example, there's probably a better way to format it, so please do so if you want.

You're right, languages can be brought back; the Catawba language has been dead for many years, but the Catawbas do have a language program and are trying to revive it.  –Benjamin 21:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Coahuilteco and Tonkawa

According to Ethnologue, Tonkawa belongs to a language family named "Coahuiltecan", which happens to sounds very much like "Coahuilteco", another dead and isolated native American language from Texas. Are those two related or not? — N-true 00:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Not related. This is a speculative proposal that has not been backed up with convincing evidence. The hypothetical Coahuiltecan family (e.g. Edward Sapir's) consists of Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudan, Karankawa, and Tonkawa. Ethnologue is probably using this (although they dont list older extinct languages). You shouldnt use Ethnologue for American language classifications, use references written by specialists. Ideally, a section should be written about Tonkawa's connection to the Coahuiltecan hypothesis & why it's not accepted. more to do... – ishwar  (speak) 06:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)