Dear Fellow Earthlings,
During the past several days I have been extremely busy – so much so that I had no time either to produce any new blogs or to do follow up work on analyzing the dissertation by Hazel Virginia Jimerson Dean-John (See Installment 280.). Finally, on this leap year day of February 29, 2016, I have been able to spend some time reading the first 15 pages of the 150-page paper very carefully .
The first thing I notice is that Dean-John found that analyzing the phonologies of her fellow Senecans would violate certain aspects of her (and their) faith. I, too, have encountered various obstacles as I seek to have Seneca native speakers share the sounds of their language with me. Indeed, since I am not Seneca, there is great difficulty inherent in that. Justifiably so! Seneca speakers are not inclined to trust non-Seneca people when it comes to sharing their precious language.
As a result of the attitudes mentioned here, Dean-John became a “Seneca community phonome” informant of one as she did her research for her dissertation. In other words, her only native language informant was herself.
As I have learned from working with Gajehsöh, working with only one native speaker informant greatly limits the depth of analysis that can be made as one seeks to determine the phonological characteristics of a given dialect – for by definition, a dialect consists of more than one native speaker! Extrapolating the phonome of a speech community by analyzing the individual phonome of only one member of that community does not bear high quality fruit.
But what I am very hopeful for as I delve into Dean-John’s self-analysis of her individual Seneca phonome is how it compares with MY own analysis of Gajehsöh’s individual Seneca phonome. I hope to extrapolate enough data to posit a tentative Seneca secondary allophonome of my own (albeit only a partially developed one) that I can then present to Gajehsöh for her comments and guidance. If I can create a third point of this “community Seneca phonome triad” (Gajehsöh/Dean-John/Hadënöhšyö:nis*), I will be able to posit a more generalized Allegany/Cattaraugus community phonome – You see, Dean-John is originally, so it seems, a native speaker of the Allegany dialect, while Gajehsöh is a native speaker of the Cattaraugus dialect.
* Remember: “Hadënöhšyö:nis” is the Seneca name that Gajehsöh has given me!
Therefore, as I read Dean-John’s paper, there is going to be a wealth of data that will come forth. Some of that data will be substantial and some will be tenuous to varying degrees. Plus, there WILL be extrapolated creations that I can present to Gajehsöh, to Dean-John (if the fates allow it), and -- hopefully, as well -- to a few others among the remaining Seneca people who can claim to be either native speakers of Seneca – or, at least, “somewhat native” speakers.
Very truly yours,
Hadënöhšyö:nis (English name: Steve Walker)
Earthsaver and Gaënö’ composer
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.