Yuman Languages II: Wolf's Son. A Walapai Text

Abstract

Translations of two Walapai versions of the Wolf's Son story were published in A. L. Kroeber's Walapai Ethnography, AAA Memoir 42.1935.252-255, 255. A Havasupai version, published by Leslie Spier, appeared in IJAL 3.1924.109-115 and, in part, in Comparative Vocabularies and Parallel Texts in Two Yuman Languages of Arizona, University of New Mexico Publications in Anthropology 2.1946.144150. The linguistic analysis of any Yuman data is aided greatly by A. M. Halpern's thorough study of Yuma proper (I-VI: IJAL 12.1946.25-33, 147-151, 204-212; 13.1947.18-30, 92-107, 147-166); mutatis mutandis, Halpern's presentation will help to put the text-oriented, and therefore necessarily eclectic, statements of the present paper in the proper perspective. 1.0. Walapai seems to be characterized by a relatively small number of morphophonemic changes. A rendering of the text first in phonemic transcription and then in a morphological breakdown would have involved an undue amount of sheer repetition. Since, however, a delimitation of morphs from nothing but a phonemic text would have presented excessive difficulties for a casual reader, it was decided to forgo a phonemic rendering altogether and to write only a morphologically analyzed text preceded by a statement of morphophonemic conversion rules. 1.1. This statement, in turn, will be preceded by a brief outline of Walapai phonology. As the presentation of the text is the main interest of this study, the discussion is kept to a minimum. Data used were obtained from the principal informants and from some young speakers of Walapai contacted while they were students at Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kansas. 1.1.1.0. Contrasts between consonantal