Page:A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages.djvu/7

 A DICTIONARY OF THE BILOXI AND OFO LANGUAGES 

By James Owen Dorsey and John R. Swanton

INTRODUCTION

The Biloxi material contained in this bulletin, along with a vast amount of similar character, was left in an unfinished condition by the untimely death of the Rev. James Owen Dorsey, by whom the most of it was collected. The care and thoroughness of Mr. Dorsey’s work have rendered that of his scientific editor comparatively trifling. He had already incorporated into his Biloxi dictionary all of the separate words and phrases, and had added all of the words in the first twenty or thirty pages of text. The texts were already provided with interlinear and connected translations and notes. Had Mr. Dorsey’s plan for publication been carried out it would have been necessary merely to finish extracting words from the texts and to add a few corrections to the notes accompanying them. The present method of arranging dictionaries of Indian tribes, however, has rendered it necessary to bring together Mr. Dorsey’s cards under various stems, and to convert the English-Biloxi part into a directory for finding the stem under which any given word is listed. This rearrangement and the historical account of the Biloxi are nearly everything in this material to which the scientific editor can lay claim.

The following list of Biloxi phonetics is substantially the same as that given by Mr. Dorsey himself in his vice-presidential address on Biloxi before Section H of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Madison, Wisconsin, August, 1893. Since that time, however, the usage of students of Indian languages regarding the application of certain signs has changed, and in addition it has seemed advisable to make changes in some of the other signs. a as in father. ạ as in final (Dorsey’s ă). â as aw in law.