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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

��VOL. I

��The old Tepecano religion is now practically abandoned in favor of Catholicism and the Christian influence may be traced in several of the prayers. Fortunately it is slight. But it must be borne in mind that the prayers are traditional material and many have not been recited for years. Probably a large number have been lost beyond possibility of record. The possibility of inaccuracy is therefore con- siderable. In many cases, the exact meaning of esoteric phrases has been forgotten or they are interpreted differently by different infor- mants. In other cases the purpose of the prayer itself is disputed by various author- ities or changes suggested in the final revision. It is with a full realization of these possible inaccuracies that the collection is presented.

For the greater part, the texts have been printed exactly as written down even in cases where cumulative evidence of many records of the same word indicates that a certain instance was incorrectly recorded. In addition to cer- tain regular changes to conform with the orthography now in standard usage, 1 the prin- cipal change in preparation of manuscript has been in the cases of the complexes pb, td, and kg where the initial surd is not released, to B', D-, and G-, respectively.

For a complete account of the phonetics and morphology of the language the reader is referred to the before-mentioned linguistic paper. A brief r6sum6 of the phonetic key used is here appended for ready reference:

a as in arm

e as in end (very rare and probably reduced from

diphthong in) i as in machine

o as in orb

6 as in urn ( and lii were occasionally written as

variants of 0)

u as in rule (approaches o of note) y as in yes (generally as an ' glide) w as in wet (generally as an u glide; also confused

with ) w semi-voiceless w

1 Phonetic Transcription of Indian Languages, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, publication 2415, Washington, D. C.

��in as in men

M semi-voiceless m

n as in net

N semi-voiceless n

)j as in sing (rare)

r as in Spanish pero

R semi-voiceless r

1 approaching r but untrilled (rare)

v as in Spanish pavo

v semi-voiceless p

s as in so

c as in show (but approaching s)

h as in hat (probably not differentiated from x)

x as in Spanish jota (probably not differentiated

from h)

b as in bed

d as in day

g as in go

B intermediate surd-sonant p-b

D intermediate surd-sonant t-d

G intermediate surd-sonant k-g

p as in Spanish pero

t as in Spanish tan

k as in Spanish casa

ts as in hats (rare)

tc as in church (rare)

glottal stop or occlusion accent after vowel denotes stress accent accent over vowel denotes pitch accent grave accent denotes secondary accent

i iota subscript denotes nasalization

raised period denotes doubled length period denotes hesitation, cessation of breath or voice, or separation of normally connected ele- ments of diphthongs or other combinations superscript characters are pronounced with less than normal force

i. TO PREPARE THE PATIO FOR THE FIESTA OF THE RAIN

adiu's.um? naparin.Q''G 3 naparinda - 'D 4 To God," thou who art my Father,' who art my*

Mother, 1

1 Adios is the most frequent beginning for most of the prayers and is, of course, a Christian influence. It is a question whether it represents a dedication to the Christian God or merely an exclamation of greeting, in which sense it is frequent in Spanish usage. It has been most frequently translated as "Hail!" The particle um here is of doubtful nature.

1 The stem means FATHER ; it has frequently been translated as "Lord."

4 The stem means MOTHER; it has frequently been translated as "Lady."

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