Afraid 2

Like the English Word ‘elks’:  If you think this Milluk word sounds like the English word ‘elks’, especially the second time that Lolly says it, that is because it really does.  In both an Americanist phonetic transcription and in an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription, the English word ‘elks’ is transcribed phonetically as [ ʔɛlks ].  

[ æ ] and [ ɛ ] in English and in Milluk:  If Mrs. Metcalf’s two pronunciations of this word sound like two different words to you, that would be because in English the phonetic vowels [ æ ] and [ ɛ ] belong to two different phonemes.  The vowel [ ɛ ] is in the English word ‘bet’ [ bɛt ], while [ æ ] is in the English word ‘bat’ [ bæ·t ].  In English, [ æ ] is an inherently long vowel, which is why we write the word ‘bat’ with a long vowel, indicated here with a raised dot [·].  

In Milluk these two phonetic vowels [ æ ] and [ ɛ ] belong to the same Milluk phoneme.  That is how it is that Mrs. Metcalf’s two pronunciations of this word can represent a range of what this Milluk word sounds like in terms of the vowel.  

Melville Jacobs’ transcriptions of Milluk only have the phonetic symbol Epsilon [ ɛ ] to represent the range of this Milluk phoneme.  In our phonetic transcriptions, we distinguish the phonetic vowels [ æ ] and [ ɛ ].  We favor the symbol [ æ ], called ‘Ash’, to write the Milluk phoneme / æ /, as a phoneme, because [ æ ] is by far the most common pronunciation of this Milluk phoneme.  

The Range of the Milluk Phoneme / æ /:  Lolly Metcalf starts out with the pronunciation [ ʔælks ] in this interview segment.  She does the same sort of thing, favoring the vowel [ æ ], at first,  in the interview segment Mouth.  We hear her say that word first as [ yæis ] then as [ yɛis ].  Having the diphthong [ æi ] in her lead pronunciation of the Milluk word / yæis / meaning ‘mouth’ can hardly be an influence of her English, as she remembered Milluk words on that day in 1953, since that diphthong does not exist in the kind of English spoken in Oregon.  The diphthong [ ɛi ] is closer to what we have in the kind of English spoken in Oregon.  

 [k] and [q]:  Annie Miner Peterson’s [ q ] in her pronunciation of the word [ ʔælqs ] ‘afraid’, ‘fear’, is farther back in the throat than [ k ].  In the interview segments Neck 1 and Neck 2, we suggest that Lolly Metcalf’s pronunciation of that word as [ ma·kʼ ] and also as [ ma·qʼ ] represent a range of pronunciations for that word which existed in the language as a whole.