He Is Hungry

Of all the transcriptions on this website, what we hear from Lolly Metcalf in this interview segment makes for the transcriptions that we are the least sure about.  In the Milluk texts, there are two examples of a word meaning ‘starve (someone)’.  They are | tɫʼáɣ·iʔya | ‘He starved (his mother’s sister)’ and | tɫʼáɣ·iya | ‘he starved (his body, i.e. he starved himself)’.  

More to the point for the meaning ‘hungry’, but beyond the text dictation work, Jacobs transcribed Annie Miner Peterson as saying: 

| tɫʼáɣ·átʔw | ‘I’ve gotten hungry, so very hungry’.  

We see that transcription along with a transcription of a somewhat similar Hanis word, both on a PDF numbered 32 which we have.  It is among 35 such PDFs of sentences that Jacobs asked for or were volunteered by Mrs. Peterson in Hanis and Milluk.  We think that the [ w ] in the one-word Milluk sentence is a very short version of the Milluk first person pronoun / ʔu / ‘I’, so that what Jacobs heard could be seen to be [ tɫʼáɣ·át_ʔu ] ‘I’ve gotten hungry, so very hungry’.  That is why we have [ tɫʼáɣ·át ] in our table of transcriptions for what Annie said with the meaning ‘He/she is hungry’.