Hopi Traditional Literature (Shaul)

Hopi Traditional Literature by David Leedom Shaul

Review by: Willem J. de Reuse
International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 71, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 356-359
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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356 international journal of american linguistics

In a completely original and innovative essay, David Mora-Marn examines the pre-
ferred argument structure in dynastic texts from the site of Palenque. Not surprisingly,
it very closely reects the preferred argument structure of Mayan languages generally.
Since the Palenque texts are somewhat atypicalthey tend to be much longer and
more complexit will be interesting to see how the preferred argument structure in
Palenque texts compares with texts from other regions.
This volume is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand recent advances
and current controversies in Maya epigraphy. It is equally valuable for students of
Mayan linguistic prehistory, in showing how these ancient texts contribute to a more
detailed understanding of previous stages of Cholan languages. To students of writ-
ing systems, this volume provides a fascinating look into the inner workings of a com-
munity of scholars who, in large part, have been able to advance from the task of
decipherment to the task of language description and textual interpretation. Although
seemingly far removed from the research questions of the archaeologist, the lan-
guage change and language variation discussed in several of these articles provide in-
sight into various episodes of contact between speech communities across the Maya
lowlands.
Few of the worlds scripts are known primarily from precisely dated stone monu-
ments. The Maya historical texts, most containing dates, due to size and weight, not
highly portable, provide a mine of information about sometimes minute language vari-
ation over both time and space. The Classic Period script in use for over seven centu-
ries is remarkable both for its evidence of uniformity and for its variation. The articles
assembled in this volume show the complexity of these patterns.
Martha J. Macri, University of California, Davis

REFERENCES

Houston, Stephen D.; David Stuart; and John S. Robertson. 1998. Disharmony in Maya
hieroglyphic writing: Linguistic change and continuity in Classic society. Anatoma de una
civilizacin: Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura maya, ed. Andrs Ciudad Ruiz
et al., pp. 27596. Madrid: Sociedad Espaola de Estudios Mayas.
Justeson, John S. 1984. Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. Albany, N.Y.: Institute
for Mesoamerican Studies, SUNY Albany.
Macri, Martha J., and Matthew G. Looper. 2003. The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs.
Vol. 1: The Classic Period Inscriptions. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Hopi Traditional Literature. By David Leedom Shaul. Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Pp. x + 236. $49.95.

The purpose of this work is to describe the main genres of Hopi literature. Introduc-
tory matter includes a Preface, Pronouncing Hopi, and an Introduction listing
the main traditional literary genres and including a concise sketch of Hopi history and
culture. This is followed by part 1, Hopi Traditional Narratives, which contains these
 reviews 357

chapters: (1) The Hopi Narrative Schema, (2) Hopi Narrative Versication, (3)
Additional Examples of Versication, and (4) Helen Sekaquaptewas Coyote and
the Winnowing Birds: A Sample Analysis. Part 2, Other Genres, presents (5) Di-
rect Address Genres and Indirection, (6) Emory Sekaquaptewas Oration, (7) Hopi
Songpoems and Songs, and (8) Toward a Hopi Songbook. The book ends with a
Sketch of Hopi Grammar, a Technical Glossary, a full Bibliography, and an
Index.
A few words on the two linguistic sections of the book, which literally frame it:
Pronouncing Hopi and Sketch of Hopi Grammar. Pronouncing Hopi is a valiant
attempt at keeping things as simple as possible, but this is not always successful. Shaul
claims that vowel length of Hopi can be understood by comparison to English pairs
such as father and far or put and pudding (p. 2). However, I am not sure whether many
speakers of English perceive a clear length contrast in such pairs. Shauls character-
izationthe Hopi v is made by vibrating both lips togetheris phonetically con-
fusing; the sound intended is a bilabial fricative, not a bilabial trill. The Sketch of
Hopi Grammar is too short to be useful and contains terminology not needed for an
understanding of the book. A few infelicities are noted here: On page 208, object of
a preposition should be object of a postposition. On pages 21112, Shaul mentions
three tenses: one he calls the future tense, one he calls the habitual tense (actually
an aspect), and a third one he forgets to label but which, judging from the example,
could be either past or present. A short morphologically analyzed text would have
been more helpful than this sketch. Reference should have been made to the fuller
sketch in the Hopi Dictionary Project (1998), which is also easy to follow.
Part 1 deals with Hopi narrative in the tradition of Hymess ethnopoetics. Chapter
1 is a fast-moving discussion of narrative schemas, particle phrasing, and the impor-
tance of deictics. Shaul points out that the presentation of Hopi texts in lines is a
departure from all previous representation of Hopi narrative texts. But this is true only
if one ignores Hymes (1992) and Shauls previous work! It is also disconcerting that
the rst full text Shaul presents (pp. 24 47) is a complex myth, with insufcient
mythological background provided to help the Western reader in following the narra-
tive. The adaptation of Biblical narratives shows that the same narrative schema and
deictic marking also apply to nontraditional literature. The main import of chapter
2 is to contrast Hopi rhetorical patterning with Chinookan rhetorical patterning, as
described by Hymes (1987). In Chinookan, the narrative mechanics are individual and
the rhetoric collective, whereas in Hopi, the narrative mechanics are collective and
the rhetoric (e.g., the location of quatrains) is individual. Chapter 3 provides more
examples of versication in quatrains, including cases in New Testament translations
and a speech to kachinas. Chapter 4 is an in-depth analysis of a simple but charming
Coyote story, which has already been analyzed twice in print (Wiget 1987 and Hymes
1992). However, Shauls own presentation is valuable since it is informed by his
superior knowledge of the Hopi language.
Other genres are the topic of part 2. Chapter 5 focuses on direct address genres,
which are characterized by the principle of indirection. Indirection is particularly
important in direct address, since Hopis do not value face-to-face confrontation. The
rst example discussed is a public announcement, basically a radio commercial for
McDonalds restaurants; other announcements in this chapter are more traditional
358 international journal of american linguistics

and refer to spring cleaning and communal hunting. The use of indirection in admo-
nitions or proverbs, conversation, short prayers, public prayers, polite formulaic ex-
pressions, and sayings is also discussed. The last section of chapter 5, Oration and
Public Prayer (p. 155), should be considered as the introduction to chapter 6, which
presents an oration on modern Hopi language use. It will be prized by students of lin-
guistic ideology.
Chapter 7, Hopi Songpoems and Songs, comes as a surprise, in that the focus is
not literary but historical and ethnomusicological. This may reect Shauls interest in
music, since he is an accomplished musician himself. The chapter begins with a well-
informed history of The Study of Native American Music, followed by an equally
interesting study of Pueblo Musical Style, then narrowing down to Hopi Musical
Style. There is a section of Hopi music and sociocultural context, which includes an
extensive song terminology and is a noteworthy ethnography of Hopi music. But one
wonders, where is the discussion of the literary qualities of Hopi music?
Finally, chapter 8 is quite short and presents four songs: one Christian hymn, with
an English translation missing, and three previously published short songs. Possibly,
Shaul did not manage to secure permission to publish previously unknown songs. As
in chapter 7, the focus is musicological, with only a bit of literary discussion on page
203.
One can conclude that the books title, Traditional Hopi Literature, is a bit mislead-
ing. Are Biblical texts (chapters 1 and 3), radio commercials, idealized conversations
from a language-learning textbook (chapter 6), and a Christian hymn (chapter 8) tra-
ditional literature? Certainly, such texts have features of traditional literature only in-
sofar as all Hopi texts participate in an ethnography of traditional Hopi speech. So the
book is really about ethnography of speech, albeit with a heavy emphasis on Hopi
narrative discourse, and with the chapters on songs insufciently integrated into this
ethnography. Furthermore, Shaul is sometimes confusingly indecisive about labeling
a genre, or whether to discuss it or not. So the speech to kachinas (p. 82) is called a
public prayer on page 152. One discovers on page 148 that what he calls admoni-
tions on pages 118 and 139 is the same as what he calls proverbs on page 119. On
page 118, Shaul announces that the study of traditional oration is a topic for further
research, so the reader wonders why all of chapter 6 is dedicated to what looks like a
traditional oration.
Despite such organizational and presentational shortcomings, this monograph is an
informative and innovative account. It includes insightful analyses of some aspects of
Hopi discourse and ethnography of speech. It will be useful as a text in intermediate-
level classes on Native American language literature and should facilitate comparison
with other Pueblo literatures, other Southwestern literatures, and even Native Ameri-
can literatures in general. Sooner or later, every serious student of Native American lit-
eratures should try his/her hand at reading texts in the original, and Hopi texts are an
excellent place to start. Shauls work will be a guide to such reading. The linguistic
structure of Hopi is such that it is not excruciatingly hard for English speakers to read
in the original (as compared to other Southwestern languages such as Apache, Navajo,
or Keresan), and there is now a sizable body of reliably written Hopi literary texts
(quite a bit larger than the one for surrounding Navajo, which has maybe twenty times
as many speakers), as well as a superb dictionary (Hopi Dictionary Project 1998).
 reviews 359

This book is not the last word on Hopi literature, but it is an important step toward
a full ethnography of speech and ethnomusicology for Hopi. A denitive and fully
comprehensive work on these topics might not be a realistic goal, however, since there
will always be aspects of Hopi literature or music that are too sacred or personal to be
discussed in print or otherwise shared with non-Hopis.

Willem J. de Reuse, University of North Texas

REFERENCES

Hopi Dictionary Project. 1998. Hopi Dictionary/ Hopikva Lavytutuveni: A HopiEnglish

Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect, comp. Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology,
University of Arizona. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Hymes, Dell. 1987. Tonkawa poetics: John Rush Buffalos Coyote and Eagles Daughters.
Native American Discourse: Poetics and Rhetoric, ed. Joel Sherzer and Anthony C. Wood-
bury, pp. 1761. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1992. Helen Sekaquaptewas Coyote and The Birds: Rhetorical analysis of a Hopi
Coyote story. Anthropological Linguistics 34:4572.
Wiget, Andrew. 1987. Telling the tale: A performance analysis of a Hopi Coyote story. Re-
covering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, ed. Brian Swann and Arnold Kru-
pat, pp. 297336. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Papers of the Thirty-fourth Algonquian Conference. Edited by H. C.

Wolfart. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2003. Pp. x + 399. $48.00
(paper).

This volume measures 23 x 15 x 2.5 cm., with black lettering on a yellow cover. It
contains 22 of the contributions presented at the annual meeting, held at Queens Uni-
versity in Kingston, Ontario, in October 2002.
Conathan and Wood (pp. 1934) set out to test the semantics of one of the main
hypotheses in Garrett (2001), essentially that Yurok and Fox both inherited one of two
Proto-Algic reduplication types (disyllabic). They nd that the semantics of Yurok
reduplication are very close to those of neighboring Karuk, but very different from
those of the supposedly cognate Fox reduplication type. This is a well-crafted paper,
replete with pertinent examples. One can only hope to see many more from these
authors in years to come.
Inglis (pp. 193200) investigates the difference in meaning between Micmac
-sp(n) and -s(n). Using only intransitive Micmac verbs, she notes that suppositive
-s(n) cannot be used with a second-person singular. With the help of native-speaker
intuition, she discovered that Micmac -sp(n) requests conrmation of information
from the person spoken to. She infers that this is required by Micmac cultural rules of
courtesy when the information is about a second-person singular. Perhaps, but why
not deference to an expert witness? This would better explain why the rule does not ap-
ply to a second-person object or to a second-person plural subject. In John saw you