Hopi vowels

Hey.

Last night I took a gander in _Hopìikwa Lavàtutuveni_, the
massive Hopi Dictionary recently published by the University of
Arizona Press, and they give the following vowel inventory for
Hopi:

        i     i-
        e  ö      o
              a

Whorf also includes a mid front unrounded vowel in his
description of Hopi from _Linguistic Structures of Native
America_. I have no idea where the /e/ came from historically,
but it's robustly enough attested that it can't just be from
borrowings.

Hmmmph. It's still a weird system.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir