HARRINGTON1928-001 - lexical attestation
Kiowa, Anadarko, Oklahoma
United States - Kiowa Agency - Anadarko, Oklahoma - North America - Plains
Function not recorded
gyǹ-bou-pọu-gyʜ-gɑ English / Kiowa
Source term: gyǹ-bou-pọu-gyʜ-gɑ (dual pl. gyǹ-bou-pọu-gyʜ)
gyǹ-bou-pọu-gyʜ-gɑ — Kiowa 'bull-roarer' (inanimate class IIa), from pọu- 'to sound' with noun postfixes -gyʜ and -gɑ; Harrington's 1918 Anadarko orthography.
'I made several bullroarers,' a Kiowa man remarked to John Peabody Harrington at Anadarko in 1918, and the linguist wrote the sentence down in Kiowa, as he wrote everything down. So the word survives — gyǹ-bou-pọu-gyʜ-gɑ, built on pọu-, 'to sound' — in a vocabulary gathered with Enoch Smoky and Paul McKenzie, who would dictate sitting, standing, pacing, and lying on the cot, late into the night. What the Kiowa bullroarer was made of, and what it did, the vocabulary never says — only that Kiowa hands made them, several at a time.
gyǹ-bou-pọụgyʜ gyǹt-'ɑ'mẹi — I made several bullroarers.
John P. Harrington, Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language (BAE Bulletin 84, 1928), p. 70
- Function
- Name and manufacture only: Harrington's vocabulary records the Kiowa word for bullroarer and the informant sentence 'I made several bullroarers'; material, mechanics and use are unstated.
- Map confidence
- medium - Anadarko, Oklahoma — Harrington's 1918 fieldwork base and the Kiowa Agency town; a representative locality, not an object findspot.
- Source location
- p. 70 (capture harrington-1928-p70-kiowa.png)