Correct coding of Orok for feature 87A

[xrotwang]

For a current research project I needed to ascertain against WALS which basically head-final (OV & Po & GN) languages in Asia have the attributive adjective after the head noun. I was surprised to see the Tungusic language Orok among these languages. I can assure you without hesitation that this assignment for Orok is incorrect, Orok has basic AN order. But the problem lies in a gross translation error from Polish into English in what I take to be your source.

Please note that I am actually referring to the edition of Piłsudski published by De Gruyter, which I have been able to access piecemeal via Google Books in this period of closed libraries, so I can't be 100% sure what the version you accessed says. I have attached images of the relevant pages/parts of pages.

The crucial sentence relating to adjective order is as follows in Polish, with glossing and translation:

Przymiotniki stoją zawsze (?) przed rodzajnikami
Przymiotnik-i  stoj-ą         zawsze (?)  przed   rodzajnik-ami
adjective-PL   stand-PRS.3PL  always (?)  before  noun-PL.INS
'Adjectives always (?) stand before nouns.'

This comes out in the English translation in the source incorrectly as "Adjectives always (?) follow the words (nouns) they determine".

The Orok example given in the original, with glossing and translation, is as follows:

byrymi ula
byrymi  ula
clever   reindeer
‘clever reindeer’

The example clearly exemplifies AN order.

There is one terminological oddity in the Polish sentence. While "przymiotnik" is the usual Polish term for 'adjective', "rodzajnik" is not the usual term for 'noun'. The volume in question does sometimes have the standard term "rzeczownik" for 'noun', but frequently has "rodzajnik" in what is clearly this sense. The translator(s) usually use(s) "noun" in English, though in the above example they hedge with both "word" and "noun". In Polish linguistic terminology "rodzajnik" means 'article' (as in "(in)definite ~"), a PoS absent from Polish and Orok. The Polish word is derived from "rodzaj" 'gender' (also 'kind, sort' in non-technical usage). It is presumably a calque on the home-grown German term for an article, "Geschlechtswort", literally 'gender-word', on the basis that the article in many languages, including German, indicates the gender of a noun. I can only speculate as to why Piłsudski used this term in the sense 'noun' -- 'verb' is "czasownik" in Polish because time/tense ("czas") is one of the main categories that characterize it, so maybe 'noun' is named after 'gender' -- and I've no idea whether this usage is idiosyncratic to him or was current in his circle. Note also that the part of the English "translation" that says "[the words] they determine" is an interpretation, not a translation of the original.

Via Bernard Comrie