On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 18:30, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

'amerI'qa' ‘ev chan ‘ev                 North America (GN) (qepHom 2016)
'amerI'qa' tIng chan tIng       South America (GN) (qepHom 2016)

I don't recall if anyone has pointed this out before, but does anyone else find these backwards? Why isn't it {'ev chan 'ev 'amerI'qa'} and {tIng chan tIng 'amerI'qa'}? I'm probably just forgetting some rule that applies only to the compass directions.

In the post introducing the direction words, Okrand describes the words as meaning area in the direction of. He mostly uses it to mean something like "area to the east beyond the named noun," and so forth, but he also uses it to mean "eastern portion of the named noun," and so on. He gives us veng chan yoS, which he translates literally as city's area-eastward district, and he says this mean the eastern part of the city. It doesn't mean a district beyond the eastern edge of the city.

So 'amerI'qa' 'ev chan 'ev can refer to the portion of America that is northward, rather than the area beyond America to the north in the same way that veng chan can refer to the eastern portion of the city. And so on.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name