[Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?

Thu Nov 20 20:49:03 UTC 2014

Danielle,

There is quite a time discrepancy between the Plano Culture, which is 
late Paleo-Indian/Early Archaic and came to end around 6000 BC, and 
Algonquian, whose ancestral tongue Proto-Algonquian is thought to have 
been spoken in the Late Archaic around 2000 B.C. So, who the ancestral 
Mi'gmaq shared languages with is a pretty open question, is it not?

Michael

Quoting "Danielle E. Cyr" <dcyr at yorku.ca>:

> The case of the spread of the uvular in Europe is a great example. And a
> well studied one. Of course it happened at a time when German culture was
> immensely prestigious, namely through its music, science and literature.
> So, I guess, anyone who could speak her/his own language with a scent of a
> german accent was to be considered high class.
> This kind of setting does not sound likely among paleoindian cultures.
> I think that we are back to Peter Denny's hypothesis of a prolonged
> linguistic and cultural contact with a non Algonquian population.
> While doing some reading on the topic, I realized that there is still a
> wide gap between archaeology and linguistics. Wouldn't it be time that we
> address that ? Well, I think we are addressing it right now through this
> conversation.
> Best to All,
> Danielle
> Dr. Danielle E. Cyr, Senior Scholar at York University
> 339, boul. Perron ouest
> New Richmond, QC,  G0C 2BO
> dcyr at yorku.ca - 418.392.7271
> ---- Original Message ----
> From: David Costa
> To: "Algonquiana"
> Sent: Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 3:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
>
> One reason why I think it would have taken more than just proximity for the
> nasal vowel to pass from Iroquoian into Algonquian is because the
> Iroquoian/Algonquian border is a much more formidable barrier than that
> between German and French, or German and Danish, let alone Danish and
> Norwegian. I?ve never seen any indication that Iroquoians and Algonquian
> learned each other?s languages with any kind of frequency, and there are
> no documented Iroquoian loans in Algonquian that I?m aware of (not even
> in Mahican). In fact, it?s hard to pin down any non-Algonquian influences
> on any Algonquian language (precontact, of course), aside from a few stray
> Siouan loans. So I suspect if Mahican acquired a whole new vowel from
> Mohawk, it took more than just both groups being in the Hudson Valley.
> Dave
> Folks,
>
>     I have to disagree with Monica. There are good examples where the
> history is well understood. It isn't magic clouds touching, but it need not
> be as intimate as intermarriage. Here's the best known example.
>     There has been a lot of work done on the uvular r in Europe, which
> spread from Paris to northern Germany and Denmark. Here's the wiki map,
> which looks about right.
> Distribution of guttural R (e.g. [? ? ?]) in Continental Europe in the
> mid-20th century.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#cite_note-1)
> not usual   only in some educated speech   usual in educated speech
> general
>
> Two things to note: 1) the distribution does not coincide completely with
> any language boundary. 2) where it is not general, it is a marker of
> educated speech.
> From early on (The Uvular r in French, Ernest F. Haden Language, Vol. 31,
> No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1955), pp. 504-510) the literature argues for
> sociolinguistic factors in the spread to neighboring languages (Italian,
> pg. 506-7 and German pg. 508). The conclusion being that the cultural
> prestige alone is enough to spread a phonological trait.
>
> You don't have to marry a French woman to learn an uvular r. (Or a Mohawk
> woman for that matter.)
> Jane Hill made a similar argument about the Northwest Coast, but with the
> wrinkle that having languages with (near) overlapping inventories made the
> learning of other languages easier in times of environmental distress where
> the ability to shift identity/allegiance could be a crucial survival tool.
> I just can't lay my hands on the reference at the moment.
> Rich
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Monica Macaulay  wrote:
> There?s a nice quote from Weinreich that I?ve always liked, on this
> topic:  ?The locus of language contact is in the mind of the
> bilingual.?  When I was an undergrad I kind of imagined these two clouds,
> Language A and Language B, and then magically they touched, and shared
> features.  Well, no.  ;-)  That contact is in the mind of the bilingual, or
> even better, in the minds of a bunch of them.
> > On Nov 20, 2014, at 12:38 PM, David Costa  wrote:
> >
> > Generally what?s needed for this kind of borrowing is extensive
> bilingualism. That can take the form of large numbers of people from the
> ?other? group marrying in, or by a community gradually switching
> languages. The longer the period of bilingualism, the greater the
> influences that can be passed from one language to another. If the nasal
> vowel passed from Mohawk to Mahican (probably the most geographically
> plausible option), that might indicate that there was a large group of
> Mohawks somewhere who switched from speaking Iroquoian to Algonquian. Once
> the feature was established in Mahican, it would have been much easier to
> pass into other Algonquian languages, specifically Abenaki. (It?s already
> been established that there are Mahican loanwords in Western Abenaki.)
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >> Yes. Trade languages and their aboriginal use, I'm aware of. But I'm
> squeamish about accepting the notion that a handful of foreign terms
> borrowed into an unrelated language can have such a far-reaching effect
> phonologically on that language. Perhaps my imagination is limited. I will
> keep gnawing.
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >> Quoting John Steckley :
> >>
> >>> Michael:
> >>>
> >>> Another potential source of that influence could be trade languages
> >>> or lingua franca.  When I worked on Gabriel Sagard's dictionary and
> >>> discovered the presence of the dialects of Wendat plus St. Lawrence
> >>> Iroquoian, I found that the St. Lawrence Iroquoian came in the form
> >>> of a trade language, with certain key items--awls, grapes,
> >>> beads--highlighted.  Trade languages existed in a variety of areas in
> >>> pre- and post-contact Aboriginal North America.  In addition to what
> >>> I found with the St. Lawrence Iroquoian example, there was Mobilian
> >>> (which included Algonquian and Iroquoian entries) in the southeast,
> >>> and, of course, Chinook on the West Coast.  Being fluent in a trade
> >>> language used between Iroquoian and Algonquian speakers could cause
> >>> there to be some phonetic influences.
> >>>
> >>> John
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Algonquiana
> >>> [mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> (mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org)] On Behalf Of
> >>> Michael McCafferty
> >>> Sent: November 20, 2014 12:55 PM
> >>> To: algonquiana at listserv.linguistlist.org
> (mailto:algonquiana at listserv.linguistlist.org)
> >>> Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
> >>>
> >>> Thank you so much, Ives, for your comments and, at least for me,
> >>> clearing away some of the fog.
> >>>
> >>> What I just cannot wrap my head around, though, is how a sound in one
> >>> language can influence the sound system of totally unrelated language.
> >>> All I can get at is that women from one language group married into
> >>> or were captured by another group speaking an unrelated language, and
> >>> in learning the unrelated language use sounds that were in their
> >>> native language that over time get adopted into the sound system of
> >>> their husbands. Is this the mechanism for this transfer?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Michael
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Quoting "Goddard, Ives" :
> >>>
> >>>> On Eastern duals.
> >>>>
> >>>> This subject was broached if incompletely treated in my 1967 papers
> >>>> (NMC Bull. 214:9-10, 104-105, with a reference to the issue having
> >>>> been earlier raised by Siebert in AA 42:331-333 and to his having
> told
> >>>> me that he no longer thought it was an Eastern archaism).  An Ottawa
> >>>> parallel for the formation of the Eastern AI triplural is cited, but
> >>>> more information on this would be welcome.  (I haven?t
> >>>> looked.)  In Delaware these marked plurals are commonly made as
> >>>> collectives, and many examples are to be found in O?Meara?s Munsee
> >>>> dictionary (his label is  ?emphatic?), as if built on the causative
> >>>> finals PEA *h and *r.  See entries for kchíiw and matáhkeew.
> Western
> >>>> Abenaki also appears to have the longer forms as marked (used for an
> >>>> indefinite number) but not as consistent triplurals.  I recall that
> >>>> the duals are used in Micmac for the people in a boat (always a
> >>>> countable number).  The comparative evidence shows this
> dual-triplural
> >>>> contrast gradually emerging and firming up within the Algonquian
> >>>> languages, becaming fully grammaticalized as such in the languages
> >>>> furthest from the Iroquoians.
> >>>>
> >>>> Independently, Unami Delaware has a dual-triplural contrast in
> >>>> imperatives, at least for some speakers: mi:tsí:t:am ?let?s eat (I
> and
> >>>> you sg.)? vs. mi:tsí:t:amo:kw ?let?s eat (I and you pl.).
> >>>>
> >>>> The nasalized vowel.
> >>>>
> >>>> On the other hand, it seems likely that the nasalized reflex of PEA
> >>>> *a: in Mahican, SNEA, and Abenaki reflects the influence of Mohawk,
> >>>> which has a nasalized vowel of exactly the same odd quality as what
> >>>> these languages seem usually to have (PAC 39:282 and n. 74).
> >>>> Penobscot Eastern Abenaki has (mostly) denasalized this vowel but
> >>>> retained this caret-vowel-like quality.  There will be a little more
> >>>> on this in my eventual ?Loup? paper in PAC 44.
> >>>>
> >>>> Ives
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Algonquiana
> >>>> [mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> (mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org)] On Behalf Of
> >>>> Conor Quinn
> >>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 4:59 PM
> >>>> To: John Steckley
> >>>> Cc: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> (mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG)
> >>>> Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
> >>>>
> >>>> Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
> >>>>
> >>>> If I'm not mistaken, the notional dual contrast is found in most
> >>>> (all?) of Eastern Algonquian, and definitely at least as far south as
> >>>> Western and Eastern Abenaki.
> >>>>
> >>>> It's a tricky pattern, because the "duals" are actually just the
> >>>> familiar verbal plurals of the rest of Algonquian.  E.g. they reflect
> >>>> the various plural person markings (among them reflex of PA *-aki
> >>>> (with Idp) or the EAlg version of PA *-wa·-t, i.e. *-h?ti?-t).
> While
> >>>> the more-than-dual plurals are limited to AI stems, with an added
> >>>> stem-extensional element---most but not all arising historically from
> >>>> transitivization (= TA), then reciprocalization (= AI again)---which
> >>>> then takes the same pluralization morphology as the "dual".
> >>>>
> >>>> So the contrast looks like it emerges from a notion of a minimal
> >>>> plural (= just the general Algonquian plural morphology) vs. an
> >>>> extended/non-minimal plural (= this new stem-extensional element
> added
> >>>> in).
> >>>>
> >>>> What's particularly striking about these systems is that they're not
> >>>> in fact strictly dual vs. strictly (more-than-two) plural.  The
> >>>> familiar-Algonquian-type simple plurals generally do get a dual
> >>>> reading...but if the stems inherently imply more-than-two -type
> >>>> participants---e.g. if they incorporate a number 'three' or above, or
> >>>> refer to collective/mass action---they very often do not use the
> >>>> stem-extensional element, and so superficially have a "dual"
> >>>> pluralization pattern.
> >>>>
> >>>> As far as I know, the only place where there's a completely strict
> >>>> dual vs. plural distinction is in the Mi'gmaq motion verbs, where
> >>>> -ie/-a' and -a'si (roughly, 'go..., change...') are systematically
> >>>> replaced with -a'ti for dual, and -(i)ta' for plural.
> >>>>
> >>>> Apropos of the original question, I think Ives might have suggested a
> >>>> possible Iroquoian contact influence in one of his two papers on the
> >>>> "intrusive nasal" reflex of PEA *a?.  But I might be thinking of some
> >>>> other source; and it's always struck me as a little tenuous given
> that
> >>>> the N. Iroquoian languages I'm aware of systematically have
> >>>> contrastive nasalization only in vowels other than /a/.  So the
> >>>> contact effect would be oddly indirect/abstracted.
> >>>>
> >>>> David Pentland and I have both independently noted some possible
> cases
> >>>> of lexical borrowing. Off the top of my head, 'eel' and 'great horned
> >>>> owl' in the northeastern-area Algonquian languages (i.e.
> >>>> Mi'gmaq gat(ew)-, PsmMl ka?t(e); Penobscot tiht?k?li, PsmMl
> >>>> tihtiko?l) may have Iroquoian links. I don't have the relevant
> >>>> Iroquian material at hand, though, and David likely has a more
> >>>> extensive list.
> >>>>
> >>>> Hope that helps!
> >>>>
> >>>> Till later, keep safe and sane.
> >>>>
> >>>> Slán,
> >>>> bhur gcara
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> P.S.  Is the Denny article the one that suggests PA *?entiy-
> 'conifer'
> >>>> as a possible loan from/with Siouan?  And points out the
> >>>> calque-cognacy (functional equivalence) of *wiki-wa·-hm- with
> t?i-pi?
> >>>> If not, who wrote that?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>
> >>
> >>
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> Monica Macaulay
> University of Wisconsin
> Department of Linguistics
> 1164 Van Hise; 1220 Linden Dr.
> Madison, WI  53706
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> --
> 	Richard A. Rhodes Associate Dean, Undergraduate Division College of
> Letters and Science 206 Evans #2924 University of California Berkeley, CA
> 94720
> The case of the spread of the uvular in Europe is a great example.
>