<html><body><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><font face="Tahoma" size="2">Again thanks to All for the various, very helping explanations. Most of what has been referred to is susceptible to have happen, at least partly, to old Mi'gmaq. However, my feeling is that none per se can be responsible for the lexical divergence of Mi'gmaq compared to other Eastern and Central Algonquian languages. And, I dare say, not even the combination of all of them.</font><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;">Like Peter Bakker, I've thought of an internal shift in vocabulary for some reason (taboo, renaming of legend characters, including animal ones, etc). For instance in Old French the common noun for <i>fox</i> was <i>goupil</i>. In many fox tales, the fox's name was <i>Renard.</i> This is how <i>renard </i>is now the common noun for <i>fox. </i>So, from <i>mashku</i> to <i>mui'n </i>?</div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;">As for the taboo effect, it can be, but such taboos last for a generation or two at most, then the name will come back by being given to a newborn. Plus taboo would not be practiced with such a magnitude on the overall vocabulary.</div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div><font face="Tahoma" size="2">As for dual, yes, Mi'gmaq has it. It is used for things and people always appearing as a pair. It is also used for people or things coming as a bunch, i.e family members, and I would guess musicians in a band, etc. Now is Mi'gmaq dual a grammatical borrowing, or is it that other EA and CA had it and lost it ? Latin, for instance, lost it compared to other IE languages. Reminiscences of it exist in the word <i>ambi </i>'both'.</font></div><div><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><br></font></div><div><font face="Tahoma" size="2">Trade languages may certainly leave traces in the speech of bilinguals, but enough to have such an effect on the whole vocabulary of a language ?</font></div><div><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><br></font></div><div><font face="Tahoma" size="2">I think David and others who hypothesize a long lasting bilingualism, whether with an Iroquoian language (which I doubt could have last that long) or with a now disappeared older language is the best hypothesis. Both at the phonetic level - adult speakers of L1 learning L2 would bring some of their phonetic features into L2, and at the lexical level. Two cultures in contact will necessarily exchange about everything from food, tools, medicine, folktales, religion, etc. through simple friendship or intermarriage - and lexical items all along.</font></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;">David's caveat is good : "see how much of it could be explained by normal Mi’gmaq-internal derivational processes. That is, some of the anomalous words could simply be neologisms, and not necessarily ancient pre-Algonquian loans." I have started to contrast each item of John Hewson's dictionary of PA with the Metallic, Cyr & Sévigny. Especially on the animal, tool, kinship, calendar and numbers. Whenever I have a decent list, I will be too happy to share it. If any of you have grad students looking for a thesis topic. please feel free to orient them towards the topic.</div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;">Till later,</div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;">Danielle</div><div style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px;"><br><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><div>Dr. Danielle E. Cyr, Senior Scholar at York University</div><div>339, boul. Perron ouest</div><div>New Richmond, QC, <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>G0C 2BO</div><div>dcyr@yorku.ca - 418.392.7271</div></font><br><blockquote style="border-left: solid 2px #000000; margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px">---- Original Message ----<br><b>From</b>: David Costa <pankihtamwa@earthlink.net><br><b>To</b>: "Danielle E. Cyr" <dcyr@yorku.ca><br><b>Cc</b>: "John Steckley" <John.Steckley@humber.ca>, "ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" <ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG><br><b>Sent</b>: Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 2:30 PM<br><b>Subject</b>: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?<br><br><br><blockquote type="cite">Thanks to all who have replied so far. I'm totally amazed by the sophistication of your suggestions and explanations. The reason of my question is that I'm presently working on Mi'gmaq place names related to early PEA migrations into the Gaspe Peninsula and Atlantic Canada. The more I read in archaeology, the more I wonder about the cultural contacts that might have taken place when the PEA arrived in these territories. Except for Peter Denny, no archaeological writings seem to advocate for such contacts. All they say is that the Planos arrived ca 9,000 BP and the PEA ca 3,000-4,000 BP. Nobody (to my candid knowledge) talks about possible encounters between the two groups. And none talks about the disappearance - or not- of the Planos. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well that’s the whole point — perhaps the Planos didn’t go anywhere, but simply switched to speaking Algonquian. If so that would help explain why Mi'gmaq looks so weird from an Algonquian perspective.</div><br><blockquote type="cite">From this, a new question arising in my mind: did someone ever tried to compare John Hewson's Dictionary of Proto-Algonquian with a Mi'gmaq dictionary to try and list the Mi'gmaq words that do not belong to PA; and then to analyze these words and try to draw a kind of phonetic/phonological sketch of a possible (dead) loaning language of some kind ?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I’m not aware of any such study, but someone should attempt it. Also, someone who knows way more Mi'gmaq than I do would also have to examine the anomalous vocab to see how much of it could be explained by normal Mi’gmaq-internal derivational processes. That is, some of the anomalous words could simply be neologisms, and not necessarily ancient pre-Algonquian loans.</div><div><br></div><div>There’s a parallel for this in California — if you examine Harrington’s notes on Island Chumash (the indigenous language of Santa Cruz Island, in the Channel Islands), in addition to the normal Chumashan vocab there’s a large residue of very basic vocab that can’t be found in any other Chumashan language, or indeed in any other language anywhere. Not only do these words not match Chumashan, they're phonotactically weird for a Chumashan language. The odds are good that they're retained archaic vocab from the language that was spoken on the Channel Islands <i>before</i> Chumash, preserved from when they switched to speaking Chumash.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite">If Peter Denny's hypothesis is correct, and if Fiedel 1987 is correct that Mi'gmaq shares only 50 percent of its lexicon with other Central and even Eastern Algonquian languages, this should be feasible. In comparison, if French had disappeared from the records, one should be able to deduce its phonological patterns by analyzing all the words that English doesn't share with any other European languages, More or less.<br><br>Am I too far gone ?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I certainly don’t think so!</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><font color="#000000">David</font></div></blockquote><br></div></font></body></html>