scratching the surface; lexemes with /ta/

Michael McCafferty mmccaffe at indiana.edu
Wed Apr 4 13:42:30 UTC 2012


Quoting Gordon Whittaker <gwhitta4 at googlemail.com>:

> > Michael,
>
> That's interesting that you have non-reduplicated examples of /taka/. But
> it's still likely to be an onomatopoeic term (like tock, tock) or a
> loanword from a nearby language. This is typical of words for scratching,
> striking, smacking, slamming, slicing, and the like, as well as for the
> instruments that do the deed.
>
>

Gordon,

In thinking about our other shared interest, Algonquian, it appears 
that terms with initial /t/ in that language family are somewhat rare 
(at least that is certainly the case in Miami-Illinois--although not as 
rare as in Nahuatl), and yet */t/ is reconstructed for Proto-Algonquian.

Michael

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