From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 1 04:32:35 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 22:32:35 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A32AEA.3370B291@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Can the name [Mandan] be analyzed in a Siouan language? I don't believe I've ever seen an etymology. Omaha has maNwadaniN and maNwadanaN, as far as I can recall. The last n's can be dh, which as the Omaha r/l is what nasalizes to n before a nasal vowel. The term occurs as a personal name and a name of a kind of dance, too. > Almost all Eng. variants have -n- closing the first syllable, > representing, I assume, nazalization of the preceding -a-. So I assume. Presumably something like maNdaN or maNwaNdaN is involved, in the latter case with aNwaN compressed to aN in English. > The Dakota > (Mawa'tadaN/Mawa'taNna) & Lakota (Miwa'taNni) names (Riggs 1890) have > -w- after the initial vowel, with no nasalization indicated: are the -n- > and -w- etymologically equivalent, analogously to the alternation > Amahami/Awahawi? The n and w aren't equivalent. Mandan is one of those languages which does have nasal vowels, and as in Siouan languages generally, resonants are more or less transparent to nasality, which spreads leftward through them. Hollow's analysis of Mandan has w => m and r => n when the following vowel is nasal, so, allowing for nasal spreading, underlying sequences like waraN would manifest as maNnaN. > I've found 3 instances in Eng. texts (1795-1805) of forms in final -l > (Mandal, Mandel): what is the relationship of the -l with the usual > final -n? (I note that the Dakota & Lakota names both end in -nV.) In Teton, -l after a nasal vowel sounds more or less like n, as in forms like c^haNlwa's^te (chanwashte) 'happy, contented', where c^haNl is from c^haNte' 'heart'. I have seen forms in which =la the diminutive (in Teton form) is reduced to =n (albeit not in Teton), and I suppose a final n or any origin might potentially sound like l in Teton mouths or English ears. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 13:50:28 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 08:50:28 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A373BA.C1D703E3@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > > unless it is transparent in the native language of that tribe itself (and > > sometimes even then), any analysis is suspect. > Perhaps too broad a generalization... ASSINIBOINE, for example, has a > solid Algonquian etymology, and CHINOOK is Salishan. Perhaps, but so did "Sioux", until the more likely etymology 'those who speak another language' (i.e., not Algonquian 'little snakes', as was previously thought) was discovered. Nor does narrowing it down to a particular language guarantee a correct interpretation. Etymologizing place names is hard, thankless work. Have fun! Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 1 19:22:07 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 14:22:07 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > Nor does narrowing it down to a > particular language guarantee a correct interpretation. Granted, but it's certainly a necessary beginning. Back to your assertion that "unless it [an ethnonym] is transparent in the native language of that tribe itself (and sometimes even then), any analysis is suspect." It seems to me that the etymology of an ethnonym should not be less suspect simply because the etymon adduced is native. (Folk etymology operates on native words as it does on foreign ones.) From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 19:46:17 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 14:46:17 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A49E5F.819983CC@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > Nor does narrowing it down to a particular language guarantee a > correct interpretation. > > Granted, but it's certainly a necessary beginning. I agree. > Back to your assertion that "unless it [an ethnonym] is transparent in > the native language of that tribe itself (and sometimes even then), > any analysis is suspect." It seems to me that the etymology of an > ethnonym should not be less suspect simply because the etymon adduced > is native. (Folk etymology operates on native words as it does on > foreign ones.) That's true too. It took me a lot of digging around in the early Spanish ethnonyms in the S.E. to realize just how slippery these guys are. John gave us the Omaha-Ponca "Mandan" terms, and there are already two or more of them. Somebody's been messin' wif 'em. Wish I could figure it out. John and I have just been carrying on private correspondence on the name "Kansa". It's just as bad, but for other reasons.... Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 1 21:45:08 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 16:45:08 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > John and I have just been carrying on private correspondence on the name > "Kansa". It's just as bad, but for other reasons.... John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. A couple of misc. citations: 1736 _Bull. Recherches Historiques_ XXXIV. (1928) 549-50: Les Okams, ou Kamsé 1806 Z. Pike _Jrnls._ passim: Kans 1823 E. James _Exped. Rocky Mts._ (Phila.) II. 354: The Konzas or Konzays [river], as it is pronounced by the Indians Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 1 22:41:48 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 16:41:48 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4BFE4.B04955E@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any > further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. There is a lot more to it, actually. My interpretation is based on the assumption that where a Dhegiha group's name corresponds to a Dhegiha clan name it comes fromt he clan name in a straightforward way (e.g., Ponca, Osage, and, of course, Kansa), turns out to be simplistic int he case of Kansa. The problem here is that there is old evidence, which I'm sure you're aware of, of a term Akansea (and numerous variants, some leading to Arkansas) in circulation among the Great Lakes area Algonquians, e.g., the Miami-Illinois speakers, and applying to at least the Quapaws, and potentially to other Dhegiha speakers. This last is, so far, not clear. It is clearly applied to the Quapaws, but we'ver ealized we're not sure precisely how much further it applied. The question is somewhat complicated, of course, by similar later terms that clearly refer to the Kansa proper. Bob also has a citation that he's thinking of tracking down more precisely, though it comes essentially from one of Dorsey's river maps, to the effect that a Quapaw told him "We are Kansa, too." Anyway, it looks like I have to admit that the simple model clan name => tribal name may not apply here. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 23:18:55 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 18:18:55 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4BFE4.B04955E@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any > further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. thanks for the citations. Hard facts about the earliest sources and migration stories are hard to come by. Kansa [kka:Nze] is more than *just* a clan/tribal name, tho' it clearly is both those things. It goes back to the western Ohio Valley in proto-historic times and also was used to describe the Quapaws. I can't recapitulate the week's worth of details here, but I'd be happy if John, Dave Costa or whoever saved the correspondence copied it here. It's a long story with numerous possible interpretations (and little agreement among John, Dave and me). But it's fascinating. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Aug 3 22:17:31 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 17:17:31 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: A couple of miscellaneous, tangentially related observations: Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, at least in Henry's time. Riggs (1893, _Dakota Grammar_ 192) says: "Both the Hidatsa and Mandan belong to the Siouan or Dakotan family. Whether it is from the common likeness to the tongue of their enemies, or for some other reason, it is a remarkable fact that many persons of each tribe can speak Dakota." This suggests sufficient linguistic contact between Mandan and Dakota to account for the hypothetical borrowing of a so far unattested Mandan word into Dakota (whence it might have been adopted into English). Pretty iffy, but at least the environment in Riggs' day was favorable. Alan From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Aug 4 01:26:45 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 21:26:45 EDT Subject: Awahawi / Amahami Message-ID: A few comments on b/m/w and d/n/l in Crow. I prefer to treat the nasals as the underlying segments, simply because it is simpler to state the distribution if the nasals are view as 'basic'. Of course this says nothing about historical developments. It is interesting that the distribution of these allophones is different in the 19 C Jesuit materials. I find many examples of m and n intervocalically; currently only w and l occur in this environment. I also find mb and nd clusters; today these are mm and nn. Also, I occasionally hear a stop intervocalically in spoken Crow for purposes of emphasis: e.g., instead of tawe'ek 'it's hot', I sometimes hear 'tabe'ek'. As John pointed out, this is not too surprising, since the sounds are conditioned variants. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 4 06:13:42 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:13:42 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4A059.77B82CC7@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > > Hollow's analysis of Mandan has w => m and r => n when the > > following vowel is nasal, so, allowing for nasal spreading, underlying > > sequences like waraN would manifest as maNnaN. > > Are you referring to Hollow's _Mandan Dict._ (PhD. diss. 1970)? If you > (or anyone else) have access to it, can you tell me if there is a Mandan > self-designation (or other word) that would seem a possible etymon for > Eng. MANDAN? Yes, that's the reference I was referring to. I couldn't locate a Mandan self-designation in Hollow. He does give Nuptadi as rupta're (a' = accented a) in the introduction, but doesn't mention this form in the dictionary itself that I could detect. If anyone knows the Mandan self-designations, I can look them up. Dick Carter or Maurico Mixco might be the ones to answer this, though, as knowledge of Mandan has improved somewhat even since Hollow's groundbreaking study. I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by outsiders' names and by internal village names. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 4 06:29:21 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:29:21 -0600 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: <37A76A7B.725E3C57@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, > at least in Henry's time. Buechel gives Hewaktokta 'Arikara'. > Riggs (1893, _Dakota Grammar_ 192) says: "Both the Hidatsa and Mandan > belong to the Siouan or Dakotan family. Whether it is from the common > likeness to the tongue of their enemies, or for some other reason, it is > a remarkable fact that many persons of each tribe can speak Dakota." It comes from the Missouri River groups acting as middlemen in an extensive trading network. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Wed Aug 4 15:00:29 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 10:00:29 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by > outsiders' names and by internal village names. Maximilian gives the village names as I recall. nuptadi was one of them (the smaller, I think), but I'm not certain there was a single ethnonym for everybody who spoke the language. Bob From jggoodtracks at juno.com Wed Aug 4 17:38:31 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 12:38:31 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: On Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:13:42 -0600 (MDT) Koontz John E writes: >On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: >> >> Are you referring to Hollow's _Mandan Dict._ (PhD. diss. 1970)? can you tell me if there is a >Mandan >> self-designation (or other word) that would seem a possible etymon >for >> Eng. MANDAN? >Yes, that's the reference I was referring to. > >I couldn't locate a Mandan self-designation in Hollow. He does give >Nuptadi as rupta're (a' = accented a) in the introduction, but >doesn't >mention this form in the dictionary >I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by >outsiders' names and by internal village names. > As John suggests, Mandans & Hidatsa have been known mostly by outsiders' names and while, the older generations have referred to themselves by historical village names. This tends to be true for many tribal communities. Although, the Poncas & Omahas had retained their original designations, others, like the Osage (Wazhazhe) have come to be known (and accept themselves) corrupted terms of their original self-designations. While other communities, Ioway, Missouria (Baxoje, Nyut^achi) represent a disregard for traditional terms in favor of those by the early day explorers & traders. The Otoe (Jiwere) represent a different scenario played out in the early day by the "Missionaries" who deemed that their self designation (Wadudana) to be "vulgar" and inappropriate, to which the People responded by substituting the term "Jiwere" to satisfy their overseers. However, as late as 1936-39, the last of the older monolingual generation persisted in using "Wadota". As a result, today, some tribes are taking it upon themselves to correct history, such as seen by the Winnebago (Hochank). Amazingly, some of these early non-Native appelations continue to show up in contemporary writings, either ignoring the Native designations, or sharing them in parenthesis, then continuing the dialog with the older non-Native terms. Recently, in a book store, I've observed this to be the case for the Pawnee (An exlorer/ trader name applied to them from a corruption of a Native term, but now accepted by the Tribe as their proper name for business and in reference to all the Bands and the tribal community as a whole). The historical (explorer/ trader's) Band designations are: "Loup, Grand, Republican & Tappage". In over 45years, I've not heard Pawnees EVER use the above terms among themselves. Instead, the Pawnees for generations have referred to themselves in conversation by their Band names: Skiri, Pitahawirata, Kitkehawki & Chauwi. When speaking in Pawnee language, the English term "Band" was rendered as "akitaru" [I believe, it's been a long time -decades- to hear Pawnee spoken in converstation now], which is best rendered as "tribe". You still will hear of these Bands referred to even today, with it being less so for the younger generations. As such, everyone claims membership to a Band, although obviously, many people are descendents of several Bands. While the language is threatened with extinction, still individuals are adamant to with serious distinction, between "Skiri" speech & "South Band" speech. The Skiri formerly (40 yrs ago and beyond) referred among themselves as to belonging to a "Clan" (in English), but actually, it was referrence to villages (names), such as the Pumpkin Vine (Village), [being the only one I remember off hand]. All the above can be confirmed via Douglas Parks at Indiana Univ @Bloomington. MEANWHILE, It has been my observation & experience among the Mandan & Hidatsa, That "Mandan" is an early traders term, which the community adopted for themselves when speaking English. (I have no information as to how the early traders decided upon the term "Mandan"). In Mandan language, it seems that they too referred to themselves early on by village designation [9+ documented village sites], such as: "Nuptadi/ Rupta're" (Hollow)/ "Nu~pta' ", "mi~ti^oha~ks"(Lowie) [^=glottal], "Awigaxa" & "Nuidadi" (Bowers) or "Nu^eta" (e=short e). Edward Kennard records in 1935: "We are Mandans= NuNu'^etarosh." The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: "I want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The two languages are not mutually intelligible. I first came to know the Hidatsa as "Gro Ventre" and soon learned of an unrelated tribe in Montana, equally known as "Gro Ventre". It soon became clear that the term was not used by actual Hidatsa persons. The Hidatsa have consistently referred to themselves as Hidatsa, but acknowledge and speak of certain groups in the community of being (of the village) "Awatixa" or "Awaxawi". It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree Houses)" village. Then "Awatixa:^at' (Short Earthlodge Village)" and "Awaxa'^awati (Rough Hill Village)". These were the 3 designations of Hidatsa (groups) still spoken of by the People in the language and in English converstation. Apparently, there were several more, namely, "Xu'ra^ati", "Awaxi:'rawati", "awatikix:u'", "awaxi'^rawati (Brown Hill Village)", ""Awi^ihpawati' (Hill Top Village)" & in 1994, ( my last stay at Ft.Berthhold of any length), the Little Shell powwow was dedicated to the "XX^oshga" (Band/ Village). It was explained briefly to me that they were a group who refused to settle on the reservation, and headed out on their own to the northwest, perhaps journeying as far as Montana, until their destitute poverty oblidged their return to the rez. And if not mistaken, (I dont have my Hidatsa-Mandan informants sitting here with me now, you see. They were all members of the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers), the XX^oshga settled to themselves in the community, and later settled the new Little Shell community after the atrocious resettlement disruption of the Elbowwoods, (ND) community, caused by the "need" to flood the rez about 50yrs ago. If you consult the first few chapters of Alfred W. Bowers, "Hidatsa Social & Ceremonial Organization". BAE:194. 1965., I believe a lot of the discussion of terms will be addressed to satisfaction. I apologize for interrupting the on-going discussions, but it seemed that the original question: "Etymology of the word MANDAN", was not readily answered, (and still has not been answered), and was being lost on tangent issues. My contribution, I hope, has been to stir the course back to the Native view. And while it is interesting to know of the early trader terms, and their origin, I find it much more facinating to learn the original Native terminology, and its source of origin if possible. Respectfully, JGT From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 5 21:51:36 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 15:51:36 -0600 Subject: 10.1165, Qs: ..., Word Units In-Reply-To: <199908051446.KAA31616@linguistlist.org> Message-ID: > Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 13:04:25 +1100 > From: Alexandra Aikhenvald > Subject: Phonological and grammatical words > > We are studying languages for which it is appropriate to establish separate > units of phonological word and grammatical word. These sometimes coincide > but do not always do so. Can you direct us to reliable descriptions of > languages which recognise these two types of word, with explicit criteria? I felt forced to make this distinction (approximately) in order to simplify the description of Omaha-Ponca, a Dhegiha Siouan language. I actually hit on the concept though in dealing with Dakotan, so I think it is a generally useful one in Mississippi Valley Siouan. I'm not sure if one can get any milage out of it in the other two or three branches of Siouan proper. Unfortunately, I cannot direct you to my dissertation as it is a long way from done. The general idea, however, is that verb words in particular often glue together several smaller verb words. These smaller words are always either invariant particles or verb stems inflected by prefixation, including in the latter class the patterns involving the so-called locative prefixes, which embed within the pronominal string. Typically the inclusive pronominal precedes the locative, while the first and second follow. Third is zero. There are some complications of this characterization of the locatives in both Dakotan and OP, but it's close enough. Phonological words that are complex verbs will have several inflected segments in a row, or a particle followed by an inflected segment. If one tries to treat these complex verbs as grammatical words one has to write a much more complicated grammar than if one admits that some phonological words are made up of several sequential grammatical words. Complex phonological words can arise lexically or syntactically. As examples of the former, the outer instrumental stems consist of a particle followed by a grammatical verb, and some verb stems simply require two particular simple stems in a row, e.g., Omaha-Ponca 'to want', which involves two separately inflected substems: A1 + gaN=dha => kkaN=bdha; A2 + gaN=dha => s^kaN=na. Note that inclusives only occur once in a phonological word: A12 + gaN=dha => aNgaN=dha. An example of a syntactically arising form would be a causative (the subordinated stem becomes a particle), a negative (the negative enclitic has a defective inflectional pattern), or an intensive or habitual (both inflected enclitic stems). Motion verbs engage in complex patterns of compounding that might be seen as an inbetween case. Interestingly, in some derivational patterns lexical complex phonological words are treated as a single chunk, e.g., a reflexive of an outer instrumental stem may treat the particle plus stem inside the reflexive as a single grammatical piece. While I am hesitant to express an opinion on the applicability of this concept outside of Mississippi Valley Siouan, I know that Randy Graczyk, in his dissertation on Crow found it convenient in some contexts to treat whole phrases (of several phonological words) as incorporated into certain verb stems, or, in phonological terms you could see the superordinate verb as an enclitic of the last word of the phrase. I guess you could say the same thing of postpositions in Omaha, but without inflection of the enclitic there's not much to be gained in traditional terms by calling the phrase incorporated, unlike the Crow case. A possible parallel in Dakotan many conjunctions (postposed) and postpositions engage in a pattern of final vowel truncation reminiscent of what happens with incorporated and reduplicated "underlyingly C-final" stems. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 5 23:02:34 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 17:02:34 -0600 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: <37A76A7B.725E3C57@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, > at least in Henry's time. I should mention that I think this name reminds of some of the variants for Otoe, too. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Fri Aug 6 01:15:13 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 20:15:13 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Jimm, Thanks for a thoughtful message with lots of helpful points. > As a result, today, some tribes are taking it upon themselves to correct > history, such as seen by the Winnebago (Hochank). ... > Amazingly, some of these early non-Native appelations continue to show up > in contemporary writings, either ignoring the Native designations, or > sharing them in parenthesis ... > In over 45years, I've not heard Pawnees EVER use the above terms among > themselves. ... > And while it is interesting to know of the > early trader terms, and their origin, I find it much more facinating to > learn the original Native terminology, and its source of origin if > possible. As your message is addressed to list-subscribers with a wide variety of interests, I thought I'd let you know my point of view in my work for the Oxford English Dictionary (without presuming to speak for the OED in any official way). The OED is a descriptive and historical dictionary, which means that it aims to record the history of English words (in my case, usually ethnonyms) as they have appeared through the years in printed sources. The body of an entry in the Dictionary thus consists primarily of quotations arranged in chronological order, chosen to illustrate the evolution in the form and meaning of the word; the etymology of the word is just the logical point of beginning for most of the word-histories. Our job in constructing the Dictionary is to record scrupulously how a word has developed and been used, and is emphatically NOT to prescribe how it should have developed or how it now should be used (nor what words should be used in place of it). For example, that many (but not all) Ojibway/Chippewa now prefer to be called Anishinabe should have no effect on the Dictionary's treatment of the word OJIBWAY (and its variant CHIPPEWA). (That is not to say that there is not now sufficient support in print for a new entry ANISHINABE--I believe there is.) There are many words in the OED that are grossly objectionable to many people for a wide variety of reasons (profanities, sexual terms, obnoxious ethnic epithets etc.), and many whose origin, history, or use seem illogical. But they exist, or have existed, in the English language and so deserve a place in the OED. It is only natural that an ethnonym should be borrowed from a neighboring language: people very often come to be known through their neighbors rather than directly. Many peoples have no generic term for all the speakers of their own language, and as language is often the salient distinguishing characteristic in initial contacts between peoples, it is also natural that a foreign name should sometimes come to be applied to all those speaking the language. Should the Ojibway give up their name for the Dakota (Natowessiwak (pl.), whence Eng. Sioux), and do their best to imitate a Dakotan self-designation? In many cases, such imitation is difficult because of dissimilarities in the sound-systems involved. (Think of the problems in adopting Salishan names into English!) In sum, I would argue for keeping an honest record of our language (English, in this case), whatever our present agendas may be. > the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers Where does "Mandaree" come from? Thanks again, Alan From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 02:21:20 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 21:21:20 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Alan! Thank You for your letter of explaination and clarification. I was not aware that your question was in reference to enhancing an OED entry. Had I know that was your focus, I would have surely wrote with a different perspective. Now that I understand your purpose, I do hope that you are able to determine the term's historical origins, which perhaps may be disclosed from a review of early writings and documents. It seems that to date, noone has been able to shed light on the designation, which surely there is an explaination -- somewhere. I agree that all words used in English speech are legitimate, as you explained so well. Indeed, we look to the OED for those very kinds of words, terms, etc. and the etymology provided provides interesting insight. Thanks again, for your letter. Perhaps, when you do learn the etymological history, you will share the same with Siouian Lists for general interest. Jimm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 6 07:13:05 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 01:13:05 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37AA3721.F1AEF497@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Where does "Mandaree" come from? I'm going to guess it's a portmanteau of Mandan plus Arikaree. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 6 08:00:42 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 02:00:42 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <19990804.123834.-443697.0.jggoodtracks@juno.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > "Nu^eta" (e=short e). Edward Kennard records in 1935: "We are Mandans= > NuNu'^etarosh." I think, on reflection, that this is the term I've run into, and I'm grateful to Jimm for reminding me of it. I didn't realize it was a village name. Kennard's verb is an inflected version of this: ruN-ruN?etar- o?s^ (I think that would be the Hollovian version.) we (are) Mandan INDICATIVE The final r of nu?eta (ruN?eta) is a fact of the morphology that appears when the -(o)?s^ suffix is added. > The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big > Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the > River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the > Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a > Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? > (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: "I > want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan > thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The > two languages are not mutually intelligible. A fact that is easy to lose sight of, since all Mandan speakers today are bilingual in Hidatsa, and something approaching this has been true for some time. Note that this term mVnVtari is more or less a match for the variants of Mandan in various native languages, if the mVnV is changed to mVmV. That is no kind of regular change, but nothing seems to be regular about this term. And a syncopated mVntari ~ mVntani isn't too far from "Mandan," either. This is quite speculative, of course, though early visitors were a bit vague on the distinction between Mandan and Hidatsa, and it's not implausible that a term for one could be applied to the other. The problem is really the lack of evidence for t,,,he changes posited. > village) "Awatixa" or "Awaxawi". It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > Houses)" village. This sort of explanation, while not at all impossible, and for all I know well documented in this case, is the kind of thing that, when unsupported by some historical evidence, makes people think that a folk reanalysis is at work. You should always be worried if a term can only be explained by changing it irregularly to some other form. That's the problem with my comment on minitari cf. maNwadaniN, though my suggestion lacks even the benefit of enhancing clarity :). > Then "Awatixa:^at' (Short Earthlodge Village)" and "Awaxa'^awati > (Rough Hill Village)". These analyses work nicely because all that's added is -ati, which I suppose is either 'village' or a locative. From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 14:39:03 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 09:39:03 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: On Thu, 05 Aug 1999 20:15:13 -0500 "Alan H. Hartley" writes: >Jimm, > >> the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers > >Where does "Mandaree" come from? > >Thanks again, >Alan The recent Community of Mandaree is a coined name from the 3 tribal groups on the Ft.Berthhold rez. The "Man-" is from Mandan, The "-da" is from Hidatsa, The "-ree" is from Arikaree, which is another form of Arikara or even Ree. The Arikaree are of Caddoan Language Family, most closely related to Pawnee, who call the Ree in Pawnee: "Astarahi". The Ree, at least in these current times, referr to themselves as "Tsanish" (Tsariks in Pawnee), which simply means the "People" or even "Human Beings". If there's other terms, past and present, I'm not aware. The M & H are Siouian Language Family, as youre aware. No doubt, you are also knwow that the three tribal communities primarily live at: Ree in White Shield, ND, the Mandan in Twin Buttes, ND and the Hidatsa in Mandaree. New Town, ND is the hub of Bureau of Indian Affairs which ministers to the three outlying communities, which are all separated by an easy 60-75mile drive, from one another, due to the immense lake spreading out through the center of the rez (reservation). This distance was impossed by the damning & flooding of the Mo.R. In 1845, the diminished population of all the villages that composed the present day 3 tribal groups, constructed Like A Fishhook Village on a Mo.R. Bend. The 3 consolidated groups lived there till they moved onto the Rez to individual allotments or at Elbowoods, ND, where the BIA Agency was located. The demise of that community is before my era, but I was told that people in Elbowoods, tended to live in grouped areas according to the 3 groups, like they did at Fishhook. Meanwhile, John's reflections on the term "Manitari" seems to be a worthy consideration, and the closest explaination to date of an etymology for Mandan. Jimm From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Fri Aug 6 14:58:49 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 09:58:49 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English > name, at least in Henry's time. > I should mention that I think this name reminds of some of the > variants for Otoe, too. Yes it does! watokta or watukta Otoe: wadohta-na where -na is a Dakotan diminutive. That's a good observation, especially in light of the fact that some linguists and anthropologists feel the traditional analysis of wadohtana as 'those who screw' is a folk etymology. The verb root for 'f*ck' is *thu (from *thu or *rhu). This comes out regularly as Kansa /chu/ (where ch is as in English "church") Osage /chu/ (where ch is [ts] aspirated) In Otoe it should be /du/, not /do/ (as we actually have in this Otoe ethnonym). It is therefore very likely that the ethnonym IS, in fact, a folk etymology. This leaves the way open for it to be cognate with this Assiniboine term (which we would then NOT expect to have anything to do with sex). But what does it mean then? Bob From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 21:24:09 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 16:24:09 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: Bob! You have that correct. Elders cofirmed it. Old documents also confirmed it. Jimm From suleiman at lineone.net Mon Aug 9 22:40:50 1999 From: suleiman at lineone.net (Muhammed Suleiman) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 23:40:50 +0100 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: Dear all, At the risk of reintroducing a question which might previously have been asked on this list, can anyone tell me why early accounts of the Mandans suggest that they are a lost Welsh tribe, having words supposeedly cognate with Welsh words, and one report even speaks of a Welshman communicating with the natives in his mother tongue. There are accounts, of course, of a Prince Madoc sailing to America long before Columbus; but does anyone know of any reason why these reports should have singled out the Mandans? Is it something to do with the lateral sounds of that language and the Welsh _ll_ sound of _Llangollen_? Secondly, could Alan Hartley tell me if there is an e-mail number I could write to point out a couple of (in my opinion) incorrect etymologies in the OED. Thank you. Regards, Dr M. Suleiman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Aug 10 00:07:20 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 19:07:20 -0500 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: Dr. Suleiman (and anyone else with an item of interest), > could Alan Hartley tell me if there is an e-mail number I > could write to point out a couple of (in my opinion) incorrect > etymologies in the OED. The OED has a new submission form at: http://www.oed.com/readers/submitform.htm The editors will welcome your contributions. Alan From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Aug 16 00:54:25 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 19:54:25 -0500 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: M. Suleiman wrote: > can anyone tell me why > early accounts of the Mandans suggest that they are a lost Welsh > tribe..? I just found reference to 2 sources on Prince Madoc and the Mandans: Marshall T. Newman "The Blond Mandan", Southwestern Journal of Anthropology VI (Autumn 1950) 255-72 Gwyn A. Williams _Madoc: _The Making of a Myth_ (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979) Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Aug 16 21:04:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 15:04:52 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts In-Reply-To: <001601bee2b8$60274a00$d6e7abc3@shahbaz> Message-ID: On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Muhammed Suleiman wrote: > At the risk of reintroducing a question which might previously have been > asked on this list, can anyone tell me why early accounts of the Mandans > suggest that they are a lost Welsh tribe, having words supposeedly > cognate with Welsh words, and one report even speaks of a Welshman > communicating with the natives in his mother tongue. There are accounts, > of course, of a Prince Madoc sailing to America long before Columbus; > but does anyone know of any reason why these reports should have singled > out the Mandans? Is it something to do with the lateral sounds of that > language and the Welsh _ll_ sound of _Llangollen_? I don't know why the Mandans should have been singled out for this treatment, unless it was perhaps from comparing their use of skin-covered boats with coracles. The Mandans aren't the only components of Madoc-mania, of course. You can find loads of pop culture Madoc speculation on the Web. There aren't any real linguistic similarities, of course. Mandan is a Siouan language with a lot in common with Crow-Hidatsa on the one hand and Mississippi Valley Siouan on the other. Welsh is an Indo-European language of the peculiar Celtic sort. I suppose there may be some chance vocabulary similarities, as there usually are, but the only list I've ever seen was one circulated widely in European and American newspapers a few years ago, traceable to some genial Welsh Madocist enjoying his moment in the Sun. I didn't look to see if the correspondences were regular, though they were indeed striking. The problem was that the supposed Mandan material was not actually Mandan, and this violates a constraint on comparisons that a linguist has to take rather seriously, even if he or she is a bit loose on what constitutes a linguistically significant similarity. There are no non-genetic phonological or grammatical similarities between the languages that I'm aware of - Mandan has no l, voiceless or otherwise, for example, and typologically they are at opposite poles (Mandan SOV, Welsh VSO). I think the only folks who might stand a chance of understanding Mandan without actually speaking it would be Hidatsa speakers, and, of course, all Mandan speakers for some decades have been bilingual in Mandan and Hidatsa and understand Hidatsa well. In spite of some vocabulary resemblances, however, and some strong grammatical parallels, I don't think that would be especially easy for a Hidatsa speaker to follow Mandan without actually knowing it. Various sound changes in the comparable grammatical and lexical morphemes would get in the way. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 18 03:16:51 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:16:51 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts (fwd) Message-ID: I've realized that Dr. Suleiman inadvertently sent this to me instead of the list. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 00:26:50 +0100 From: Muhammed Suleiman To: Koontz John E Subject: Re: Mandan Contacts Many thanks to John Koontz for his appraisal of the Madoc conection with the Mandans. It seems to have been George Catlin who first suggested that Prince Madoc ap Owain of Gwynedd and his companions had managed to reach the Missouri, and that they became the ancestors of the Mandans. If I remember correctly, one of his books does in fact contain a short comparative vocabulary - though I cannot vouch for the fact that all the words were Mandan. You have put my mind at ease as far as any phonological similarities are concerned. I had thought that the Welsh voiceless latteral 'll' of _Llangower_, is so relatively uncommon in the languages of the world, that a non-Welsh speaker who had heard the language might,, on hearing the unvoiced lateral sound elsewhere, have presumed he was hearing a form of Welsh spoken. It would appear from what you say that this could not have been the case with the Mandans. I did not realize that the subject of Prince Madoc/ Madoc had been dealt with in other, less academic, recesses of the Net. I'll be sure to take a look. Still, travellers stories of colonies of 'white Indians' (such as in Louisville, Kentucky), persistent Old World legends like that of Madoc ap Owain, and the discovery of Caucasoid skeletal remains in all parts of the Americas remain tantalizing, to say the least. Regards, Dr M. Suleiman From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 18 04:46:01 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:46:01 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > From: Muhammed Suleiman > Still, travellers stories of colonies of 'white Indians' (such as in > Louisville, Kentucky), persistent Old World legends like that of Madoc ap > Owain, and the discovery of Caucasoid skeletal remains in all parts of the > Americas remain tantalizing, to say the least. I regret that I'm not sure that I agree with this assessment, at least in connection with the Mandan along the Middle Missouri. Travellers' stories of 'white Indians' strike me as inventions, or naive reactions to variations within or between various Native American populations, or differences in styles of adornment. Persistent Madoc stories strike me as persistent tall tales. Even if true, any finds supporting contact would be comparatively late and on the northern East Coast, like the actual evidence of Norse or Basque visits. The only Caucasoid remains I'm aware of are Kennebeck Man, which is much earlier and on the West Coast, and the advisability of the characterization is debatable, though it has excited newspaper reporters. It doesn't mean anything like putatively Indo-European speaking or European, for example. When I put these three unconnected, variously dubious considerations together I don't get anything tantalizing. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Aug 18 02:44:51 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:44:51 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: John Koontz wrote: > And a syncopated mVntari ~ mVntani isn't too far from "Mandan," > either. This is quite speculative, of course, though early visitors were a > bit vague on the distinction between Mandan and Hidatsa, and it's not > implausible that a term for one could be applied to the other. Could it be that both MINITARI and MANDAN stem ultimately from a Hidatsa/Crow or Mandan word for 'ford'? Moulton (Jrnls. of Lewis & Clark Exped. III. 206), presumably from Hollow, gives Mandan mingintari 'water ford' (< Hidatsa) as the etymon of MINITARI. Clark (1804 ibid. 207) has "Manodans", representing the "pre-syncopated" version. (The Eng. forms for MANDAN in final -l that I cited in an earlier message show another perceived variant of the final consonant.) As Matthews (1877, p. 81) says of Hidatsa, "it is often impossible, even after several repetitions of a word by an Indian speaker, to decide between d and r, or between d, l, and n..." The further derivation would be mVNi 'water' (Hidatsa midi, Mandan mani) + a verbal form (? taNi) 'cross over' (Hidatsa tadi/tari). Clark (op. cit. 209) has "Manetarres", showing V = a. I don't know what the topographic referent would be; I assume the Missouri was nowhere fordable in that area. > > It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > > Houses)" village. > > This sort of explanation, while not at all impossible, and for all I know > well documented in this case, is the kind of thing that, when unsupported > by some historical evidence, makes people think that a folk reanalysis is > at work. There is a modicum of historical evidence: 1797 D. Thompson Jrnl. in W. Wood & T. Thiessen _Early Fur Trade_ (1985) 111 "Three of the Willow commonly called the flying Fall Indians came to us" 1806 A. Henry (Younger) Jrnl. (1992) 234 "We now came to the Little Big Bellies Village or Willow Indians which is situated at the entrance of the Knife River..about one mile from the Soulier Village." Note Matthews (1877, p. 35): "It is said by some to mean willows; but I know of no species of willow that bears this name. By a few of the tribe it is pronounced Hidaa'tsa, and in this form bears a slight resemblance to the word midaha'dsa, the present Minnetaree generic name for all shrub willows." (midaha'dsa is, I presume, identical to Jimm's Wirahatsi cited above. Is the -t- before -ati epenthetic for euphony?) Thanks to everyone for the help with these knotty etymologies! Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 19 06:09:33 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 00:09:33 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BA1E23.D8BB445B@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: This is very long. If you're not interested in the Mandan name issue, delete it quickly and escape while you can. On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Could it be that both MINITARI and MANDAN stem ultimately from a > Hidatsa/Crow or Mandan word for 'ford'? Moulton (Jrnls. of Lewis & Clark > Exped. III. 206), presumably from Hollow, gives Mandan mingintari 'water I suspect the g here shouldn't be there, i.e., I'd expect miNniNtari, or, as Hollow would write the underlying form in his dictionary, wiriNtari. (I'm writing VN for nasal V as an email expedient. He uses the nasal hook under the V.) The form is from Hidatsa wiri-tari 'to cross water' (minitari in pronuciation as initial w is typically nasalized), because Mandan doesn't attest tari 'to cross', as far as I can tell from Hollow. However, miNniN-tari has been Mandanized to the extent of substituting Mandan miNniN 'water' for Hidatsa wiri (miri in pronunciation)(miNniN from underlying wiriN from still more underlying wriN, in Hollow's analysis). By way of background/review, note that as far as I can recall Wes Jones writes m and n for initial w and r in Hidatsa as an orthographic cue to the typical initial nasalization of w and r, but without arguing that m and n contrast with w and r. Harris & Voegelin wrote w and r everywhere, without, as far as I can recall without looking, implying that the surface phonetics were any different from what Jones reports. Hence Jones's miri, H&V's wiri, and (pretheoretically) Matthews' midi, bidi, mini, etc., are all orthographic variants. Hidatsa lacks nasal vowels, at least within recent times. Siouan comparativists assume that this is because it lost them at some point in the past. Conceivably it was in the process of losing them when first observed, but Matthews' experience suggests they were pretty much gone by his time, at least 150 years later. I think this would be consistent with what Randy Graczyk has argued for Crow and I hope he'll correct me (again) if not. I mention it because the nomenclature for these groups may well originate in a period before nasal vowels and vowel-conditioned sonorant nasalization were lost in Hidatsa. On the other hand, as this example illustrates, Siouan languages are pretty slapdash about adapting the phonology and lexicon of loans from other Siouan languages to their own, in whole or in part. This Mandan form would be analogous to using a hypothetical Wasser-gun for 'watergun' in German. In Mandan Hollow argues that all m and n derive from w and r before nasal vowels (nasal vowels do also occur independently of m and n after stops, etc.), and that nasality spreads to the left (toward front of word) across w and r. He also argues that all wV1rV1 sequences derive from underlying wrV1, which is probably true enough in most cases. Hollow tends to write very "underlying" forms in his dictionary, but I think he preferred a more surfacy orthography in texts. Hence wriN > wiNriN > miNniN in Hollow's usage, depending on context. Hollow lists the root of Mandan 'to cross' as kxaNh, while Matthews lists tadi ~ tari (i.e., tari) for Hidatsa. Note that the final h in Mandan means that the declarative -?os^ manifests an intrusive h, i.e., kxaNho?s^, suggesting that an otherwise deleted final h is part of the underlying form of the stem. (The stem would appear as kxaN if nothing followed it.) I'm not sure if the x here represents Hollow's hearing of Mandan's (rare) phonemic aspiration (noted subsequently by Carter), or what. > ford' (< Hidatsa) as the etymon of MINITARI. Clark (1804 ibid. 207) has > "Manodans", representing the "pre-syncopated" version. (The Eng. forms Variations with back vowels instead of i(N) are unexpected, but not impossible, once the form is opaque to the speakers. > The further derivation would be mVNi 'water' (Hidatsa midi, > Mandan mani) + a verbal form (? taNi) 'cross over' (Hidatsa tadi/tari). I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has to be explained, if only by hand-waving. > Clark (op. cit. 209) has "Manetarres", showing V = a. I don't know what > the topographic referent would be; I assume the Missouri was nowhere > fordable in that area. I believe that's true. However, the village people tended to live on the western tributaries of the Missouri. The archaeological classification of the area is based on these tributaries, which, from south to north, are: Niobrara, White, Bad, Cheyenne, Moreau, Grand, Cannonball, Heart, Knife, and Little Missouri. The Niobrara and Little Missouri bound the "Middle Missouri" region. The subunits between the Niobrara and Little Missouri (exclusive) are: Big Bend, Bad-Cheyenne, Grand-Moreau, Cannonball, and Knife-Heart. I suspect these streams were at least potentially fordable, though not necessarily at their mouths. Jimm Good Tracks: > > > It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > > > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > > > Houses)" village. I get: hiraa tsa wira hatsi t(a) ati wood ?modifier POSS? village scrubwillow 'Willow (people) their-village' I'm not positive what the -t- is, actually. It's probably a morpheme, though, not anything epenthetic. The alienable possession formant ta- is the only thing I could come up with. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any references to a *-t(V) locative postposition, which would be another reasonable possibility: *'willow(s)-in village'. The hatsi plainly modifies wira, but I could't determine a gloss for it. Given this, this is not a (set of) of contractions and substitutions I can explain. That is, 'willow' is plainly wira 'wood' plus some modifier hatsi, and hira(a) doesn't match wira in any obvious way, assuming that's the match; nor does tsa match hatsi. The problem is that though the form hiratsa can be divided up in various ways into meaningful subcomponents, the results don't make any particular sense. So we're left trying to compare an analysable wira-hatsi with an unanalysable hiratsa. This yields a match *ira*ts*, where *'s are things that just don't match. This makes for a very unpromising comparison. Thus, I suspect the association here is just that the Hiratsa people (a subdivision of the present "Hidatsa") lived in a village called 'Willow village' at some point, leading to these terms becoming synonymous without being in any way related. Of course, hiratsa might be just another village name, from an earlier or later period. Village and ethnic names are theoretically distinguishable, but they are interrelated. If hiratsa really means something like what wirahatsi means, then it doesn't mean it in Hidatsa, and I have no idea what language it would be. One interesting observation here, though, is that the Hiratsa are the Hidatsa segment/village who say that they originated on the Missouri, while the other segments, the Awaxawi and the Awatixa, say they arrived from the east. This sort of thing can happen in origin stories easily enough, because they fuzz over issues like the independence of ethnicity and language. However, it can't happen in historical linguistics. People who come from different places speak different languages, leaving aside the possibility that the same language is spoken over the entire territory in question, which merely refers the spread of the language/people to an earlier period. Presumably either the Awaxawi and Awatixa brought the Hidatsa language and the Hiratsa adopted it instead of something else, or the Hiratsa had it already and the Awaxawi and Awatixa adoped it from them. I've tended to assume - Occam's Razor - that the Hiratsa were originally Mandan speakers, who adopted the Hidatsa language from the Hidatsa-speaking Awaxawi and Awatixa, but maybe they spoke something other than Mandan, something that has disappeared more or less completely, except for possible relicts like the word hiratsa. Incidentally, hiratsa would come from earlier *hirasa, if it is really Siouan, and I can't make anything of that in Mandan, where it would come out as hiras^a. Village culture on the Missouri River goes back to c. AD 1000, and seems to expand out of the NE corner of Iowa up the Missouri. The prehistory of the Middle Missouri seems to be fairly complex and to involve several different ethnic groups that interacted extensively, somehow producing the Mandan on the one hand and Hidatsa on the other (and presumably whatever ethnic group brought Crow, if the Crow-Hisatsa split antedates the arrival on the Missouri). (The Arikara seem to arrive c. 1400 from eastern Nebraska, so they don't need to be accounted for in the early complexities.) Recently a number of phases in SW Minnesota, including the one that is associated with the precontact Cheyenne, have been added to Middle Missouri. Some of these might be the Awaxawi and Awatixa (and Crow, etc.), if they arrived fairly late, but before contact. I don't think that archaeologists claim to have any idea when and where the Mandan and Hidatsa emerge from or arrive in the complexities of Middle Missouri. By the time Europeans arrive, the Arikara have introduced all kinds of Central Plains tradition practices and Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara villages look pretty much the same, except, possibly, for central open areas for Okipa in Mandan villages. In fact, cultural hardware is pretty uniform from Nebraska north by this point. Middle Missouri is interesting in a way that archaeologists haven't actually addressed, in that it's closely associated with the use of age-grading societies, which in North America occur only there and in the Blackfoot and Gros Ventre/Arapahoe north of Middle Missouri. > Note Matthews (1877, p. 35): "It is said by some to mean willows; but I > know of no species of willow that bears this name. By a few of the tribe > it is pronounced Hidaa'tsa, and in this form bears a slight resemblance > to the word midaha'dsa, the present Minnetaree generic name for all > shrub willows." (midaha'dsa is, I presume, identical to Jimm's Wirahatsi > cited above. Is the -t- before -ati epenthetic for euphony? hidaa tsa mida hadsa (i.e., hatsa?) The same thing in a different orthography, though shorn of the -t-atsi, as Alan notes. The t is probably a morpheme, as I noted above, but I'm not positive what it is. JEK From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Aug 19 15:59:07 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 11:59:07 EDT Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: A few comments on 'wirahatsitati'. The Crow word for 'willow' is biliichi', which may be cognate with Hidatsa miraha'aci 'willow' (this is the form in Wes Jones' data). The lack of correspondence in the vowels is problematic, but there are many Crow/Hidatsa forms that correspond perfectly except for one set of vowels. I suspect that the first part i(bil-, mir-) is the 'water' word rather than the 'wood' word, since willows tend to grow near water. I have no idea what the second part means. Glossing 'wirahatsitati' as 'Willow (people), their village' looks right to me, with it(a)- being the possessive prefix. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 19 18:30:39 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 12:30:39 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > A few comments on 'wirahatsitati'. The Crow word for 'willow' is biliichi', > which may be cognate with Hidatsa miraha'aci 'willow' (this is the form in > Wes Jones' data). This is very helpful. Given the fact that Mandan and Hidatsa have undergone a major collapse in numbers of villages and dialects, having Crow, which was presumably at some point part of the same dialect complex with Hidatsa, is a big help in elucidating awkward Hidatsa forms. This gives us: mira ha'a ci bilii chi Here we're writing ts as c, following the scholarly orthography adopted by Wes, but ch for c^ (c-hacek), following the English-influenced popular orthography adopted by the Crow. I'll stick with ts below, just to keep things consistent with earlier letters, and in line with the Crow practice. > The lack of correspondence in the vowels is problematic, > but there are many Crow/Hidatsa forms that correspond perfectly except for > one set of vowels. I suspect that the first part i(bil-, mir-) is the > 'water' word rather than the 'wood' word, since willows tend to grow near > water. Of course, the 'water' analysis would make Crow right about the vowels, and Hidatsa wrong. *smilie* But, of course, 'water' makes just as good a candidate as 'wood', prima facie, as long as the rest is uninterpretable. I'm perhaps unduly influenced by the fact that typical MVS tree names are so often -stick or -wood or wood-. (To find Dakota tree names, look under c^haN 'wood'.) One side issue: In bringing up the problem of the often irregular correspondence of vowels between Crow and Hidatsa Randy gives me a a chance to admit that as I've been pointing out that vowels in this or that form for Mandan don't correspond, I've been omitting a mental footnote to this effect. (See, I do leave some things out.) It would be nice, someday, if we could characterize these examples of non-correspondance in some way. Is it truely random, or influenced by vowel harmony or reanalysis? The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though that's a serious enough issue. The real (or bigger) problem is haatsi vs. chi. Note that chi corresponds roughly to tsa in hira-tsa. The vowel is wrong, but alternations of i and a (and e) at word ends could reflect ablaut gradation. I'm not clear on whether tsa vs chi is a plausible correspondence, based on the way the two languages work, but let's leave it at that for now. So, as Randy says: > I have no idea what the second part means. It occurred to me, however, that MVS might elucidate this situation, and I think it does. Dhegiha terminolgies distinguish between 'yellow' and 'red' willows, the latter being, I think, actually dogwoods, the one whose branches are sometimes used for arrows, with the shredded inner bark from the peeled arrows being kinnikinnick, the agent used to cut native tobacco. Osage for 'yellow willow' is dhuxe-zi < *ruxe-zi(hi), where *ruxe is 'willow' and *zi(hi) is 'yellow'. The (hV) is an extension common in MVS color terms, but not universal. I think that *zi(hi) would appear regularly as *chi in Crow, *tsi in Hidatsa. What we do get is shiile in Crow and tsiri in Hidatsa, with a different extension *-re. The Crow form looks, furthermore, like it's from the s^-fricative grade. Since fricative gradation is common in color terms in Siouan, this isn't a big problem. Presumably *chii(le) < *zi(re) was replaced by shii(le) < *z^i(re) at some point. In any event, this makes the forms look like mira ha'a tsi bilii chi ??? ??? yellow which definitely recalls the Osage formulation. To me it suggests, furthermore, that the mira 'wood' is correct, and that the puzzling haa element is related to PS *ha 'skin, hide, bark', even though this is not attested in Crow or Hidatsa (or Mandan) as far as I know. Thus: mira ha'a tsi bilii chi wood (bark) yellow So it's Crow that has modified the vowel of the first part in this interpretation. *smilie* This puts Hiratsa as 'willow' in a somewhat better position, but only if hira is somehow equivalent to mira, and only if tsa is plausibly a contextually appropriate abalut grade of tsi, say a noun-forming grade. As far as I know, the only cases of *w > h in Siouan are in the first person/inclusive person pronominals of Dhegiha, Chiwere, and Winnebago. Alternatively, I don't know of any noun hira that would be equivalent to 'wood' in the context, e.g., something like 'stem', or of any sequence hira that would make a good amusing joke out of the form. This isn't a fatal objection, given how little I know about Crow and Hidatsa and Mandan. Can anyone else elucidate this? > Glossing 'wirahatsitati' > as 'Willow (people), their village' looks right to me, with it(a)- being the > possessive prefix. Thanks! That is: [mirahaatsi-[i- ta- ati ]] willow 3p Alienable village From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 20 17:15:19 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:15:19 -0600 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi Message-ID: David Costa recently asked me: > BTW, I know I asked you this years ago but maybe you have some > new thoughts on it now -- do you have any hunch as to what the > Siouan etymology of that name for the Potawatomi is, that one > that starts with /w/, such as Chiwere /woraxe/? Or is it still > just unanalyzable? Here's my answer: Still no clue. Sorry! I'll mention also Winnebago woora'xe, which seems a bit unusual to me in having a final -e here where it could perfectly well be deleted. It does occur to me - and this is very speculative - that what a Siouan morphological analysis would have as the root is rax(e), which could be a fricative grade variant of *ras^(e) ~ *raz^e. - The voicing of fricatives presents some problems that Siouanists haven't really solved. - The wo is presumably a prefix contraction wa-o- (standard in MVS) 'something in (which), something wherein is'. This fricative grade *ras^(e), etc., could be potentially the form in Siouan languages that merge *r and *y, e.g., Ioway-Otoe, Winnebago, Crow, Hidatsa, Mandan, of *yas^(e) ~ *yaz^e 'name'. Now, a root of the latter form appears in the word Osage (*wa-z^a'z^e, Dhegiha having z^ for *y, cf. Omaha-Ponca iz^a'z^e '(his) name'). Winnebago has wara's^ for 'Osage', which demonstrates at least a perception on someone's part that the root is *yaz^e (> ras^ in Winnebago), not hypothetical *z^az^e, even though both would merge as a nicely reduplicated z^az^e in Dhegiha. Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. On the other hand, the root here, even if there's a pattern, may not be 'name', but something homophonous, perhaps 'person'? The hypothetical cognate of waz^az^e in Dakotan, the other MVS branch that distinguishes *y and *r, would be *wac^ha'z^e (c^haz^e' is 'name'). This is similar to the actually attested wic^ha's^a ~ wic^a'sta 'man', and, of course, I got to this point by working backwards from that. The first vowel in this form is wrong (wi < *wa-i 'wherewith to', perhaps, though that seems unlikely in the context) and there's some waffling on the fricative: s ~ s^. The usual assumption is that the root here is wic^ha-, since that appears as 'them' in the verbal paradigm. No one accounts for -sta or -s^a, however, as far as I know, so wic^ha's^(a) ~ *wic^ha's(a) might be the stem, leaving -ta unaccounted for. In summary, there are widespread occurrences of roots of the form *yaS (S = s/s^/x) or *raS (where y and r merge) in ethnonyms and terms for 'person', and the same root occurs as PS 'name', but I can only manage to associate them by heavy use of modals and a lot of handwaving over non-corresponding vowels in initial prefixes of the form wV. The only other possibility that occurs to me is that perhaps the Potawatomi speak for the twees. (Thanks, and a nod to the late Ted Geissel.) From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 20 17:41:19 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:41:19 -0600 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Message-ID: This also reflects a query from David Costa. The information here probably won't be new to comparativists or specialists in ethnonyms, but might others in passing. This is a list of possible look-alikes for s^ahaN' 'Sioux'. Mandan: xaNruNwaNk 'Sioux' Hollow, p. 308, supposed by Hollow to be xaNh 'grass' plus ruNwaNk 'man', but xaN might also be a fricative grade of a contracted s^aN < s^ahaN. Winnebago: s^aNaNhaN'aN 'Sioux' KM-2917 (entry number in Ken Miner's unpublished Field Lexicon); s^aawiN' 'Sioux woman' KM-2906 (wiN 'female'). OP: "caa'" /s^aaN'/ 'Sioux', cf., e.g., Dorsey 1891 throughout. For that matter, I've elicited the form myself. OP deletes h in VhV'. I think s^ahaN is attested in other Dhegiha languages, but don't have a reference. Ioway-Otoe: sahaN' ~ s^ahaN' (Good Tracks) (s^ in process of shift to s) Dakotan: The only resemblant is from Bray & Bray, eds., 1976, 1993, Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: the Expeditions of 1838-39 with Journals, Letteers, and Notes on the Dakota Indians, pp. 259, 260, where the term "Saonis [Saone], or the whitish people, whose robes are always well-whitened with white earth; sa, whitish, oni, to rub." is given as applying to the Minneconjou, "Wanonwakteninan" [Didn't recognize. JEK], Sans Arc, Blackfoot, and Hunkpapa branches of the Tetons. Nicollet's etymology could be quite correct, of course. As this form omits intervocalic h, it would have to be understood as an Omaha loan, I guess, if involved in this set. Note that this is an example of 'white Indians' and why one should be suspicious that reports of such imply European contact. Perhaps worth consideration, though I don't know enough about Caddoan to be able to comment on them or their potential involvement in this set. Pawnee: cararat 'Sioux' (Parks 1976:43) Arikara: sana'nat 'Sioux' (NATS 2.1: text 3, line 5, p. 4) Note that the s^ahaN form appears fairly widely (minus the nasal vowel, of course) in Algonquian languages from the "Old Northwest" area, e.g., Miami-Illinois, Fox, Shawnee. I didn't try to collect such terms, as David Costa presumably knows a lot more about them than I do! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 00:30:06 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 18:30:06 -0600 Subject: Query: washona Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 14:09:40 -0700 (PDT) From: dcosta at socrates.berkeley.edu To: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Subject: Re: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Could you also ask your Siouan list about ? Charles Trowbridge gives it as a Miami tribe name. He fails to indicate who it designates, but it's in the middle of a set of names for other Siouan groups. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 01:25:55 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 20:25:55 -0500 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Message-ID: Here are a few more instances of the word in English. I have attached an MSWord file of the material more or less as I submit it to the OED, and also the equivalent text file. Alan -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Saone slipsNT.doc Type: application/msword Size: 25088 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- SAONE NEWS drafting, def. A subdivision of the Teton comprising the Sans Arc, the Blackfoot Sioux (Sihasapa), the Two Kettle (Oohenonpa), and sometimes the Hunkpapa. based on F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, etym. cf. Dakota c^ãona, a subgroup of the Yanktonais, lit. 'wood-hitters' S. R. RIGGS Dakota-English Dict. (1890) 91/1 ahh 03/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1794 Treaties (C. J. Kappler, 1904) 230 It is admitted by the Sioune and Ogallala bands of Sioux Indians, that they reside within the territorial limits of the United States ahh 01/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1804 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 33 Sou on..rove on St Peters river in the Prareis ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1805 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 417 Dar-co-tar's proper...Teton-sah-o-ne tribe ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1805 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 418 Tetons Sahone. These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1814 P. ALLEN Exped. Lewis & Clark I. 61 Tetons Saone; these inhabit both sides of the Missouri below the Warreconne river, and consist of about three hundred men. ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1814 H. BRACKENRIDGE Views of Louisiana 78 Tetons, Bois Brule, Arkandada, Mini-kiniad-za, Sa-hone. These are the pirates or marauders of the Missouri. ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1817 S. BROWN Western Gazetteer 208 Tetons Sahone are four bands which rove over a country almost entirely level, where a tree is scarcely to be seen ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1817 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to J. BRADBURY Travels 90] Sahonies ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1823 E. JAMES Exped. Rocky Mts. (Philadelphia) I. 179 Of these warriors, three are Tetons, one a Yancton and a Sa-ho-ne, three different tribes of the great Dacota ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1824 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to 18th Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. LXI. 9?] Siouones of the Fire-hearts band ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1832 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to 22d Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. XC. 63] Saones ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1834 W. M. ANDERSON Rocky Mountain Jrnls. (1967) 106 about four hundred lodges of the Sowanné, Ogallallas, Minne Con-ojus and onk-paw-paw bands of Sioux separated with me at the little Missouri ahh 03/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1838 S. PARKER Tour Beyond Rocky Mts. 43 The region...is inhabited by the following bands of Sioux, viz...Siones [et al.] ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1843 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to P.-J. DE SMET Letters 37 (note)] Saoynes ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1854 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to T. MCKENNEY & J. HALL Hist. Indian Tribes III. 81] Sahohes note: typo for Sahones? ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1910 F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. 464 The Hunkpapa were probably not counted as Saone proper by Lewis ahh 6/98 From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:09:30 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:09:30 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: > Buechel gives Hewaktokta 'Arikara'. Riggs (1890, _Dict._ 164) has He-wa'-kto-kto 'the Arickaree Indians'. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:09:39 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:09:39 -0500 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi Message-ID: > Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to > appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable > and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- > Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. So a step further away from the "willows" analysis of HIDATSA? From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:10:06 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:10:06 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Thanks to John for a marvelous essay on MANDAN and HIDATSA/wirahatsitati ! > > Mandan mingintari 'water > > I suspect the g here shouldn't be there You're right--my mistake: it should be miniN (where first -i- is raised and N = IPA eng). > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has > to be explained, if only by hand-waving. Besides the forms like "Manetarres", Lewis & Clark also have "Wanutaries" (III. 31) and "Winitaries" (III. 234), and Jimm GoodTracks (Aug. 4) cites the Mandan word mani'ta:niro:te?esh 'he's a Manitaree'. Does analysis of the latter permit extraction of mani'ta:n 'Mandan'? If so, it would certainly make a good etymon for the English name. Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 05:18:50 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 23:18:50 -0600 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi In-Reply-To: <37BE0A63.2E1CC221@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > > Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to > > appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable > > and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- > > Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. > > So a step further away from the "willows" analysis of HIDATSA? I wouldn't take this one very seriously. I can't account for the hi, for example, so this form remains (as far as I can tell) unanalyzable. It could be all one morpheme (there are a few three syllable morphemes in Siouan languages, mostly foreign), or two or three, and who knows where the cuts are or what it means, other than, of course, "Hidatsa." The best bet is probably still hira ??? + tsA 'yellow' (in some nominalized form. On the other hand, I'm not convinced there isn't something in the Dakotan and Dhegiha forms, without feeling I've proved it at this point. But going further, to the forms for 'Potawatomi' and 'Hidatsa', seems quite a stretch. In the first case I'm not convinced that the form is of Siouan origin, and in the second I'm not sure raca is an actual constituent. So, while I mentioned the Hidatsa form for the sake of completeness, I'd like to keep the serious discussion of Hidatsa vs. Wirahaatsa separate, if that's possible! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 08:06:50 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 02:06:50 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BE0A7E.983D946F@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > You're right--my mistake: it should be miniN (where first -i- is raised > and N = IPA eng). Ah, the raised i indicates that Hollow considered it epenthetic, and the eng indicates that the preceding vowel is nasal. The first vowel is nasal, too, though this isn't indicated explicitly. > > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has > > to be explained, if only by hand-waving. > > Besides the forms like "Manetarres", Lewis & Clark also have > "Wanutaries" (III. 31) and "Winitaries" (III. 234), and Jimm GoodTracks > (Aug. 4) cites the Mandan word mani'ta:niro:te?esh 'he's a Manitaree'. > Does analysis of the latter permit extraction of mani'ta:n 'Mandan'? If > so, it would certainly make a good etymon for the English name. L&C aren't entirely reliable at transcriptions, so I wouldn't count too much on their vowels. The source Jimm cites seems to be better. I'm not sure what it is, though I recognize the story: > The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big > Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the > River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the > Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a > Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? > (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: > "I want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan > thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The > two languages are not mutually intelligible. There are several things of interest in this. One is the version of wiri-tari (Minitare), offered: wiri- he- waa-tari- waa-wahe- c water (?) I cross I want (?) DECL Notice the -he- required in actual use. I'm not sure what it is! I'm also not positive what waawahe is, though it seems clear in the context. It does seem to me that the most likely origin of English Mandan is a variant of Minnetare like manitani. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 21:45:11 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 15:45:11 -0600 Subject: Comanche (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 11:24:15 -0700 (PDT) From: dcosta at socrates.berkeley.edu Long ago you told me that the Omaha word for the Comanche is /ppa'daNkka/, and that in Omaha at least this means 'stubby head'. You also told me that Winnebago has a word /pa:jo'ke/ which designates some imaginary Indian tribe. You still agree with both of these statements? ------ JEK: This looks like a hint that it's time to get the Padouca Papers on line in the archives of the Siouan list. I assume that Padouca comes into French from Miami-Illinois. Osage ppa'taNkka (or hpa'taNhka), glossed, 'Comanche', is attested in LaFelsche's dictionary in the spelling p.a'doNk.a, using p., k., etc., for underdotted (tense, preaspirated) stops and N for raised n. LaFlesche also gives taN'kka (doN'k.a) 'short or stubby, as a bear's tail', as well as to'kka (do'k.a) 'damp, wet, moist', and ppa (p.a) 'head', from which it is possible to conclude that ppa'taNkka could mean 'stubby headed, stubby head(s)'. Omaha-Ponca has (Fletcher & LaFlesche) ppa'daNkka 'Comanche', spelled Pa'duNka by LaFlesche and glossed Padouca parenthetically, in addition to Comanche. I don't believe daNkka is attested in OP. It's possible that aN and oN here reflect, at least in Osage, a back nasal vowel oN (cf. Dakotan uN) still marginally distinct from aN. I'm pretty sure that LaFlesche's uN in the Omaha reference is just nasalized schwa or influence from the English pronunciation. He doesn't use uN very often, and he does manifest some influence from English, once spelling Ponca with a c in an Omaha context: PoNca. Winnebago paajo'ke clearly resembles these forms and Padouca, too. The corerepondence would be exact and regular if the Dhegiha forms were Osage ppa'tokka and Omaha-Ponca ppa'dukka, and the latter of these forms is, of course, a pretty good match for Padouca, though it seems unlikely that Padouca was borrowed from Omaha-Ponca, in which this o > u change occurs. Of course, some Siouanists feel that u here is an exageratedly high vowel graph for what OP actually has, and other Dhegiha languages seem to have some tendency to raise o, too, judging from Dorsey's Kansa forms, though I have to confess that my ear or attention is poor enough that I am not a able to do more than say that it sounds like u to me in Omaha-Ponca and like o in Osage. The tendency to raise o is presumably connected to the tendency to front u to u-umlaut. The u-umlaut is unrounded to i (merging with original i) in Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw, but remains u-umlaut consistently in Kansa andd Osage. In a few places Kansa at least has i where I'd expect u-umlaut or u-umlaut where I'd expect i. One obvious possibility in cases like this is that the poor correspondences reflect the process of borrowing a word between languages. For example, if the source is Osage ppa'taNkka or something similar, and it was borrowed into Illinois and then French, French might get an unnasalized form Padouca, subsequently borrowed into English. The Illinois form might have been borrowed into Winnebago, too, though I'm intrigued that it has the regular shift of a to e after velars. I wouldn't have thought that to be at all recent. Perhaps Winnebago speakers just know that ka should be ke? This would be an easy analogy to draw if the loan resulted from borrowing from a Siouan source. Another explanation might be that the original form in Dhegiha was a meaningless *ppadokka (borrowed from elsewhere?), subsequently widely reanalized as ppaddaNkka to give it a meaning. The comparable term in Winnebago didn't undergo the reanalysis, though it was probably borrowed from groups further west. If Dhegiha did have *ppaddokka at some point, then this and the Winnebago form would correspond exactly and could support a reconstruction *hpatohka, though inheritence seems less likely with this term than borrowing. To complete the linguistic story, the initial ppa of Padouca and its congeners recalls the initial ppa of Pawnee and its even more various connections. However, so far this is like frequent occurrences of *raS or *(k)tokto ~ *(k)takta in ethnic names: an interesting coincidence, as assuming a connection doesn't seem to lead to an further clarification of the rest of the forms in question or of their total meaning, and the groups involved are rather disparate, and hence not likely to suffer from name transference. On the latter point, there is a school of thought that argues that the term Padouca originally referred to the Plains Apache groups and was only transferred to the Comanche as they (largely, but not entirely) replaced these Apache. I guess under the circumstances it might have applied to the Kiowa and other (non-Siouan) western Plains nomads, too, though this is not attested or argued anywhere that I know. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 21:56:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 15:56:52 -0600 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' In-Reply-To: <37BE0023.A126B5FC@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Here are a few more instances of the word in English. I have attached an > MSWord file of the material more or less as I submit it to the OED, and > also the equivalent text file. It looks like the form Saone(s) for a grouping of subdivisions of the Teton is more widely attested than I had realized. I don't think that it can have anything to do with c^haNona, as I think s and ch (and even sh) are pretty well kept apart in the sources. However, since at least Lewis & Clark's variant sah-on-ne is clear that there is a final n + vowel, it seems unlikely that it has to do with s^ahaN. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 22 00:46:52 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 19:46:52 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: John Koontz wrote: > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has to be > explained, if only by hand-waving. Matthews (1877, p. 35) says "Prince Maximilian writes the word Manitari..which represents a way in which the Mandans often pronounce it--the Mandan word for water being mani." Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 22 02:16:36 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 20:16:36 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BF487C.55C5BA8C@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Matthews (1877, p. 35) says "Prince Maximilian writes the word > Manitari..which represents a way in which the Mandans often pronounce > it--the Mandan word for water being mani." Hollow reports the word as miNniN, which he derives from underlying |[wriN]|, by regular processes of epenthesis (> wiNriN) and sonorant nasalization (> [miNniN]). Of course, Siouanists are used to sonorant clusters being broken up by epenthetic vowels, as in Teton bl (and mn) or Omaha-Ponca bdh. In some languages, like those just cited, the epenthetic vowel is a schwa and eschews other vowelish properties, e.g., in can't be accented. In others, like Mandan, Crow, Hidatsa, and Winnebago, it is perceived as a full vowel conditioned by the following vowel. In Winnebago, at least, the epenthetic vowels can be accented, if the leftward accentual shift moved stress onto one. So, it could be argued that a in mani represents either a schwa-like rendition of the first syllable of Minitari, somehow institutionalized in Mandan, or at least accepted as a legitimate variant. The vasos for the variant might be a bit of influence on mini from the vowel pattern of tari. Bear in mind that tari is not found in Mandan, but only in Hidatsa, so this word is essentially uninterpretable. Even if Matthews is not strictly correct about the Mandan word for 'water', his Mandan form for Minitari is consistent with the one in the story cited by Jimm Good Tracks. Both have mani-. I think we can agree that Manitari is a legitimate variant of Minitari in Mandan. Actually, it should be Manitani and Minitani, based on that example from Jimm. For what it's worth, one of the unknown, but supposed Siouan groups known by name only from the upper Ohio Valley is called Monetan, usually interpreted as 'big water' (?maNniN-thaN), based on the usual 'water' and 'big' morphemes of the Siouan family. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Tue Aug 24 22:47:52 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 15:47:52 -0700 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though that's a serious enough issue. For willows, fertile ground for folk reanalysis--which probably occurred in one or the other language. The rest could result from the reanalysis of the original wiri/a. I can't offer a critique of John's MVS contribution except to agree that it's a possible analysis. It's farther from any kind of really solid etymologizing than I like to stray. If this is as good as we can do, then we have some really interesting intellectual stimulation, but not much publishable. Why not ask Crow and Hidatsa speakers what Willow "means" in their language and at least sort out the folk etymologies? Bob From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Tue Aug 24 23:29:50 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:29:50 -0700 Subject: Comanche (fwd) Message-ID: > Long ago you told me that the Omaha word for the Comanche is /ppa'daNkka/, > and that in Omaha at least this means 'stubby head'. You also told me that > Winnebago has a word /pa:jo'ke/ which designates some imaginary Indian tribe. > You still agree with both of these statements? John writes: > Another explanation might be that the original form in Dhegiha was a > meaningless *ppadokka (borrowed from elsewhere?), subsequently widely > reanalized as ppaddaNkka to give it a meaning. That corresponds with my position certainly. I'm pluncking for folk etymology all the way. :-) Same with "Baxoje" and "Wadohta-na". Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 02:41:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 20:41:52 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Since Bob was a bit dubious of the interpretation I offered for Hidatsa (and Crow) 'willow', let me offer a little support. Basically, I interpreted the Hidatsa form as 'yellow bark tree' and the Crow form as 'yellow tree' remodelled as 'yellow water'. Or, actually, both forms are uninterpretable wholes that seem to be traceable to these interpetations. The restructuring in Crow demonstrates that the forms are not interpretable as they stand today. I'm deleting all comparisons to Hidatsa, because there's nothing there that's quite a different matter, and still opaque to me. On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Koontz John E wrote: Hidatsa > mira ha'a ci Crow > bilii chi > The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though > that's a serious enough issue. The real (or bigger) problem is haatsi vs. > chi. ... > > It occurred to me, however, that MVS might elucidate this situation, and I > think it does. ... > Osage for 'yellow willow' is dhuxe-zi < *ruxe-zi(hi), where > *ruxe is 'willow' and *zi(hi) is 'yellow'. The (hV) is an extension > common in MVS color terms, but not universal. > > I think that *zi(hi) would appear regularly as *chi in Crow, *tsi in > Hidatsa. What we do get is shiile in Crow and tsiri in Hidatsa, with a > different extension *-re. The Crow form looks, furthermore, like it's > from the s^-fricative grade. Since fricative gradation is common in color > terms in Siouan, this isn't a big problem. Presumably *chii(le) < *zi(re) > was replaced by shii(le) < *z^i(re) at some point. In any event, this > makes the forms look like > Hidatsa > mira ha'a tsi Crow > bilii chi > ??? ??? yellow > > which definitely recalls the Osage formulation. To me it suggests, > furthermore, that the mira 'wood' is correct, and that the puzzling haa > element is related to PS *ha 'skin, hide, bark', even though this is not > attested in Crow or Hidatsa (or Mandan) as far as I know. Thus: > > mira ha'a tsi > bilii chi > wood (bark) yellow > > So it's Crow that has modified the vowel of the first part in this > interpretation. This etymology is phonologically and morphologically regular except for: - Lack of CH *-re extension on color terms. - Crow has the *s (*z) grade of 'yellow' actually expected, instead of the *s^ (*z^) grade it normally substitutes as the free term for 'yellow'. - I don't think *ha 'bark' is otherwise attested in Crow-Hisatsa or Mandan. - Crow has changed bilaa 'wood' to bilii 'water', presumably by fiddling with the phonology of an uninterpretable form rather than by any kind of semantic reanalysis, though an association of willows with water might be at work (as Randy suggested). I don't think this is really any more problematic than interpreting Mandan koxaNte 'corn kernels' as ko(r) 'squash' (attested) + xaNte 'grass' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley), or haNxurar 'bat' as haN 'night' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley) + xura(r) 'eagle' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley). Naturally, such analyses would be stronger if the constituents were all attested in the languages where the compounds exist, but if the morphosyntax is correct, the correspondences regular (or we are willing to admit that the irregularity is secondary), and the sense reasonable, I think the etymologies can be considered fairly reasonable. Note that in the case of 'willow' and 'corn kernels' we have also the suggestive circumstance that the forms in question parallel constructions found in other Siouan languages, e.g., Osage 'willow + yellow', and the general pattern in Mississippi Valley of deriving 'corn' terms from 'squash' terms. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 05:37:04 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:37:04 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Make that: On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Koontz John E wrote: > interpretable as they stand today. I'm deleting all comparisons to much and > Hidatsa, because there's nothing^there^that's quite a different matter, > and still opaque to me. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Wed Aug 25 19:10:42 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:10:42 -0700 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) Message-ID: > Basically, I interpreted the Hidatsa form as 'yellow bark tree' and the Crow form as 'yellow tree' remodelled as 'yellow water'. Or, actually, both forms are uninterpretable wholes that seem to be traceable to these interpetations. This provides a vignette of problems faced by those of us who like to etymologize place/personal names. I spent years doing up a paper on S.E. placenames in De Soto's time, and at this point would probably recant about 60% of it. In toponymic and ethnonymic study it is often just not enough to find that your word can be broken down morphemically with a correct phonology. There would have to be additional proof that these folk built their lives around willow trees, or something of the sort. Otherwise we just have another case like wadohda-na, which does NOT mean 'lovers of sex', baxoje, which does NOT mean either 'gray noses' or 'gray snow' and ppado(N)kka, which does NOT mean 'stubby heads'. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to discuss the cases, of course!! I think this problem is a little different from etymologizing plant and animal names, since plants and animals at least have pemanent attributes we can work with. Even there, etymological problems are plenty and acute. Obviously I'm getting old and curmudgeonly. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 18:27:43 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:27:43 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: <37C43FB2.3EF5C437@lark.cc.ukans.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote: > There would have to be additional proof that these folk built > their lives around willow trees, or something of the sort. Ah, I think I agree with this. But at this point I was just dealing with a couple of terms for willows. I can see 'Willow Village' as a reasonable placename, for whatever reason, but in that case the form in question is transparently 'Willow Village', and I was only worried about the constituency of the Hidatsa and Crow terms for 'willow'. Those terms have nothing to do with Hidatsa, except that the Hidatsa name 'Willow Village' was asserted to apply to the original Hisatsa subgroup of what are now called the Hidatsa generally, and has a couple of phonemes of overlap with the word Hidatsa. This is somewhat confusing, of course, because we did come at this via the meaning of Hidatsa, and for a while I was comparing parts of that term with the term for 'willow', mainly trying to do an even handed job of showing that they didn't match at all well. > Otherwise we just have another case like wadohda-na, which does > NOT mean 'lovers of sex', baxoje, which does NOT mean either > 'gray noses' or 'gray snow' and ppado(N)kka, which does NOT mean > 'stubby heads'. I agree with all these assertions, in case there's any doubt. I also doubt that Hidatsa has anything to do with 'willow' or any part of the word for 'willow'. > I think this problem is a little different from etymologizing > plant and animal names, since plants and animals at least have > pemanent attributes we can work with. Even there, etymological > problems are plenty and acute. Just to emphasize matters, though this did arise out of a discussion of the meaning of 'Hidatsa' I see the issue of the internal structure of the 'willow' terms as a separate, more concrete issue. That's why I changed the title from 'Etymology of Mandan'. I realized it no longer applied. You all can feel free to accept or reject my analysis of the Crow-Hisatsa 'willow' terms as 'yellow (bark) tree' or my conclusion that the term hidatsa has nothing to do with 'willow' in tandem or separately, of course, but I'd like to suggest that they are separate issues. From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Mon Aug 30 03:07:20 1999 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:07:20 -0600 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: Hi, everyone -- I'm not teaching this year, but I have this request from a student who is helping Jule Garcia. Any ideas? Thanks. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 18:51:16 -0600 (MDT) From: "Girand Cynthia V." To: david.rood at Colorado.EDU Subject: Field Methods software Hi David, I'm hoping you can help me out with some names of folks that have spent time doing linguistic fieldwork with computers. I am the "technical" TA for Field Methods this semester. Jule is teaching it. We have the opportunity to get some linguistic fieldwork software. But I have no clue where to start. I guess there are a few ideas on the SIL web page, but I'm sure there are other possibilities as well. So, I'm hoping you might have some contacts or know of some linguists who use current software in the field. Could you think of say, five people who have done recent fieldwork with computers? Thanks for your help! Regards, Cynthia From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Aug 30 06:16:58 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 00:16:58 -0600 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think I'd try Shoebox. I haven't used it in the field. From cqcq at compuserve.com Mon Aug 30 12:46:55 1999 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:46:55 -0400 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: For Cynthia: I took my laptop to the field fairly often during fieldwork. I liked Shoebox because I could browse on any field, bringing up queries I'd previously marked by speaker. It's fast and easy to use for this task. I would type in the info my speaker gave me while at the very place in my data where it was pertinent, then later go back and clean it up. And of course I had the tape recorder(s) going, too. Carolyn Quintero cqcq at compuserve.com From Rgraczyk at aol.com Mon Aug 30 15:24:34 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:24:34 EDT Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: Re field methods software: SIL has a new program called LinguaLinks--I believe this is the successor to Shoebox. I haven't used it, but have been thinking about getting it. You can get info about it on the SIL web page: SIL.org. Randy From mosind at yahoo.com Tue Aug 31 13:56:05 1999 From: mosind at yahoo.com (Constantine Xmelnitski) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 06:56:05 -0700 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? Message-ID: Dear Siouanists: I've been trying to urge the Shoebox to parse Lakhota texts properly yet there's one stumbling block for it to do well: You seemingly cannot arrange affixes into slots, preventing, say, pronominal affixes appear after reflexive or dative ones. Also we cannot block some ungrammatical affix combinations. As a result I have either a dozen of ambiguities (with all the variants of -wa-, -ya-, -ki-, etc.) or morpheme trash. Perhaps there's some solution? Thank you for attention Connie. --- Koontz John E wrote: > I think I'd try Shoebox. I haven't used it in the > field. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Aug 31 17:57:06 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:57:06 -0600 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? In-Reply-To: <19990831135605.26426.rocketmail@web114.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Constantine Xmelnitski wrote: > I've been trying to urge the Shoebox to parse Lakhota > texts properly yet there's one stumbling block for it > to do well: > You seemingly cannot arrange affixes into slots, > preventing, say, pronominal affixes appear after > reflexive or dative ones. It's been a while since I looked at the Shoebox parser, but it has always been rather weak, requiring a lot of human intervention to function. Note that the parser, while useful, is a long way from being the main reason one would recommend Shoebox, it's just there to help automate glossing somewhat. > Also we cannot block some ungrammatical affix > combinations. > As a result I have either a dozen of ambiguities (with > all the variants of -wa-, -ya-, -ki-, etc.) or > morpheme trash. Siouan morphology tends to produce ambiguities, due to the many homophonous morphemes. At least theoretically, position class analysis isn't a general solution, as it the consituent classes may vary in order depending on the identity of the morphemes. Furthermore, some words consist, essentially, of two (or more) sequences of subwords defined in terms of similar sets of position classes. A few classes are shared by such subword sequences, e.g., inclusives. Adding some derivational prefixes can modify (supercede) the positional structure of the underlying stem. Some of these assertions are less true with Dakotan than, say, Dhegiha, but they are true of all MV languages. > Perhaps there's some solution? I'd just expect to have the system come up with numerous cases in which it needed to have me tell it which wa or ya the current one was. The expectation is that you have to gloss most things to the extent of picking them out of a list. If you get some non-root entries for free be satisfied. I had the impression that of the several SIL parsers available, the old-fashioned and somewhat complex AMPLE looked like it might be the most likely to work well with Siouan morphologies. However, it doesn't integrate with Shoebox as far as I know. I think you'd have to parse outside Shoebox, and I'm not sure if this external parsing could be imported usefully. If anyone has any experience with this, I'd be delighted not hear it. I'm rather rusty with Shoebox myself; I've never actually used AMPLE, I've done very little parsing of Siouan data with the Shoebox tools, none since, I think, version 2. From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Aug 31 22:08:22 1999 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 18:08:22 -0400 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? Message-ID: After experimenting with Shoebox 2.0 parser (ITP) just to the point of getting it to work and building a small data base, I abandoned its use entirely due to too much surface variation in Osage. I did use Shoebox happily for dictionary items as a simple database and found it excellent (except for the absence of ability to print!) Carolyn Quintero From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 1 04:32:35 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 22:32:35 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A32AEA.3370B291@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Can the name [Mandan] be analyzed in a Siouan language? I don't believe I've ever seen an etymology. Omaha has maNwadaniN and maNwadanaN, as far as I can recall. The last n's can be dh, which as the Omaha r/l is what nasalizes to n before a nasal vowel. The term occurs as a personal name and a name of a kind of dance, too. > Almost all Eng. variants have -n- closing the first syllable, > representing, I assume, nazalization of the preceding -a-. So I assume. Presumably something like maNdaN or maNwaNdaN is involved, in the latter case with aNwaN compressed to aN in English. > The Dakota > (Mawa'tadaN/Mawa'taNna) & Lakota (Miwa'taNni) names (Riggs 1890) have > -w- after the initial vowel, with no nasalization indicated: are the -n- > and -w- etymologically equivalent, analogously to the alternation > Amahami/Awahawi? The n and w aren't equivalent. Mandan is one of those languages which does have nasal vowels, and as in Siouan languages generally, resonants are more or less transparent to nasality, which spreads leftward through them. Hollow's analysis of Mandan has w => m and r => n when the following vowel is nasal, so, allowing for nasal spreading, underlying sequences like waraN would manifest as maNnaN. > I've found 3 instances in Eng. texts (1795-1805) of forms in final -l > (Mandal, Mandel): what is the relationship of the -l with the usual > final -n? (I note that the Dakota & Lakota names both end in -nV.) In Teton, -l after a nasal vowel sounds more or less like n, as in forms like c^haNlwa's^te (chanwashte) 'happy, contented', where c^haNl is from c^haNte' 'heart'. I have seen forms in which =la the diminutive (in Teton form) is reduced to =n (albeit not in Teton), and I suppose a final n or any origin might potentially sound like l in Teton mouths or English ears. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 13:50:28 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 08:50:28 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A373BA.C1D703E3@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > > unless it is transparent in the native language of that tribe itself (and > > sometimes even then), any analysis is suspect. > Perhaps too broad a generalization... ASSINIBOINE, for example, has a > solid Algonquian etymology, and CHINOOK is Salishan. Perhaps, but so did "Sioux", until the more likely etymology 'those who speak another language' (i.e., not Algonquian 'little snakes', as was previously thought) was discovered. Nor does narrowing it down to a particular language guarantee a correct interpretation. Etymologizing place names is hard, thankless work. Have fun! Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 1 19:22:07 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 14:22:07 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > Nor does narrowing it down to a > particular language guarantee a correct interpretation. Granted, but it's certainly a necessary beginning. Back to your assertion that "unless it [an ethnonym] is transparent in the native language of that tribe itself (and sometimes even then), any analysis is suspect." It seems to me that the etymology of an ethnonym should not be less suspect simply because the etymon adduced is native. (Folk etymology operates on native words as it does on foreign ones.) From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 19:46:17 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 14:46:17 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A49E5F.819983CC@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > Nor does narrowing it down to a particular language guarantee a > correct interpretation. > > Granted, but it's certainly a necessary beginning. I agree. > Back to your assertion that "unless it [an ethnonym] is transparent in > the native language of that tribe itself (and sometimes even then), > any analysis is suspect." It seems to me that the etymology of an > ethnonym should not be less suspect simply because the etymon adduced > is native. (Folk etymology operates on native words as it does on > foreign ones.) That's true too. It took me a lot of digging around in the early Spanish ethnonyms in the S.E. to realize just how slippery these guys are. John gave us the Omaha-Ponca "Mandan" terms, and there are already two or more of them. Somebody's been messin' wif 'em. Wish I could figure it out. John and I have just been carrying on private correspondence on the name "Kansa". It's just as bad, but for other reasons.... Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 1 21:45:08 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 16:45:08 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > John and I have just been carrying on private correspondence on the name > "Kansa". It's just as bad, but for other reasons.... John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. A couple of misc. citations: 1736 _Bull. Recherches Historiques_ XXXIV. (1928) 549-50: Les Okams, ou Kams? 1806 Z. Pike _Jrnls._ passim: Kans 1823 E. James _Exped. Rocky Mts._ (Phila.) II. 354: The Konzas or Konzays [river], as it is pronounced by the Indians Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 1 22:41:48 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 16:41:48 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4BFE4.B04955E@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any > further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. There is a lot more to it, actually. My interpretation is based on the assumption that where a Dhegiha group's name corresponds to a Dhegiha clan name it comes fromt he clan name in a straightforward way (e.g., Ponca, Osage, and, of course, Kansa), turns out to be simplistic int he case of Kansa. The problem here is that there is old evidence, which I'm sure you're aware of, of a term Akansea (and numerous variants, some leading to Arkansas) in circulation among the Great Lakes area Algonquians, e.g., the Miami-Illinois speakers, and applying to at least the Quapaws, and potentially to other Dhegiha speakers. This last is, so far, not clear. It is clearly applied to the Quapaws, but we'ver ealized we're not sure precisely how much further it applied. The question is somewhat complicated, of course, by similar later terms that clearly refer to the Kansa proper. Bob also has a citation that he's thinking of tracking down more precisely, though it comes essentially from one of Dorsey's river maps, to the effect that a Quapaw told him "We are Kansa, too." Anyway, it looks like I have to admit that the simple model clan name => tribal name may not apply here. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Sun Aug 1 23:18:55 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 18:18:55 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4BFE4.B04955E@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: > John suggested Dhegiha kkaNze, a clan name. If you and he come to any > further conclusions, I'd be grateful to hear them. thanks for the citations. Hard facts about the earliest sources and migration stories are hard to come by. Kansa [kka:Nze] is more than *just* a clan/tribal name, tho' it clearly is both those things. It goes back to the western Ohio Valley in proto-historic times and also was used to describe the Quapaws. I can't recapitulate the week's worth of details here, but I'd be happy if John, Dave Costa or whoever saved the correspondence copied it here. It's a long story with numerous possible interpretations (and little agreement among John, Dave and me). But it's fascinating. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Aug 3 22:17:31 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 17:17:31 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: A couple of miscellaneous, tangentially related observations: Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, at least in Henry's time. Riggs (1893, _Dakota Grammar_ 192) says: "Both the Hidatsa and Mandan belong to the Siouan or Dakotan family. Whether it is from the common likeness to the tongue of their enemies, or for some other reason, it is a remarkable fact that many persons of each tribe can speak Dakota." This suggests sufficient linguistic contact between Mandan and Dakota to account for the hypothetical borrowing of a so far unattested Mandan word into Dakota (whence it might have been adopted into English). Pretty iffy, but at least the environment in Riggs' day was favorable. Alan From Rgraczyk at aol.com Wed Aug 4 01:26:45 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 21:26:45 EDT Subject: Awahawi / Amahami Message-ID: A few comments on b/m/w and d/n/l in Crow. I prefer to treat the nasals as the underlying segments, simply because it is simpler to state the distribution if the nasals are view as 'basic'. Of course this says nothing about historical developments. It is interesting that the distribution of these allophones is different in the 19 C Jesuit materials. I find many examples of m and n intervocalically; currently only w and l occur in this environment. I also find mb and nd clusters; today these are mm and nn. Also, I occasionally hear a stop intervocalically in spoken Crow for purposes of emphasis: e.g., instead of tawe'ek 'it's hot', I sometimes hear 'tabe'ek'. As John pointed out, this is not too surprising, since the sounds are conditioned variants. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 4 06:13:42 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:13:42 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37A4A059.77B82CC7@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > > Hollow's analysis of Mandan has w => m and r => n when the > > following vowel is nasal, so, allowing for nasal spreading, underlying > > sequences like waraN would manifest as maNnaN. > > Are you referring to Hollow's _Mandan Dict._ (PhD. diss. 1970)? If you > (or anyone else) have access to it, can you tell me if there is a Mandan > self-designation (or other word) that would seem a possible etymon for > Eng. MANDAN? Yes, that's the reference I was referring to. I couldn't locate a Mandan self-designation in Hollow. He does give Nuptadi as rupta're (a' = accented a) in the introduction, but doesn't mention this form in the dictionary itself that I could detect. If anyone knows the Mandan self-designations, I can look them up. Dick Carter or Maurico Mixco might be the ones to answer this, though, as knowledge of Mandan has improved somewhat even since Hollow's groundbreaking study. I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by outsiders' names and by internal village names. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 4 06:29:21 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:29:21 -0600 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: <37A76A7B.725E3C57@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, > at least in Henry's time. Buechel gives Hewaktokta 'Arikara'. > Riggs (1893, _Dakota Grammar_ 192) says: "Both the Hidatsa and Mandan > belong to the Siouan or Dakotan family. Whether it is from the common > likeness to the tongue of their enemies, or for some other reason, it is > a remarkable fact that many persons of each tribe can speak Dakota." It comes from the Missouri River groups acting as middlemen in an extensive trading network. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Wed Aug 4 15:00:29 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 10:00:29 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by > outsiders' names and by internal village names. Maximilian gives the village names as I recall. nuptadi was one of them (the smaller, I think), but I'm not certain there was a single ethnonym for everybody who spoke the language. Bob From jggoodtracks at juno.com Wed Aug 4 17:38:31 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 12:38:31 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: On Wed, 4 Aug 1999 00:13:42 -0600 (MDT) Koontz John E writes: >On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: >> >> Are you referring to Hollow's _Mandan Dict._ (PhD. diss. 1970)? can you tell me if there is a >Mandan >> self-designation (or other word) that would seem a possible etymon >for >> Eng. MANDAN? >Yes, that's the reference I was referring to. > >I couldn't locate a Mandan self-designation in Hollow. He does give >Nuptadi as rupta're (a' = accented a) in the introduction, but >doesn't >mention this form in the dictionary >I sort of have the impression that the Mandan and Hidatsa are know by >outsiders' names and by internal village names. > As John suggests, Mandans & Hidatsa have been known mostly by outsiders' names and while, the older generations have referred to themselves by historical village names. This tends to be true for many tribal communities. Although, the Poncas & Omahas had retained their original designations, others, like the Osage (Wazhazhe) have come to be known (and accept themselves) corrupted terms of their original self-designations. While other communities, Ioway, Missouria (Baxoje, Nyut^achi) represent a disregard for traditional terms in favor of those by the early day explorers & traders. The Otoe (Jiwere) represent a different scenario played out in the early day by the "Missionaries" who deemed that their self designation (Wadudana) to be "vulgar" and inappropriate, to which the People responded by substituting the term "Jiwere" to satisfy their overseers. However, as late as 1936-39, the last of the older monolingual generation persisted in using "Wadota". As a result, today, some tribes are taking it upon themselves to correct history, such as seen by the Winnebago (Hochank). Amazingly, some of these early non-Native appelations continue to show up in contemporary writings, either ignoring the Native designations, or sharing them in parenthesis, then continuing the dialog with the older non-Native terms. Recently, in a book store, I've observed this to be the case for the Pawnee (An exlorer/ trader name applied to them from a corruption of a Native term, but now accepted by the Tribe as their proper name for business and in reference to all the Bands and the tribal community as a whole). The historical (explorer/ trader's) Band designations are: "Loup, Grand, Republican & Tappage". In over 45years, I've not heard Pawnees EVER use the above terms among themselves. Instead, the Pawnees for generations have referred to themselves in conversation by their Band names: Skiri, Pitahawirata, Kitkehawki & Chauwi. When speaking in Pawnee language, the English term "Band" was rendered as "akitaru" [I believe, it's been a long time -decades- to hear Pawnee spoken in converstation now], which is best rendered as "tribe". You still will hear of these Bands referred to even today, with it being less so for the younger generations. As such, everyone claims membership to a Band, although obviously, many people are descendents of several Bands. While the language is threatened with extinction, still individuals are adamant to with serious distinction, between "Skiri" speech & "South Band" speech. The Skiri formerly (40 yrs ago and beyond) referred among themselves as to belonging to a "Clan" (in English), but actually, it was referrence to villages (names), such as the Pumpkin Vine (Village), [being the only one I remember off hand]. All the above can be confirmed via Douglas Parks at Indiana Univ @Bloomington. MEANWHILE, It has been my observation & experience among the Mandan & Hidatsa, That "Mandan" is an early traders term, which the community adopted for themselves when speaking English. (I have no information as to how the early traders decided upon the term "Mandan"). In Mandan language, it seems that they too referred to themselves early on by village designation [9+ documented village sites], such as: "Nuptadi/ Rupta're" (Hollow)/ "Nu~pta' ", "mi~ti^oha~ks"(Lowie) [^=glottal], "Awigaxa" & "Nuidadi" (Bowers) or "Nu^eta" (e=short e). Edward Kennard records in 1935: "We are Mandans= NuNu'^etarosh." The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: "I want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The two languages are not mutually intelligible. I first came to know the Hidatsa as "Gro Ventre" and soon learned of an unrelated tribe in Montana, equally known as "Gro Ventre". It soon became clear that the term was not used by actual Hidatsa persons. The Hidatsa have consistently referred to themselves as Hidatsa, but acknowledge and speak of certain groups in the community of being (of the village) "Awatixa" or "Awaxawi". It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree Houses)" village. Then "Awatixa:^at' (Short Earthlodge Village)" and "Awaxa'^awati (Rough Hill Village)". These were the 3 designations of Hidatsa (groups) still spoken of by the People in the language and in English converstation. Apparently, there were several more, namely, "Xu'ra^ati", "Awaxi:'rawati", "awatikix:u'", "awaxi'^rawati (Brown Hill Village)", ""Awi^ihpawati' (Hill Top Village)" & in 1994, ( my last stay at Ft.Berthhold of any length), the Little Shell powwow was dedicated to the "XX^oshga" (Band/ Village). It was explained briefly to me that they were a group who refused to settle on the reservation, and headed out on their own to the northwest, perhaps journeying as far as Montana, until their destitute poverty oblidged their return to the rez. And if not mistaken, (I dont have my Hidatsa-Mandan informants sitting here with me now, you see. They were all members of the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers), the XX^oshga settled to themselves in the community, and later settled the new Little Shell community after the atrocious resettlement disruption of the Elbowwoods, (ND) community, caused by the "need" to flood the rez about 50yrs ago. If you consult the first few chapters of Alfred W. Bowers, "Hidatsa Social & Ceremonial Organization". BAE:194. 1965., I believe a lot of the discussion of terms will be addressed to satisfaction. I apologize for interrupting the on-going discussions, but it seemed that the original question: "Etymology of the word MANDAN", was not readily answered, (and still has not been answered), and was being lost on tangent issues. My contribution, I hope, has been to stir the course back to the Native view. And while it is interesting to know of the early trader terms, and their origin, I find it much more facinating to learn the original Native terminology, and its source of origin if possible. Respectfully, JGT From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 5 21:51:36 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 15:51:36 -0600 Subject: 10.1165, Qs: ..., Word Units In-Reply-To: <199908051446.KAA31616@linguistlist.org> Message-ID: > Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 13:04:25 +1100 > From: Alexandra Aikhenvald > Subject: Phonological and grammatical words > > We are studying languages for which it is appropriate to establish separate > units of phonological word and grammatical word. These sometimes coincide > but do not always do so. Can you direct us to reliable descriptions of > languages which recognise these two types of word, with explicit criteria? I felt forced to make this distinction (approximately) in order to simplify the description of Omaha-Ponca, a Dhegiha Siouan language. I actually hit on the concept though in dealing with Dakotan, so I think it is a generally useful one in Mississippi Valley Siouan. I'm not sure if one can get any milage out of it in the other two or three branches of Siouan proper. Unfortunately, I cannot direct you to my dissertation as it is a long way from done. The general idea, however, is that verb words in particular often glue together several smaller verb words. These smaller words are always either invariant particles or verb stems inflected by prefixation, including in the latter class the patterns involving the so-called locative prefixes, which embed within the pronominal string. Typically the inclusive pronominal precedes the locative, while the first and second follow. Third is zero. There are some complications of this characterization of the locatives in both Dakotan and OP, but it's close enough. Phonological words that are complex verbs will have several inflected segments in a row, or a particle followed by an inflected segment. If one tries to treat these complex verbs as grammatical words one has to write a much more complicated grammar than if one admits that some phonological words are made up of several sequential grammatical words. Complex phonological words can arise lexically or syntactically. As examples of the former, the outer instrumental stems consist of a particle followed by a grammatical verb, and some verb stems simply require two particular simple stems in a row, e.g., Omaha-Ponca 'to want', which involves two separately inflected substems: A1 + gaN=dha => kkaN=bdha; A2 + gaN=dha => s^kaN=na. Note that inclusives only occur once in a phonological word: A12 + gaN=dha => aNgaN=dha. An example of a syntactically arising form would be a causative (the subordinated stem becomes a particle), a negative (the negative enclitic has a defective inflectional pattern), or an intensive or habitual (both inflected enclitic stems). Motion verbs engage in complex patterns of compounding that might be seen as an inbetween case. Interestingly, in some derivational patterns lexical complex phonological words are treated as a single chunk, e.g., a reflexive of an outer instrumental stem may treat the particle plus stem inside the reflexive as a single grammatical piece. While I am hesitant to express an opinion on the applicability of this concept outside of Mississippi Valley Siouan, I know that Randy Graczyk, in his dissertation on Crow found it convenient in some contexts to treat whole phrases (of several phonological words) as incorporated into certain verb stems, or, in phonological terms you could see the superordinate verb as an enclitic of the last word of the phrase. I guess you could say the same thing of postpositions in Omaha, but without inflection of the enclitic there's not much to be gained in traditional terms by calling the phrase incorporated, unlike the Crow case. A possible parallel in Dakotan many conjunctions (postposed) and postpositions engage in a pattern of final vowel truncation reminiscent of what happens with incorporated and reduplicated "underlyingly C-final" stems. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 5 23:02:34 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 17:02:34 -0600 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: <37A76A7B.725E3C57@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English name, > at least in Henry's time. I should mention that I think this name reminds of some of the variants for Otoe, too. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Fri Aug 6 01:15:13 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 20:15:13 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Jimm, Thanks for a thoughtful message with lots of helpful points. > As a result, today, some tribes are taking it upon themselves to correct > history, such as seen by the Winnebago (Hochank). ... > Amazingly, some of these early non-Native appelations continue to show up > in contemporary writings, either ignoring the Native designations, or > sharing them in parenthesis ... > In over 45years, I've not heard Pawnees EVER use the above terms among > themselves. ... > And while it is interesting to know of the > early trader terms, and their origin, I find it much more facinating to > learn the original Native terminology, and its source of origin if > possible. As your message is addressed to list-subscribers with a wide variety of interests, I thought I'd let you know my point of view in my work for the Oxford English Dictionary (without presuming to speak for the OED in any official way). The OED is a descriptive and historical dictionary, which means that it aims to record the history of English words (in my case, usually ethnonyms) as they have appeared through the years in printed sources. The body of an entry in the Dictionary thus consists primarily of quotations arranged in chronological order, chosen to illustrate the evolution in the form and meaning of the word; the etymology of the word is just the logical point of beginning for most of the word-histories. Our job in constructing the Dictionary is to record scrupulously how a word has developed and been used, and is emphatically NOT to prescribe how it should have developed or how it now should be used (nor what words should be used in place of it). For example, that many (but not all) Ojibway/Chippewa now prefer to be called Anishinabe should have no effect on the Dictionary's treatment of the word OJIBWAY (and its variant CHIPPEWA). (That is not to say that there is not now sufficient support in print for a new entry ANISHINABE--I believe there is.) There are many words in the OED that are grossly objectionable to many people for a wide variety of reasons (profanities, sexual terms, obnoxious ethnic epithets etc.), and many whose origin, history, or use seem illogical. But they exist, or have existed, in the English language and so deserve a place in the OED. It is only natural that an ethnonym should be borrowed from a neighboring language: people very often come to be known through their neighbors rather than directly. Many peoples have no generic term for all the speakers of their own language, and as language is often the salient distinguishing characteristic in initial contacts between peoples, it is also natural that a foreign name should sometimes come to be applied to all those speaking the language. Should the Ojibway give up their name for the Dakota (Natowessiwak (pl.), whence Eng. Sioux), and do their best to imitate a Dakotan self-designation? In many cases, such imitation is difficult because of dissimilarities in the sound-systems involved. (Think of the problems in adopting Salishan names into English!) In sum, I would argue for keeping an honest record of our language (English, in this case), whatever our present agendas may be. > the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers Where does "Mandaree" come from? Thanks again, Alan From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 02:21:20 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 21:21:20 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Alan! Thank You for your letter of explaination and clarification. I was not aware that your question was in reference to enhancing an OED entry. Had I know that was your focus, I would have surely wrote with a different perspective. Now that I understand your purpose, I do hope that you are able to determine the term's historical origins, which perhaps may be disclosed from a review of early writings and documents. It seems that to date, noone has been able to shed light on the designation, which surely there is an explaination -- somewhere. I agree that all words used in English speech are legitimate, as you explained so well. Indeed, we look to the OED for those very kinds of words, terms, etc. and the etymology provided provides interesting insight. Thanks again, for your letter. Perhaps, when you do learn the etymological history, you will share the same with Siouian Lists for general interest. Jimm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 6 07:13:05 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 01:13:05 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37AA3721.F1AEF497@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Where does "Mandaree" come from? I'm going to guess it's a portmanteau of Mandan plus Arikaree. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 6 08:00:42 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 02:00:42 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <19990804.123834.-443697.0.jggoodtracks@juno.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote: > "Nu^eta" (e=short e). Edward Kennard records in 1935: "We are Mandans= > NuNu'^etarosh." I think, on reflection, that this is the term I've run into, and I'm grateful to Jimm for reminding me of it. I didn't realize it was a village name. Kennard's verb is an inflected version of this: ruN-ruN?etar- o?s^ (I think that would be the Hollovian version.) we (are) Mandan INDICATIVE The final r of nu?eta (ruN?eta) is a fact of the morphology that appears when the -(o)?s^ suffix is added. > The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big > Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the > River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the > Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a > Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? > (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: "I > want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan > thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The > two languages are not mutually intelligible. A fact that is easy to lose sight of, since all Mandan speakers today are bilingual in Hidatsa, and something approaching this has been true for some time. Note that this term mVnVtari is more or less a match for the variants of Mandan in various native languages, if the mVnV is changed to mVmV. That is no kind of regular change, but nothing seems to be regular about this term. And a syncopated mVntari ~ mVntani isn't too far from "Mandan," either. This is quite speculative, of course, though early visitors were a bit vague on the distinction between Mandan and Hidatsa, and it's not implausible that a term for one could be applied to the other. The problem is really the lack of evidence for t,,,he changes posited. > village) "Awatixa" or "Awaxawi". It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > Houses)" village. This sort of explanation, while not at all impossible, and for all I know well documented in this case, is the kind of thing that, when unsupported by some historical evidence, makes people think that a folk reanalysis is at work. You should always be worried if a term can only be explained by changing it irregularly to some other form. That's the problem with my comment on minitari cf. maNwadaniN, though my suggestion lacks even the benefit of enhancing clarity :). > Then "Awatixa:^at' (Short Earthlodge Village)" and "Awaxa'^awati > (Rough Hill Village)". These analyses work nicely because all that's added is -ati, which I suppose is either 'village' or a locative. From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 14:39:03 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 09:39:03 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: On Thu, 05 Aug 1999 20:15:13 -0500 "Alan H. Hartley" writes: >Jimm, > >> the original Singing Group of Mandaree Singers > >Where does "Mandaree" come from? > >Thanks again, >Alan The recent Community of Mandaree is a coined name from the 3 tribal groups on the Ft.Berthhold rez. The "Man-" is from Mandan, The "-da" is from Hidatsa, The "-ree" is from Arikaree, which is another form of Arikara or even Ree. The Arikaree are of Caddoan Language Family, most closely related to Pawnee, who call the Ree in Pawnee: "Astarahi". The Ree, at least in these current times, referr to themselves as "Tsanish" (Tsariks in Pawnee), which simply means the "People" or even "Human Beings". If there's other terms, past and present, I'm not aware. The M & H are Siouian Language Family, as youre aware. No doubt, you are also knwow that the three tribal communities primarily live at: Ree in White Shield, ND, the Mandan in Twin Buttes, ND and the Hidatsa in Mandaree. New Town, ND is the hub of Bureau of Indian Affairs which ministers to the three outlying communities, which are all separated by an easy 60-75mile drive, from one another, due to the immense lake spreading out through the center of the rez (reservation). This distance was impossed by the damning & flooding of the Mo.R. In 1845, the diminished population of all the villages that composed the present day 3 tribal groups, constructed Like A Fishhook Village on a Mo.R. Bend. The 3 consolidated groups lived there till they moved onto the Rez to individual allotments or at Elbowoods, ND, where the BIA Agency was located. The demise of that community is before my era, but I was told that people in Elbowoods, tended to live in grouped areas according to the 3 groups, like they did at Fishhook. Meanwhile, John's reflections on the term "Manitari" seems to be a worthy consideration, and the closest explaination to date of an etymology for Mandan. Jimm From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Fri Aug 6 14:58:49 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 09:58:49 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Alexander Henry the Younger (1809, _Journal_ (1992) 393) records > "Saiwahtoukta" as the Assiniboine name for the Mandans. (Can anyone > analyse it?) This name argues against an A. origin for the English > name, at least in Henry's time. > I should mention that I think this name reminds of some of the > variants for Otoe, too. Yes it does! watokta or watukta Otoe: wadohta-na where -na is a Dakotan diminutive. That's a good observation, especially in light of the fact that some linguists and anthropologists feel the traditional analysis of wadohtana as 'those who screw' is a folk etymology. The verb root for 'f*ck' is *thu (from *thu or *rhu). This comes out regularly as Kansa /chu/ (where ch is as in English "church") Osage /chu/ (where ch is [ts] aspirated) In Otoe it should be /du/, not /do/ (as we actually have in this Otoe ethnonym). It is therefore very likely that the ethnonym IS, in fact, a folk etymology. This leaves the way open for it to be cognate with this Assiniboine term (which we would then NOT expect to have anything to do with sex). But what does it mean then? Bob From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Aug 6 21:24:09 1999 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 16:24:09 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: Bob! You have that correct. Elders cofirmed it. Old documents also confirmed it. Jimm From suleiman at lineone.net Mon Aug 9 22:40:50 1999 From: suleiman at lineone.net (Muhammed Suleiman) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 23:40:50 +0100 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: Dear all, At the risk of reintroducing a question which might previously have been asked on this list, can anyone tell me why early accounts of the Mandans suggest that they are a lost Welsh tribe, having words supposeedly cognate with Welsh words, and one report even speaks of a Welshman communicating with the natives in his mother tongue. There are accounts, of course, of a Prince Madoc sailing to America long before Columbus; but does anyone know of any reason why these reports should have singled out the Mandans? Is it something to do with the lateral sounds of that language and the Welsh _ll_ sound of _Llangollen_? Secondly, could Alan Hartley tell me if there is an e-mail number I could write to point out a couple of (in my opinion) incorrect etymologies in the OED. Thank you. Regards, Dr M. Suleiman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Aug 10 00:07:20 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 19:07:20 -0500 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: Dr. Suleiman (and anyone else with an item of interest), > could Alan Hartley tell me if there is an e-mail number I > could write to point out a couple of (in my opinion) incorrect > etymologies in the OED. The OED has a new submission form at: http://www.oed.com/readers/submitform.htm The editors will welcome your contributions. Alan From ahartley at d.umn.edu Mon Aug 16 00:54:25 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 19:54:25 -0500 Subject: Mandan Contacts Message-ID: M. Suleiman wrote: > can anyone tell me why > early accounts of the Mandans suggest that they are a lost Welsh > tribe..? I just found reference to 2 sources on Prince Madoc and the Mandans: Marshall T. Newman "The Blond Mandan", Southwestern Journal of Anthropology VI (Autumn 1950) 255-72 Gwyn A. Williams _Madoc: _The Making of a Myth_ (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979) Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Aug 16 21:04:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 15:04:52 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts In-Reply-To: <001601bee2b8$60274a00$d6e7abc3@shahbaz> Message-ID: On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Muhammed Suleiman wrote: > At the risk of reintroducing a question which might previously have been > asked on this list, can anyone tell me why early accounts of the Mandans > suggest that they are a lost Welsh tribe, having words supposeedly > cognate with Welsh words, and one report even speaks of a Welshman > communicating with the natives in his mother tongue. There are accounts, > of course, of a Prince Madoc sailing to America long before Columbus; > but does anyone know of any reason why these reports should have singled > out the Mandans? Is it something to do with the lateral sounds of that > language and the Welsh _ll_ sound of _Llangollen_? I don't know why the Mandans should have been singled out for this treatment, unless it was perhaps from comparing their use of skin-covered boats with coracles. The Mandans aren't the only components of Madoc-mania, of course. You can find loads of pop culture Madoc speculation on the Web. There aren't any real linguistic similarities, of course. Mandan is a Siouan language with a lot in common with Crow-Hidatsa on the one hand and Mississippi Valley Siouan on the other. Welsh is an Indo-European language of the peculiar Celtic sort. I suppose there may be some chance vocabulary similarities, as there usually are, but the only list I've ever seen was one circulated widely in European and American newspapers a few years ago, traceable to some genial Welsh Madocist enjoying his moment in the Sun. I didn't look to see if the correspondences were regular, though they were indeed striking. The problem was that the supposed Mandan material was not actually Mandan, and this violates a constraint on comparisons that a linguist has to take rather seriously, even if he or she is a bit loose on what constitutes a linguistically significant similarity. There are no non-genetic phonological or grammatical similarities between the languages that I'm aware of - Mandan has no l, voiceless or otherwise, for example, and typologically they are at opposite poles (Mandan SOV, Welsh VSO). I think the only folks who might stand a chance of understanding Mandan without actually speaking it would be Hidatsa speakers, and, of course, all Mandan speakers for some decades have been bilingual in Mandan and Hidatsa and understand Hidatsa well. In spite of some vocabulary resemblances, however, and some strong grammatical parallels, I don't think that would be especially easy for a Hidatsa speaker to follow Mandan without actually knowing it. Various sound changes in the comparable grammatical and lexical morphemes would get in the way. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 18 03:16:51 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:16:51 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts (fwd) Message-ID: I've realized that Dr. Suleiman inadvertently sent this to me instead of the list. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 00:26:50 +0100 From: Muhammed Suleiman To: Koontz John E Subject: Re: Mandan Contacts Many thanks to John Koontz for his appraisal of the Madoc conection with the Mandans. It seems to have been George Catlin who first suggested that Prince Madoc ap Owain of Gwynedd and his companions had managed to reach the Missouri, and that they became the ancestors of the Mandans. If I remember correctly, one of his books does in fact contain a short comparative vocabulary - though I cannot vouch for the fact that all the words were Mandan. You have put my mind at ease as far as any phonological similarities are concerned. I had thought that the Welsh voiceless latteral 'll' of _Llangower_, is so relatively uncommon in the languages of the world, that a non-Welsh speaker who had heard the language might,, on hearing the unvoiced lateral sound elsewhere, have presumed he was hearing a form of Welsh spoken. It would appear from what you say that this could not have been the case with the Mandans. I did not realize that the subject of Prince Madoc/ Madoc had been dealt with in other, less academic, recesses of the Net. I'll be sure to take a look. Still, travellers stories of colonies of 'white Indians' (such as in Louisville, Kentucky), persistent Old World legends like that of Madoc ap Owain, and the discovery of Caucasoid skeletal remains in all parts of the Americas remain tantalizing, to say the least. Regards, Dr M. Suleiman From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 18 04:46:01 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:46:01 -0600 Subject: Mandan Contacts (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > From: Muhammed Suleiman > Still, travellers stories of colonies of 'white Indians' (such as in > Louisville, Kentucky), persistent Old World legends like that of Madoc ap > Owain, and the discovery of Caucasoid skeletal remains in all parts of the > Americas remain tantalizing, to say the least. I regret that I'm not sure that I agree with this assessment, at least in connection with the Mandan along the Middle Missouri. Travellers' stories of 'white Indians' strike me as inventions, or naive reactions to variations within or between various Native American populations, or differences in styles of adornment. Persistent Madoc stories strike me as persistent tall tales. Even if true, any finds supporting contact would be comparatively late and on the northern East Coast, like the actual evidence of Norse or Basque visits. The only Caucasoid remains I'm aware of are Kennebeck Man, which is much earlier and on the West Coast, and the advisability of the characterization is debatable, though it has excited newspaper reporters. It doesn't mean anything like putatively Indo-European speaking or European, for example. When I put these three unconnected, variously dubious considerations together I don't get anything tantalizing. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Aug 18 02:44:51 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 21:44:51 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: John Koontz wrote: > And a syncopated mVntari ~ mVntani isn't too far from "Mandan," > either. This is quite speculative, of course, though early visitors were a > bit vague on the distinction between Mandan and Hidatsa, and it's not > implausible that a term for one could be applied to the other. Could it be that both MINITARI and MANDAN stem ultimately from a Hidatsa/Crow or Mandan word for 'ford'? Moulton (Jrnls. of Lewis & Clark Exped. III. 206), presumably from Hollow, gives Mandan mingintari 'water ford' (< Hidatsa) as the etymon of MINITARI. Clark (1804 ibid. 207) has "Manodans", representing the "pre-syncopated" version. (The Eng. forms for MANDAN in final -l that I cited in an earlier message show another perceived variant of the final consonant.) As Matthews (1877, p. 81) says of Hidatsa, "it is often impossible, even after several repetitions of a word by an Indian speaker, to decide between d and r, or between d, l, and n..." The further derivation would be mVNi 'water' (Hidatsa midi, Mandan mani) + a verbal form (? taNi) 'cross over' (Hidatsa tadi/tari). Clark (op. cit. 209) has "Manetarres", showing V = a. I don't know what the topographic referent would be; I assume the Missouri was nowhere fordable in that area. > > It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > > Houses)" village. > > This sort of explanation, while not at all impossible, and for all I know > well documented in this case, is the kind of thing that, when unsupported > by some historical evidence, makes people think that a folk reanalysis is > at work. There is a modicum of historical evidence: 1797 D. Thompson Jrnl. in W. Wood & T. Thiessen _Early Fur Trade_ (1985) 111 "Three of the Willow commonly called the flying Fall Indians came to us" 1806 A. Henry (Younger) Jrnl. (1992) 234 "We now came to the Little Big Bellies Village or Willow Indians which is situated at the entrance of the Knife River..about one mile from the Soulier Village." Note Matthews (1877, p. 35): "It is said by some to mean willows; but I know of no species of willow that bears this name. By a few of the tribe it is pronounced Hidaa'tsa, and in this form bears a slight resemblance to the word midaha'dsa, the present Minnetaree generic name for all shrub willows." (midaha'dsa is, I presume, identical to Jimm's Wirahatsi cited above. Is the -t- before -ati epenthetic for euphony?) Thanks to everyone for the help with these knotty etymologies! Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 19 06:09:33 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 00:09:33 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BA1E23.D8BB445B@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: This is very long. If you're not interested in the Mandan name issue, delete it quickly and escape while you can. On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Could it be that both MINITARI and MANDAN stem ultimately from a > Hidatsa/Crow or Mandan word for 'ford'? Moulton (Jrnls. of Lewis & Clark > Exped. III. 206), presumably from Hollow, gives Mandan mingintari 'water I suspect the g here shouldn't be there, i.e., I'd expect miNniNtari, or, as Hollow would write the underlying form in his dictionary, wiriNtari. (I'm writing VN for nasal V as an email expedient. He uses the nasal hook under the V.) The form is from Hidatsa wiri-tari 'to cross water' (minitari in pronuciation as initial w is typically nasalized), because Mandan doesn't attest tari 'to cross', as far as I can tell from Hollow. However, miNniN-tari has been Mandanized to the extent of substituting Mandan miNniN 'water' for Hidatsa wiri (miri in pronunciation)(miNniN from underlying wiriN from still more underlying wriN, in Hollow's analysis). By way of background/review, note that as far as I can recall Wes Jones writes m and n for initial w and r in Hidatsa as an orthographic cue to the typical initial nasalization of w and r, but without arguing that m and n contrast with w and r. Harris & Voegelin wrote w and r everywhere, without, as far as I can recall without looking, implying that the surface phonetics were any different from what Jones reports. Hence Jones's miri, H&V's wiri, and (pretheoretically) Matthews' midi, bidi, mini, etc., are all orthographic variants. Hidatsa lacks nasal vowels, at least within recent times. Siouan comparativists assume that this is because it lost them at some point in the past. Conceivably it was in the process of losing them when first observed, but Matthews' experience suggests they were pretty much gone by his time, at least 150 years later. I think this would be consistent with what Randy Graczyk has argued for Crow and I hope he'll correct me (again) if not. I mention it because the nomenclature for these groups may well originate in a period before nasal vowels and vowel-conditioned sonorant nasalization were lost in Hidatsa. On the other hand, as this example illustrates, Siouan languages are pretty slapdash about adapting the phonology and lexicon of loans from other Siouan languages to their own, in whole or in part. This Mandan form would be analogous to using a hypothetical Wasser-gun for 'watergun' in German. In Mandan Hollow argues that all m and n derive from w and r before nasal vowels (nasal vowels do also occur independently of m and n after stops, etc.), and that nasality spreads to the left (toward front of word) across w and r. He also argues that all wV1rV1 sequences derive from underlying wrV1, which is probably true enough in most cases. Hollow tends to write very "underlying" forms in his dictionary, but I think he preferred a more surfacy orthography in texts. Hence wriN > wiNriN > miNniN in Hollow's usage, depending on context. Hollow lists the root of Mandan 'to cross' as kxaNh, while Matthews lists tadi ~ tari (i.e., tari) for Hidatsa. Note that the final h in Mandan means that the declarative -?os^ manifests an intrusive h, i.e., kxaNho?s^, suggesting that an otherwise deleted final h is part of the underlying form of the stem. (The stem would appear as kxaN if nothing followed it.) I'm not sure if the x here represents Hollow's hearing of Mandan's (rare) phonemic aspiration (noted subsequently by Carter), or what. > ford' (< Hidatsa) as the etymon of MINITARI. Clark (1804 ibid. 207) has > "Manodans", representing the "pre-syncopated" version. (The Eng. forms Variations with back vowels instead of i(N) are unexpected, but not impossible, once the form is opaque to the speakers. > The further derivation would be mVNi 'water' (Hidatsa midi, > Mandan mani) + a verbal form (? taNi) 'cross over' (Hidatsa tadi/tari). I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has to be explained, if only by hand-waving. > Clark (op. cit. 209) has "Manetarres", showing V = a. I don't know what > the topographic referent would be; I assume the Missouri was nowhere > fordable in that area. I believe that's true. However, the village people tended to live on the western tributaries of the Missouri. The archaeological classification of the area is based on these tributaries, which, from south to north, are: Niobrara, White, Bad, Cheyenne, Moreau, Grand, Cannonball, Heart, Knife, and Little Missouri. The Niobrara and Little Missouri bound the "Middle Missouri" region. The subunits between the Niobrara and Little Missouri (exclusive) are: Big Bend, Bad-Cheyenne, Grand-Moreau, Cannonball, and Knife-Heart. I suspect these streams were at least potentially fordable, though not necessarily at their mouths. Jimm Good Tracks: > > > It was explained to me (by VYB, KYB & > > > CB) that "Hira:'tsa" is short form for "Wirahatsitati' (Willow Tree > > > Houses)" village. I get: hiraa tsa wira hatsi t(a) ati wood ?modifier POSS? village scrubwillow 'Willow (people) their-village' I'm not positive what the -t- is, actually. It's probably a morpheme, though, not anything epenthetic. The alienable possession formant ta- is the only thing I could come up with. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any references to a *-t(V) locative postposition, which would be another reasonable possibility: *'willow(s)-in village'. The hatsi plainly modifies wira, but I could't determine a gloss for it. Given this, this is not a (set of) of contractions and substitutions I can explain. That is, 'willow' is plainly wira 'wood' plus some modifier hatsi, and hira(a) doesn't match wira in any obvious way, assuming that's the match; nor does tsa match hatsi. The problem is that though the form hiratsa can be divided up in various ways into meaningful subcomponents, the results don't make any particular sense. So we're left trying to compare an analysable wira-hatsi with an unanalysable hiratsa. This yields a match *ira*ts*, where *'s are things that just don't match. This makes for a very unpromising comparison. Thus, I suspect the association here is just that the Hiratsa people (a subdivision of the present "Hidatsa") lived in a village called 'Willow village' at some point, leading to these terms becoming synonymous without being in any way related. Of course, hiratsa might be just another village name, from an earlier or later period. Village and ethnic names are theoretically distinguishable, but they are interrelated. If hiratsa really means something like what wirahatsi means, then it doesn't mean it in Hidatsa, and I have no idea what language it would be. One interesting observation here, though, is that the Hiratsa are the Hidatsa segment/village who say that they originated on the Missouri, while the other segments, the Awaxawi and the Awatixa, say they arrived from the east. This sort of thing can happen in origin stories easily enough, because they fuzz over issues like the independence of ethnicity and language. However, it can't happen in historical linguistics. People who come from different places speak different languages, leaving aside the possibility that the same language is spoken over the entire territory in question, which merely refers the spread of the language/people to an earlier period. Presumably either the Awaxawi and Awatixa brought the Hidatsa language and the Hiratsa adopted it instead of something else, or the Hiratsa had it already and the Awaxawi and Awatixa adoped it from them. I've tended to assume - Occam's Razor - that the Hiratsa were originally Mandan speakers, who adopted the Hidatsa language from the Hidatsa-speaking Awaxawi and Awatixa, but maybe they spoke something other than Mandan, something that has disappeared more or less completely, except for possible relicts like the word hiratsa. Incidentally, hiratsa would come from earlier *hirasa, if it is really Siouan, and I can't make anything of that in Mandan, where it would come out as hiras^a. Village culture on the Missouri River goes back to c. AD 1000, and seems to expand out of the NE corner of Iowa up the Missouri. The prehistory of the Middle Missouri seems to be fairly complex and to involve several different ethnic groups that interacted extensively, somehow producing the Mandan on the one hand and Hidatsa on the other (and presumably whatever ethnic group brought Crow, if the Crow-Hisatsa split antedates the arrival on the Missouri). (The Arikara seem to arrive c. 1400 from eastern Nebraska, so they don't need to be accounted for in the early complexities.) Recently a number of phases in SW Minnesota, including the one that is associated with the precontact Cheyenne, have been added to Middle Missouri. Some of these might be the Awaxawi and Awatixa (and Crow, etc.), if they arrived fairly late, but before contact. I don't think that archaeologists claim to have any idea when and where the Mandan and Hidatsa emerge from or arrive in the complexities of Middle Missouri. By the time Europeans arrive, the Arikara have introduced all kinds of Central Plains tradition practices and Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara villages look pretty much the same, except, possibly, for central open areas for Okipa in Mandan villages. In fact, cultural hardware is pretty uniform from Nebraska north by this point. Middle Missouri is interesting in a way that archaeologists haven't actually addressed, in that it's closely associated with the use of age-grading societies, which in North America occur only there and in the Blackfoot and Gros Ventre/Arapahoe north of Middle Missouri. > Note Matthews (1877, p. 35): "It is said by some to mean willows; but I > know of no species of willow that bears this name. By a few of the tribe > it is pronounced Hidaa'tsa, and in this form bears a slight resemblance > to the word midaha'dsa, the present Minnetaree generic name for all > shrub willows." (midaha'dsa is, I presume, identical to Jimm's Wirahatsi > cited above. Is the -t- before -ati epenthetic for euphony? hidaa tsa mida hadsa (i.e., hatsa?) The same thing in a different orthography, though shorn of the -t-atsi, as Alan notes. The t is probably a morpheme, as I noted above, but I'm not positive what it is. JEK From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Aug 19 15:59:07 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 11:59:07 EDT Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: A few comments on 'wirahatsitati'. The Crow word for 'willow' is biliichi', which may be cognate with Hidatsa miraha'aci 'willow' (this is the form in Wes Jones' data). The lack of correspondence in the vowels is problematic, but there are many Crow/Hidatsa forms that correspond perfectly except for one set of vowels. I suspect that the first part i(bil-, mir-) is the 'water' word rather than the 'wood' word, since willows tend to grow near water. I have no idea what the second part means. Glossing 'wirahatsitati' as 'Willow (people), their village' looks right to me, with it(a)- being the possessive prefix. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Aug 19 18:30:39 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 12:30:39 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > A few comments on 'wirahatsitati'. The Crow word for 'willow' is biliichi', > which may be cognate with Hidatsa miraha'aci 'willow' (this is the form in > Wes Jones' data). This is very helpful. Given the fact that Mandan and Hidatsa have undergone a major collapse in numbers of villages and dialects, having Crow, which was presumably at some point part of the same dialect complex with Hidatsa, is a big help in elucidating awkward Hidatsa forms. This gives us: mira ha'a ci bilii chi Here we're writing ts as c, following the scholarly orthography adopted by Wes, but ch for c^ (c-hacek), following the English-influenced popular orthography adopted by the Crow. I'll stick with ts below, just to keep things consistent with earlier letters, and in line with the Crow practice. > The lack of correspondence in the vowels is problematic, > but there are many Crow/Hidatsa forms that correspond perfectly except for > one set of vowels. I suspect that the first part i(bil-, mir-) is the > 'water' word rather than the 'wood' word, since willows tend to grow near > water. Of course, the 'water' analysis would make Crow right about the vowels, and Hidatsa wrong. *smilie* But, of course, 'water' makes just as good a candidate as 'wood', prima facie, as long as the rest is uninterpretable. I'm perhaps unduly influenced by the fact that typical MVS tree names are so often -stick or -wood or wood-. (To find Dakota tree names, look under c^haN 'wood'.) One side issue: In bringing up the problem of the often irregular correspondence of vowels between Crow and Hidatsa Randy gives me a a chance to admit that as I've been pointing out that vowels in this or that form for Mandan don't correspond, I've been omitting a mental footnote to this effect. (See, I do leave some things out.) It would be nice, someday, if we could characterize these examples of non-correspondance in some way. Is it truely random, or influenced by vowel harmony or reanalysis? The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though that's a serious enough issue. The real (or bigger) problem is haatsi vs. chi. Note that chi corresponds roughly to tsa in hira-tsa. The vowel is wrong, but alternations of i and a (and e) at word ends could reflect ablaut gradation. I'm not clear on whether tsa vs chi is a plausible correspondence, based on the way the two languages work, but let's leave it at that for now. So, as Randy says: > I have no idea what the second part means. It occurred to me, however, that MVS might elucidate this situation, and I think it does. Dhegiha terminolgies distinguish between 'yellow' and 'red' willows, the latter being, I think, actually dogwoods, the one whose branches are sometimes used for arrows, with the shredded inner bark from the peeled arrows being kinnikinnick, the agent used to cut native tobacco. Osage for 'yellow willow' is dhuxe-zi < *ruxe-zi(hi), where *ruxe is 'willow' and *zi(hi) is 'yellow'. The (hV) is an extension common in MVS color terms, but not universal. I think that *zi(hi) would appear regularly as *chi in Crow, *tsi in Hidatsa. What we do get is shiile in Crow and tsiri in Hidatsa, with a different extension *-re. The Crow form looks, furthermore, like it's from the s^-fricative grade. Since fricative gradation is common in color terms in Siouan, this isn't a big problem. Presumably *chii(le) < *zi(re) was replaced by shii(le) < *z^i(re) at some point. In any event, this makes the forms look like mira ha'a tsi bilii chi ??? ??? yellow which definitely recalls the Osage formulation. To me it suggests, furthermore, that the mira 'wood' is correct, and that the puzzling haa element is related to PS *ha 'skin, hide, bark', even though this is not attested in Crow or Hidatsa (or Mandan) as far as I know. Thus: mira ha'a tsi bilii chi wood (bark) yellow So it's Crow that has modified the vowel of the first part in this interpretation. *smilie* This puts Hiratsa as 'willow' in a somewhat better position, but only if hira is somehow equivalent to mira, and only if tsa is plausibly a contextually appropriate abalut grade of tsi, say a noun-forming grade. As far as I know, the only cases of *w > h in Siouan are in the first person/inclusive person pronominals of Dhegiha, Chiwere, and Winnebago. Alternatively, I don't know of any noun hira that would be equivalent to 'wood' in the context, e.g., something like 'stem', or of any sequence hira that would make a good amusing joke out of the form. This isn't a fatal objection, given how little I know about Crow and Hidatsa and Mandan. Can anyone else elucidate this? > Glossing 'wirahatsitati' > as 'Willow (people), their village' looks right to me, with it(a)- being the > possessive prefix. Thanks! That is: [mirahaatsi-[i- ta- ati ]] willow 3p Alienable village From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 20 17:15:19 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:15:19 -0600 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi Message-ID: David Costa recently asked me: > BTW, I know I asked you this years ago but maybe you have some > new thoughts on it now -- do you have any hunch as to what the > Siouan etymology of that name for the Potawatomi is, that one > that starts with /w/, such as Chiwere /woraxe/? Or is it still > just unanalyzable? Here's my answer: Still no clue. Sorry! I'll mention also Winnebago woora'xe, which seems a bit unusual to me in having a final -e here where it could perfectly well be deleted. It does occur to me - and this is very speculative - that what a Siouan morphological analysis would have as the root is rax(e), which could be a fricative grade variant of *ras^(e) ~ *raz^e. - The voicing of fricatives presents some problems that Siouanists haven't really solved. - The wo is presumably a prefix contraction wa-o- (standard in MVS) 'something in (which), something wherein is'. This fricative grade *ras^(e), etc., could be potentially the form in Siouan languages that merge *r and *y, e.g., Ioway-Otoe, Winnebago, Crow, Hidatsa, Mandan, of *yas^(e) ~ *yaz^e 'name'. Now, a root of the latter form appears in the word Osage (*wa-z^a'z^e, Dhegiha having z^ for *y, cf. Omaha-Ponca iz^a'z^e '(his) name'). Winnebago has wara's^ for 'Osage', which demonstrates at least a perception on someone's part that the root is *yaz^e (> ras^ in Winnebago), not hypothetical *z^az^e, even though both would merge as a nicely reduplicated z^az^e in Dhegiha. Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. On the other hand, the root here, even if there's a pattern, may not be 'name', but something homophonous, perhaps 'person'? The hypothetical cognate of waz^az^e in Dakotan, the other MVS branch that distinguishes *y and *r, would be *wac^ha'z^e (c^haz^e' is 'name'). This is similar to the actually attested wic^ha's^a ~ wic^a'sta 'man', and, of course, I got to this point by working backwards from that. The first vowel in this form is wrong (wi < *wa-i 'wherewith to', perhaps, though that seems unlikely in the context) and there's some waffling on the fricative: s ~ s^. The usual assumption is that the root here is wic^ha-, since that appears as 'them' in the verbal paradigm. No one accounts for -sta or -s^a, however, as far as I know, so wic^ha's^(a) ~ *wic^ha's(a) might be the stem, leaving -ta unaccounted for. In summary, there are widespread occurrences of roots of the form *yaS (S = s/s^/x) or *raS (where y and r merge) in ethnonyms and terms for 'person', and the same root occurs as PS 'name', but I can only manage to associate them by heavy use of modals and a lot of handwaving over non-corresponding vowels in initial prefixes of the form wV. The only other possibility that occurs to me is that perhaps the Potawatomi speak for the twees. (Thanks, and a nod to the late Ted Geissel.) From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Aug 20 17:41:19 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:41:19 -0600 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Message-ID: This also reflects a query from David Costa. The information here probably won't be new to comparativists or specialists in ethnonyms, but might others in passing. This is a list of possible look-alikes for s^ahaN' 'Sioux'. Mandan: xaNruNwaNk 'Sioux' Hollow, p. 308, supposed by Hollow to be xaNh 'grass' plus ruNwaNk 'man', but xaN might also be a fricative grade of a contracted s^aN < s^ahaN. Winnebago: s^aNaNhaN'aN 'Sioux' KM-2917 (entry number in Ken Miner's unpublished Field Lexicon); s^aawiN' 'Sioux woman' KM-2906 (wiN 'female'). OP: "caa'" /s^aaN'/ 'Sioux', cf., e.g., Dorsey 1891 throughout. For that matter, I've elicited the form myself. OP deletes h in VhV'. I think s^ahaN is attested in other Dhegiha languages, but don't have a reference. Ioway-Otoe: sahaN' ~ s^ahaN' (Good Tracks) (s^ in process of shift to s) Dakotan: The only resemblant is from Bray & Bray, eds., 1976, 1993, Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: the Expeditions of 1838-39 with Journals, Letteers, and Notes on the Dakota Indians, pp. 259, 260, where the term "Saonis [Saone], or the whitish people, whose robes are always well-whitened with white earth; sa, whitish, oni, to rub." is given as applying to the Minneconjou, "Wanonwakteninan" [Didn't recognize. JEK], Sans Arc, Blackfoot, and Hunkpapa branches of the Tetons. Nicollet's etymology could be quite correct, of course. As this form omits intervocalic h, it would have to be understood as an Omaha loan, I guess, if involved in this set. Note that this is an example of 'white Indians' and why one should be suspicious that reports of such imply European contact. Perhaps worth consideration, though I don't know enough about Caddoan to be able to comment on them or their potential involvement in this set. Pawnee: cararat 'Sioux' (Parks 1976:43) Arikara: sana'nat 'Sioux' (NATS 2.1: text 3, line 5, p. 4) Note that the s^ahaN form appears fairly widely (minus the nasal vowel, of course) in Algonquian languages from the "Old Northwest" area, e.g., Miami-Illinois, Fox, Shawnee. I didn't try to collect such terms, as David Costa presumably knows a lot more about them than I do! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 00:30:06 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 18:30:06 -0600 Subject: Query: washona Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 14:09:40 -0700 (PDT) From: dcosta at socrates.berkeley.edu To: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Subject: Re: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Could you also ask your Siouan list about ? Charles Trowbridge gives it as a Miami tribe name. He fails to indicate who it designates, but it's in the middle of a set of names for other Siouan groups. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 01:25:55 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 20:25:55 -0500 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' Message-ID: Here are a few more instances of the word in English. I have attached an MSWord file of the material more or less as I submit it to the OED, and also the equivalent text file. Alan -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Saone slipsNT.doc Type: application/msword Size: 25088 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- SAONE NEWS drafting, def. A subdivision of the Teton comprising the Sans Arc, the Blackfoot Sioux (Sihasapa), the Two Kettle (Oohenonpa), and sometimes the Hunkpapa. based on F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, etym. cf. Dakota c^?ona, a subgroup of the Yanktonais, lit. 'wood-hitters' S. R. RIGGS Dakota-English Dict. (1890) 91/1 ahh 03/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1794 Treaties (C. J. Kappler, 1904) 230 It is admitted by the Sioune and Ogallala bands of Sioux Indians, that they reside within the territorial limits of the United States ahh 01/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1804 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 33 Sou on..rove on St Peters river in the Prareis ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1805 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 417 Dar-co-tar's proper...Teton-sah-o-ne tribe ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1805 (Clark) Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. III. (1987) 418 Tetons Sahone. These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri ahh 02/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1814 P. ALLEN Exped. Lewis & Clark I. 61 Tetons Saone; these inhabit both sides of the Missouri below the Warreconne river, and consist of about three hundred men. ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1814 H. BRACKENRIDGE Views of Louisiana 78 Tetons, Bois Brule, Arkandada, Mini-kiniad-za, Sa-hone. These are the pirates or marauders of the Missouri. ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1817 S. BROWN Western Gazetteer 208 Tetons Sahone are four bands which rove over a country almost entirely level, where a tree is scarcely to be seen ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1817 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to J. BRADBURY Travels 90] Sahonies ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1823 E. JAMES Exped. Rocky Mts. (Philadelphia) I. 179 Of these warriors, three are Tetons, one a Yancton and a Sa-ho-ne, three different tribes of the great Dacota ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1824 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to 18th Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. LXI. 9?] Siouones of the Fire-hearts band ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1832 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to 22d Cong., 1st sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. XC. 63] Saones ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1834 W. M. ANDERSON Rocky Mountain Jrnls. (1967) 106 about four hundred lodges of the Sowann?, Ogallallas, Minne Con-ojus and onk-paw-paw bands of Sioux separated with me at the little Missouri ahh 03/99 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1838 S. PARKER Tour Beyond Rocky Mts. 43 The region...is inhabited by the following bands of Sioux, viz...Siones [et al.] ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1843 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to P.-J. DE SMET Letters 37 (note)] Saoynes ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1854 in F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. (1910) 464 [converts to T. MCKENNEY & J. HALL Hist. Indian Tribes III. 81] Sahohes note: typo for Sahones? ahh 6/98 SAONE NEWS drafting, quot. 1910 F. W. HODGE Hdbk. Amer. Indians II. 464 The Hunkpapa were probably not counted as Saone proper by Lewis ahh 6/98 From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:09:30 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:09:30 -0500 Subject: MANDAN etymology Message-ID: > Buechel gives Hewaktokta 'Arikara'. Riggs (1890, _Dict._ 164) has He-wa'-kto-kto 'the Arickaree Indians'. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:09:39 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:09:39 -0500 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi Message-ID: > Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to > appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable > and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- > Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. So a step further away from the "willows" analysis of HIDATSA? From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sat Aug 21 02:10:06 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:10:06 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: Thanks to John for a marvelous essay on MANDAN and HIDATSA/wirahatsitati ! > > Mandan mingintari 'water > > I suspect the g here shouldn't be there You're right--my mistake: it should be miniN (where first -i- is raised and N = IPA eng). > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has > to be explained, if only by hand-waving. Besides the forms like "Manetarres", Lewis & Clark also have "Wanutaries" (III. 31) and "Winitaries" (III. 234), and Jimm GoodTracks (Aug. 4) cites the Mandan word mani'ta:niro:te?esh 'he's a Manitaree'. Does analysis of the latter permit extraction of mani'ta:n 'Mandan'? If so, it would certainly make a good etymon for the English name. Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 05:18:50 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 23:18:50 -0600 Subject: ???*yaS and Woraxe as Potawatomi In-Reply-To: <37BE0A63.2E1CC221@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > > Further afield, I've recently realized that another similar form seems to > > appear in the term Hidatsa, in which -datsa (/raca/), if it is segmentable > > and of Siouan origin and goes back that far, would be from Proto- > > Crow-Hidatsa *-rasa. The fricative grade is off again here: s, not s^. > > So a step further away from the "willows" analysis of HIDATSA? I wouldn't take this one very seriously. I can't account for the hi, for example, so this form remains (as far as I can tell) unanalyzable. It could be all one morpheme (there are a few three syllable morphemes in Siouan languages, mostly foreign), or two or three, and who knows where the cuts are or what it means, other than, of course, "Hidatsa." The best bet is probably still hira ??? + tsA 'yellow' (in some nominalized form. On the other hand, I'm not convinced there isn't something in the Dakotan and Dhegiha forms, without feeling I've proved it at this point. But going further, to the forms for 'Potawatomi' and 'Hidatsa', seems quite a stretch. In the first case I'm not convinced that the form is of Siouan origin, and in the second I'm not sure raca is an actual constituent. So, while I mentioned the Hidatsa form for the sake of completeness, I'd like to keep the serious discussion of Hidatsa vs. Wirahaatsa separate, if that's possible! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 08:06:50 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 02:06:50 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BE0A7E.983D946F@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > You're right--my mistake: it should be miniN (where first -i- is raised > and N = IPA eng). Ah, the raised i indicates that Hollow considered it epenthetic, and the eng indicates that the preceding vowel is nasal. The first vowel is nasal, too, though this isn't indicated explicitly. > > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has > > to be explained, if only by hand-waving. > > Besides the forms like "Manetarres", Lewis & Clark also have > "Wanutaries" (III. 31) and "Winitaries" (III. 234), and Jimm GoodTracks > (Aug. 4) cites the Mandan word mani'ta:niro:te?esh 'he's a Manitaree'. > Does analysis of the latter permit extraction of mani'ta:n 'Mandan'? If > so, it would certainly make a good etymon for the English name. L&C aren't entirely reliable at transcriptions, so I wouldn't count too much on their vowels. The source Jimm cites seems to be better. I'm not sure what it is, though I recognize the story: > The Hidatsa were known by a number of terms, including Gro Ventres/ Big > Bellies, Minataries and a collective term "Mirokac" which included the > River Crows. It seems that "mi'nitari" is the Mandan name for the > Hidatsa, which oral history records states that a Mandan came upon a > Hidatsa on northside of Missouri river and, asked: "What are you? > (Nima'tawo^oro^osha)". The Hidatsa did not understand, and replied: > "I want to cross the water. (wirihewa:ta:riwa:wa'hec)". So the Mandan > thought: "He's (saying) he's a Manitaree. (Mani'ta:niro:te^esh)." The > two languages are not mutually intelligible. There are several things of interest in this. One is the version of wiri-tari (Minitare), offered: wiri- he- waa-tari- waa-wahe- c water (?) I cross I want (?) DECL Notice the -he- required in actual use. I'm not sure what it is! I'm also not positive what waawahe is, though it seems clear in the context. It does seem to me that the most likely origin of English Mandan is a variant of Minnetare like manitani. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 21:45:11 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 15:45:11 -0600 Subject: Comanche (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 11:24:15 -0700 (PDT) From: dcosta at socrates.berkeley.edu Long ago you told me that the Omaha word for the Comanche is /ppa'daNkka/, and that in Omaha at least this means 'stubby head'. You also told me that Winnebago has a word /pa:jo'ke/ which designates some imaginary Indian tribe. You still agree with both of these statements? ------ JEK: This looks like a hint that it's time to get the Padouca Papers on line in the archives of the Siouan list. I assume that Padouca comes into French from Miami-Illinois. Osage ppa'taNkka (or hpa'taNhka), glossed, 'Comanche', is attested in LaFelsche's dictionary in the spelling p.a'doNk.a, using p., k., etc., for underdotted (tense, preaspirated) stops and N for raised n. LaFlesche also gives taN'kka (doN'k.a) 'short or stubby, as a bear's tail', as well as to'kka (do'k.a) 'damp, wet, moist', and ppa (p.a) 'head', from which it is possible to conclude that ppa'taNkka could mean 'stubby headed, stubby head(s)'. Omaha-Ponca has (Fletcher & LaFlesche) ppa'daNkka 'Comanche', spelled Pa'duNka by LaFlesche and glossed Padouca parenthetically, in addition to Comanche. I don't believe daNkka is attested in OP. It's possible that aN and oN here reflect, at least in Osage, a back nasal vowel oN (cf. Dakotan uN) still marginally distinct from aN. I'm pretty sure that LaFlesche's uN in the Omaha reference is just nasalized schwa or influence from the English pronunciation. He doesn't use uN very often, and he does manifest some influence from English, once spelling Ponca with a c in an Omaha context: PoNca. Winnebago paajo'ke clearly resembles these forms and Padouca, too. The corerepondence would be exact and regular if the Dhegiha forms were Osage ppa'tokka and Omaha-Ponca ppa'dukka, and the latter of these forms is, of course, a pretty good match for Padouca, though it seems unlikely that Padouca was borrowed from Omaha-Ponca, in which this o > u change occurs. Of course, some Siouanists feel that u here is an exageratedly high vowel graph for what OP actually has, and other Dhegiha languages seem to have some tendency to raise o, too, judging from Dorsey's Kansa forms, though I have to confess that my ear or attention is poor enough that I am not a able to do more than say that it sounds like u to me in Omaha-Ponca and like o in Osage. The tendency to raise o is presumably connected to the tendency to front u to u-umlaut. The u-umlaut is unrounded to i (merging with original i) in Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw, but remains u-umlaut consistently in Kansa andd Osage. In a few places Kansa at least has i where I'd expect u-umlaut or u-umlaut where I'd expect i. One obvious possibility in cases like this is that the poor correspondences reflect the process of borrowing a word between languages. For example, if the source is Osage ppa'taNkka or something similar, and it was borrowed into Illinois and then French, French might get an unnasalized form Padouca, subsequently borrowed into English. The Illinois form might have been borrowed into Winnebago, too, though I'm intrigued that it has the regular shift of a to e after velars. I wouldn't have thought that to be at all recent. Perhaps Winnebago speakers just know that ka should be ke? This would be an easy analogy to draw if the loan resulted from borrowing from a Siouan source. Another explanation might be that the original form in Dhegiha was a meaningless *ppadokka (borrowed from elsewhere?), subsequently widely reanalized as ppaddaNkka to give it a meaning. The comparable term in Winnebago didn't undergo the reanalysis, though it was probably borrowed from groups further west. If Dhegiha did have *ppaddokka at some point, then this and the Winnebago form would correspond exactly and could support a reconstruction *hpatohka, though inheritence seems less likely with this term than borrowing. To complete the linguistic story, the initial ppa of Padouca and its congeners recalls the initial ppa of Pawnee and its even more various connections. However, so far this is like frequent occurrences of *raS or *(k)tokto ~ *(k)takta in ethnic names: an interesting coincidence, as assuming a connection doesn't seem to lead to an further clarification of the rest of the forms in question or of their total meaning, and the groups involved are rather disparate, and hence not likely to suffer from name transference. On the latter point, there is a school of thought that argues that the term Padouca originally referred to the Plains Apache groups and was only transferred to the Comanche as they (largely, but not entirely) replaced these Apache. I guess under the circumstances it might have applied to the Kiowa and other (non-Siouan) western Plains nomads, too, though this is not attested or argued anywhere that I know. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Aug 21 21:56:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 15:56:52 -0600 Subject: S^ahaN as 'Sioux' In-Reply-To: <37BE0023.A126B5FC@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Here are a few more instances of the word in English. I have attached an > MSWord file of the material more or less as I submit it to the OED, and > also the equivalent text file. It looks like the form Saone(s) for a grouping of subdivisions of the Teton is more widely attested than I had realized. I don't think that it can have anything to do with c^haNona, as I think s and ch (and even sh) are pretty well kept apart in the sources. However, since at least Lewis & Clark's variant sah-on-ne is clear that there is a final n + vowel, it seems unlikely that it has to do with s^ahaN. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Sun Aug 22 00:46:52 1999 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 19:46:52 -0500 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: John Koontz wrote: > I believe that Mandan has miNniN for 'water' normally, so the a has to be > explained, if only by hand-waving. Matthews (1877, p. 35) says "Prince Maximilian writes the word Manitari..which represents a way in which the Mandans often pronounce it--the Mandan word for water being mani." Alan From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Aug 22 02:16:36 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 20:16:36 -0600 Subject: etymology of MANDAN In-Reply-To: <37BF487C.55C5BA8C@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > Matthews (1877, p. 35) says "Prince Maximilian writes the word > Manitari..which represents a way in which the Mandans often pronounce > it--the Mandan word for water being mani." Hollow reports the word as miNniN, which he derives from underlying |[wriN]|, by regular processes of epenthesis (> wiNriN) and sonorant nasalization (> [miNniN]). Of course, Siouanists are used to sonorant clusters being broken up by epenthetic vowels, as in Teton bl (and mn) or Omaha-Ponca bdh. In some languages, like those just cited, the epenthetic vowel is a schwa and eschews other vowelish properties, e.g., in can't be accented. In others, like Mandan, Crow, Hidatsa, and Winnebago, it is perceived as a full vowel conditioned by the following vowel. In Winnebago, at least, the epenthetic vowels can be accented, if the leftward accentual shift moved stress onto one. So, it could be argued that a in mani represents either a schwa-like rendition of the first syllable of Minitari, somehow institutionalized in Mandan, or at least accepted as a legitimate variant. The vasos for the variant might be a bit of influence on mini from the vowel pattern of tari. Bear in mind that tari is not found in Mandan, but only in Hidatsa, so this word is essentially uninterpretable. Even if Matthews is not strictly correct about the Mandan word for 'water', his Mandan form for Minitari is consistent with the one in the story cited by Jimm Good Tracks. Both have mani-. I think we can agree that Manitari is a legitimate variant of Minitari in Mandan. Actually, it should be Manitani and Minitani, based on that example from Jimm. For what it's worth, one of the unknown, but supposed Siouan groups known by name only from the upper Ohio Valley is called Monetan, usually interpreted as 'big water' (?maNniN-thaN), based on the usual 'water' and 'big' morphemes of the Siouan family. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Tue Aug 24 22:47:52 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 15:47:52 -0700 Subject: etymology of MANDAN Message-ID: > The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though that's a serious enough issue. For willows, fertile ground for folk reanalysis--which probably occurred in one or the other language. The rest could result from the reanalysis of the original wiri/a. I can't offer a critique of John's MVS contribution except to agree that it's a possible analysis. It's farther from any kind of really solid etymologizing than I like to stray. If this is as good as we can do, then we have some really interesting intellectual stimulation, but not much publishable. Why not ask Crow and Hidatsa speakers what Willow "means" in their language and at least sort out the folk etymologies? Bob From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Tue Aug 24 23:29:50 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:29:50 -0700 Subject: Comanche (fwd) Message-ID: > Long ago you told me that the Omaha word for the Comanche is /ppa'daNkka/, > and that in Omaha at least this means 'stubby head'. You also told me that > Winnebago has a word /pa:jo'ke/ which designates some imaginary Indian tribe. > You still agree with both of these statements? John writes: > Another explanation might be that the original form in Dhegiha was a > meaningless *ppadokka (borrowed from elsewhere?), subsequently widely > reanalized as ppaddaNkka to give it a meaning. That corresponds with my position certainly. I'm pluncking for folk etymology all the way. :-) Same with "Baxoje" and "Wadohta-na". Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 02:41:52 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 20:41:52 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Since Bob was a bit dubious of the interpretation I offered for Hidatsa (and Crow) 'willow', let me offer a little support. Basically, I interpreted the Hidatsa form as 'yellow bark tree' and the Crow form as 'yellow tree' remodelled as 'yellow water'. Or, actually, both forms are uninterpretable wholes that seem to be traceable to these interpetations. The restructuring in Crow demonstrates that the forms are not interpretable as they stand today. I'm deleting all comparisons to Hidatsa, because there's nothing there that's quite a different matter, and still opaque to me. On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Koontz John E wrote: Hidatsa > mira ha'a ci Crow > bilii chi > The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though > that's a serious enough issue. The real (or bigger) problem is haatsi vs. > chi. ... > > It occurred to me, however, that MVS might elucidate this situation, and I > think it does. ... > Osage for 'yellow willow' is dhuxe-zi < *ruxe-zi(hi), where > *ruxe is 'willow' and *zi(hi) is 'yellow'. The (hV) is an extension > common in MVS color terms, but not universal. > > I think that *zi(hi) would appear regularly as *chi in Crow, *tsi in > Hidatsa. What we do get is shiile in Crow and tsiri in Hidatsa, with a > different extension *-re. The Crow form looks, furthermore, like it's > from the s^-fricative grade. Since fricative gradation is common in color > terms in Siouan, this isn't a big problem. Presumably *chii(le) < *zi(re) > was replaced by shii(le) < *z^i(re) at some point. In any event, this > makes the forms look like > Hidatsa > mira ha'a tsi Crow > bilii chi > ??? ??? yellow > > which definitely recalls the Osage formulation. To me it suggests, > furthermore, that the mira 'wood' is correct, and that the puzzling haa > element is related to PS *ha 'skin, hide, bark', even though this is not > attested in Crow or Hidatsa (or Mandan) as far as I know. Thus: > > mira ha'a tsi > bilii chi > wood (bark) yellow > > So it's Crow that has modified the vowel of the first part in this > interpretation. This etymology is phonologically and morphologically regular except for: - Lack of CH *-re extension on color terms. - Crow has the *s (*z) grade of 'yellow' actually expected, instead of the *s^ (*z^) grade it normally substitutes as the free term for 'yellow'. - I don't think *ha 'bark' is otherwise attested in Crow-Hisatsa or Mandan. - Crow has changed bilaa 'wood' to bilii 'water', presumably by fiddling with the phonology of an uninterpretable form rather than by any kind of semantic reanalysis, though an association of willows with water might be at work (as Randy suggested). I don't think this is really any more problematic than interpreting Mandan koxaNte 'corn kernels' as ko(r) 'squash' (attested) + xaNte 'grass' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley), or haNxurar 'bat' as haN 'night' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley) + xura(r) 'eagle' (not attested, but reconstructable in Miss. Valley). Naturally, such analyses would be stronger if the constituents were all attested in the languages where the compounds exist, but if the morphosyntax is correct, the correspondences regular (or we are willing to admit that the irregularity is secondary), and the sense reasonable, I think the etymologies can be considered fairly reasonable. Note that in the case of 'willow' and 'corn kernels' we have also the suggestive circumstance that the forms in question parallel constructions found in other Siouan languages, e.g., Osage 'willow + yellow', and the general pattern in Mississippi Valley of deriving 'corn' terms from 'squash' terms. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 05:37:04 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:37:04 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Make that: On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Koontz John E wrote: > interpretable as they stand today. I'm deleting all comparisons to much and > Hidatsa, because there's nothing^there^that's quite a different matter, > and still opaque to me. From rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu Wed Aug 25 19:10:42 1999 From: rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu (Robert L. Rankin) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:10:42 -0700 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) Message-ID: > Basically, I interpreted the Hidatsa form as 'yellow bark tree' and the Crow form as 'yellow tree' remodelled as 'yellow water'. Or, actually, both forms are uninterpretable wholes that seem to be traceable to these interpetations. This provides a vignette of problems faced by those of us who like to etymologize place/personal names. I spent years doing up a paper on S.E. placenames in De Soto's time, and at this point would probably recant about 60% of it. In toponymic and ethnonymic study it is often just not enough to find that your word can be broken down morphemically with a correct phonology. There would have to be additional proof that these folk built their lives around willow trees, or something of the sort. Otherwise we just have another case like wadohda-na, which does NOT mean 'lovers of sex', baxoje, which does NOT mean either 'gray noses' or 'gray snow' and ppado(N)kka, which does NOT mean 'stubby heads'. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to discuss the cases, of course!! I think this problem is a little different from etymologizing plant and animal names, since plants and animals at least have pemanent attributes we can work with. Even there, etymological problems are plenty and acute. Obviously I'm getting old and curmudgeonly. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Aug 25 18:27:43 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:27:43 -0600 Subject: Crow-Hidatsa Willow (Re: etymology of MANDAN) In-Reply-To: <37C43FB2.3EF5C437@lark.cc.ukans.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote: > There would have to be additional proof that these folk built > their lives around willow trees, or something of the sort. Ah, I think I agree with this. But at this point I was just dealing with a couple of terms for willows. I can see 'Willow Village' as a reasonable placename, for whatever reason, but in that case the form in question is transparently 'Willow Village', and I was only worried about the constituency of the Hidatsa and Crow terms for 'willow'. Those terms have nothing to do with Hidatsa, except that the Hidatsa name 'Willow Village' was asserted to apply to the original Hisatsa subgroup of what are now called the Hidatsa generally, and has a couple of phonemes of overlap with the word Hidatsa. This is somewhat confusing, of course, because we did come at this via the meaning of Hidatsa, and for a while I was comparing parts of that term with the term for 'willow', mainly trying to do an even handed job of showing that they didn't match at all well. > Otherwise we just have another case like wadohda-na, which does > NOT mean 'lovers of sex', baxoje, which does NOT mean either > 'gray noses' or 'gray snow' and ppado(N)kka, which does NOT mean > 'stubby heads'. I agree with all these assertions, in case there's any doubt. I also doubt that Hidatsa has anything to do with 'willow' or any part of the word for 'willow'. > I think this problem is a little different from etymologizing > plant and animal names, since plants and animals at least have > pemanent attributes we can work with. Even there, etymological > problems are plenty and acute. Just to emphasize matters, though this did arise out of a discussion of the meaning of 'Hidatsa' I see the issue of the internal structure of the 'willow' terms as a separate, more concrete issue. That's why I changed the title from 'Etymology of Mandan'. I realized it no longer applied. You all can feel free to accept or reject my analysis of the Crow-Hisatsa 'willow' terms as 'yellow (bark) tree' or my conclusion that the term hidatsa has nothing to do with 'willow' in tandem or separately, of course, but I'd like to suggest that they are separate issues. From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Mon Aug 30 03:07:20 1999 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:07:20 -0600 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: Hi, everyone -- I'm not teaching this year, but I have this request from a student who is helping Jule Garcia. Any ideas? Thanks. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 18:51:16 -0600 (MDT) From: "Girand Cynthia V." To: david.rood at Colorado.EDU Subject: Field Methods software Hi David, I'm hoping you can help me out with some names of folks that have spent time doing linguistic fieldwork with computers. I am the "technical" TA for Field Methods this semester. Jule is teaching it. We have the opportunity to get some linguistic fieldwork software. But I have no clue where to start. I guess there are a few ideas on the SIL web page, but I'm sure there are other possibilities as well. So, I'm hoping you might have some contacts or know of some linguists who use current software in the field. Could you think of say, five people who have done recent fieldwork with computers? Thanks for your help! Regards, Cynthia From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Aug 30 06:16:58 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 00:16:58 -0600 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think I'd try Shoebox. I haven't used it in the field. From cqcq at compuserve.com Mon Aug 30 12:46:55 1999 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:46:55 -0400 Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: For Cynthia: I took my laptop to the field fairly often during fieldwork. I liked Shoebox because I could browse on any field, bringing up queries I'd previously marked by speaker. It's fast and easy to use for this task. I would type in the info my speaker gave me while at the very place in my data where it was pertinent, then later go back and clean it up. And of course I had the tape recorder(s) going, too. Carolyn Quintero cqcq at compuserve.com From Rgraczyk at aol.com Mon Aug 30 15:24:34 1999 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 11:24:34 EDT Subject: Field Methods software (fwd) Message-ID: Re field methods software: SIL has a new program called LinguaLinks--I believe this is the successor to Shoebox. I haven't used it, but have been thinking about getting it. You can get info about it on the SIL web page: SIL.org. Randy From mosind at yahoo.com Tue Aug 31 13:56:05 1999 From: mosind at yahoo.com (Constantine Xmelnitski) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 06:56:05 -0700 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? Message-ID: Dear Siouanists: I've been trying to urge the Shoebox to parse Lakhota texts properly yet there's one stumbling block for it to do well: You seemingly cannot arrange affixes into slots, preventing, say, pronominal affixes appear after reflexive or dative ones. Also we cannot block some ungrammatical affix combinations. As a result I have either a dozen of ambiguities (with all the variants of -wa-, -ya-, -ki-, etc.) or morpheme trash. Perhaps there's some solution? Thank you for attention Connie. --- Koontz John E wrote: > I think I'd try Shoebox. I haven't used it in the > field. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Aug 31 17:57:06 1999 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:57:06 -0600 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? In-Reply-To: <19990831135605.26426.rocketmail@web114.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Constantine Xmelnitski wrote: > I've been trying to urge the Shoebox to parse Lakhota > texts properly yet there's one stumbling block for it > to do well: > You seemingly cannot arrange affixes into slots, > preventing, say, pronominal affixes appear after > reflexive or dative ones. It's been a while since I looked at the Shoebox parser, but it has always been rather weak, requiring a lot of human intervention to function. Note that the parser, while useful, is a long way from being the main reason one would recommend Shoebox, it's just there to help automate glossing somewhat. > Also we cannot block some ungrammatical affix > combinations. > As a result I have either a dozen of ambiguities (with > all the variants of -wa-, -ya-, -ki-, etc.) or > morpheme trash. Siouan morphology tends to produce ambiguities, due to the many homophonous morphemes. At least theoretically, position class analysis isn't a general solution, as it the consituent classes may vary in order depending on the identity of the morphemes. Furthermore, some words consist, essentially, of two (or more) sequences of subwords defined in terms of similar sets of position classes. A few classes are shared by such subword sequences, e.g., inclusives. Adding some derivational prefixes can modify (supercede) the positional structure of the underlying stem. Some of these assertions are less true with Dakotan than, say, Dhegiha, but they are true of all MV languages. > Perhaps there's some solution? I'd just expect to have the system come up with numerous cases in which it needed to have me tell it which wa or ya the current one was. The expectation is that you have to gloss most things to the extent of picking them out of a list. If you get some non-root entries for free be satisfied. I had the impression that of the several SIL parsers available, the old-fashioned and somewhat complex AMPLE looked like it might be the most likely to work well with Siouan morphologies. However, it doesn't integrate with Shoebox as far as I know. I think you'd have to parse outside Shoebox, and I'm not sure if this external parsing could be imported usefully. If anyone has any experience with this, I'd be delighted not hear it. I'm rather rusty with Shoebox myself; I've never actually used AMPLE, I've done very little parsing of Siouan data with the Shoebox tools, none since, I think, version 2. From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Aug 31 22:08:22 1999 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 18:08:22 -0400 Subject: Is Shoebox4.0 good for Dakotan? Message-ID: After experimenting with Shoebox 2.0 parser (ITP) just to the point of getting it to work and building a small data base, I abandoned its use entirely due to too much surface variation in Osage. I did use Shoebox happily for dictionary items as a simple database and found it excellent (except for the absence of ability to print!) Carolyn Quintero