Status of PS Glottal Stop

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> > When you realize that only Dakotan and Winnebago make much of a big
> > deal about initial ? at all, wonder if the C?-forms don't say
> > something about these particular languages, rather than Siouan at
> > large.
>
> No, I think the irregular conjugation pattern is present much more widely
> (found occasionally in Biloxi for example:  z^oN '2sg of do').  And Sapir
> recorded 'do' or 'make' as /?oN/ in Tutelo.

Just in case there's any question about it, I should make it clear that
I'm not denying the existence of a distinct paradigmatic pattern for
so-called *?-stems (Proto-Siouan glotal stop stems) - a pattern distinct
from *r-stems or regulars.  I'm just saying that, given the data, I wonder
if the class in question might not be *V-stems, Proto-Siouan stems
beginning with a vowel, rather than *?-stems.  It's the same stems, and
the same distinctness of pattern.  Only the reconstructed stem initial
changes, and even then only in my manic phase.

> > Since all the inflectional forms with *C? are restricted to one
> > language or another, and the various other inflectional forms, *mV
> > first person, *z^V second person (perhaps *nV second persons, if they
> > don't come from the *r-stems), don't suggest *? at all, I suggested
> > that these stems might actually be *V-initial.
>
> But it seems to me, then, that what you're really saying in a very
> round-about way is that the "organic" glottal stops we've been talking
> about are epenthetic in a grammatical or lexical environment, namely just
> (V-initial) verb roots (since the locative prefixes don't get them in most
> of the languages).  But that's not epenthesis.  Why not all initial
> vowels?  Why not vowel-initial nouns, particles, etc.

It isn't epenthesis now, of course, but I'm using the term in an ostensive
way.  At some point, one presumes, it was a phonetically regular
epenthesis, process, but it's been grammaticalized.  It's messy, of
course, not to know what the exact conditions fo the epenthesis were, and
frustrating to think that they may be fundamentally unknowable, but it
does seem to require some sort of explanation why reflexes of *? are so
shy about manifesting themselves in stems that we suppose to have started
with *?.

Taking some steps in the direction of characterizing when epenthetic *[?]
occurred, as opposed to epenthetic *r or *w (*[y] or *[w]?), it seems to
be at the PRO + STEM-INITIAL boundary, where STEM-INITIAL is defined to
refer to the initial of the part of the stem that the second person
precedes, i.e., not locatives or "outer" components.  I suppose *? also
occurs word initially (before vowels).  Conversely, epenthetic *r (or *w
occurs) preceding or between locatives, or between locative and
STEM-INITIAL, maybe between stem(-final) and enclitic or stem & stem.  The
complications occur when the epenthetic *? or *y or *w is taken as part of
the stem and introduced into forms where it doesn't belong, especially if
subsequently (or concurrently?) the epenthesis process is lost, or the *y
is rhoticized (which evidently happened in PS).

> > Winnebago provides the best evidence of this, albeit not
> > incontrovertable evidence.
>
> And it's also found with a few select nouns.

These are the cases (I forget which they are!) where 0 (elsewhere) ~ t?
(Winnebago) in noun stems?

I guess Mandan also has r? (both epentheses combined?) between some stems
and vowel initial enclitics (e.g., -e).

JEK