Dorsey's Law

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Tue Apr 2 20:51:02 UTC 2002


>I am writing a dissertation on epenthetic vowels, and have a few
questions about those that are inserted by 'Dorsey's Law' in Winnebago
and other Siouan languages.

Bruce Hays' book on metrical phonology summarizes the entire series of
arguments on Winnebago phonology nicely and has references to the original
sources.

You might try to contact Ken Miner, the author of several of the papers on
WI phonology and about the only person with an interest in phonology and a
lot of field experience with WI, and see if he can help you.  He has been
retired from the Univ. of Kansas for a couple of years but probably still
has an email account with the University.

The other person to write to is Mauricio Mixco at the Univ. of Utah.  Mo has
worked with Mandan speakers, and Mandan also has a Dorsey's Law phenomenon.


There are no doubt lots of studies of Russian, Ukrainian, etc. polnoglasie
available too.  It's somewhat similar.  Also, Hungarian borrowings of
western words often have epenthetic copy vowels as I recall.

Bob Rankin



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