A little more on Iroquoian

[BARudes at aol.com]

A couple of things:

First, since I was hasty in my glossing of the words meaning 'skunk', 
'raccoon', etc. this morning, and since Wally's comment ("…and related forms") is 
ambiguous, I give here the entire cognate set with glosses and citations to 
sources. The gloss for the reconstructed forms is based on Cherokee and Tuscarora 
sharing the same gloss; the set as a whole was glossed 'skunk' in Mithun 1984; 
however, Mohawk, Oneida and Wyandot (?) may have preserved the original 
meaning.

PI  *t'i:?r  'skunk' (Rudes1995:53)
Ch    ti:li 'skunk' (King 1978), di?li 'skunk' (Holmes and Smith 1977:257)
PNI *t'i:?roN 'skunk'
T     n'e?reN? 'skunk' (Rudes 1999:347)
OH    tiron ' a kind of leopard or wild cat' (Sagard, cited in Tooker 
1991:158)
W     at'i:roN ('raccoon' ?) (I could not locate this word in Barbeau's 
material at
                   the moment, but the words for wildcat and skunk are 
different) 
Oe    vtil'uN 'raccoon' (Michelson 2002:351)
M     at`i:uN 'raccoon' (Michelson 1973:33)

Second, contrary to the proposal made in Wright 1974, Iroquoian *k'eNhreks 
cannot come from a construction meaning 'long tail'. The Mohawk, Oneida, Old 
Tuscarora, and Tuscarora words show that the Proto-Northern Iroquoian word was 
*k'eNhreks with final *-eks, not *-es. The final -es in the Seneca and Onondaga 
forms, and the final -i$ of Wyandot result from regular processes of cluster 
reduction. The Proto-Iroquoian form may or may not have ended with *-ks; too 
little is known about the relationship of final clusters between Northern 
Iroquoian and Cherokee.

The PNI root for 'be long' is *-e:ts-/-i:ts-/-oN:ts-, not **-e:s. It appears 
in Tuscarora as -e:0, not **-e:s. Since the verb always consists of a vowel 
followed by a fricative, it cannot be part of the ending of *k'eNhreks. 
Furthermore, one cannot reconstruct a root **-ihrek- or *-ihre- 'tail' for 
Proto-Iroquoian or Proto-Northern Iroquoian. The roots in the various languages are: T 
-(i)?rhweN0- (Rudes 1999:271), Se -ihkaR- (Chafe 1967:#756), C 
-?nheNhts-/-?nhweNhts-, Oo -iteN?R- (Woodbury 2003:1386), Oe -tahs-/-taks- (Michelson 
2002:428), M -itahs- (Michelson 1973:62), Huron -itah$- (Fraser 1920:455). The 
Tuscarora and Cayuga words point to a root *-?rhweNts-; the Mohawk, Oneida, and Huron 
words point to a root *-itahs-.

There are additional problems with the proposed derivation of the name Erie 
from *k'eNhreks that I will leave for another time; in any event, looking at 
Roy's analysis 31 years after he presented it, it does not look so good.

As it stands, PI *k'eNhre(ks) looks like an unanalyzable form.
 
PI  *k'VNhre(ks)
Ch    gvhe 'bobcat' (Feeling 1975:26)
PNI *k'eNhreks
T     k'eNhreks 'mountain lion' (Rudes 1999:252)
OT    caunerex 'wildcat-skin' (Lawson 1709)
W     yeNhr'i$  'lion' (Barbeau 1960:118)
S     heN:es 'panther, tiger, leopard' (Chafe 1967:#562)
OOo   guenhrach 'tigre' (Shea 1860:98)
Oo    k'eNhes 'wildcat' (Mithun 1984:265)
Oe    k'vleks 'lion' (Michelson 2002:477)
M     k`v:reks 'wildcat' (Mithun 1984:265)


Blair
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