OK again

[Wallace Chafe]

I guess there's no linguistic reason why Caddo ukkih and Choctaw ho:keh
might not be the result of borrowing in one direction or the other. Caddo
has only three vowels, so a correspondence of Caddo i and u with Choctaw o
and e would be expected. There's nothing unusual about ukkih from the point
of view of Caddo phonology. Geminate consonants are very common, whatever
that means.

I agree with Bob about the Oll Korrect explanation, which probably ought to
be put to rest for good, unless somebody finds some really convincing
documentation of its use.

As for 'corn', I tend to be a little skeptical of "boxcar reconstructions".
In any case, I'm pretty sure the last syllable of Caddo kisi? isn't cognate
with the endings of the Pawnee, Arikara, and Wichita words. Those endings
correspond quite regularly to a Caddo noun suffix -?uh, not to -i?.

Wally

>  I wonder of this has any connection with the Choctaw [ho:keh] Pam was
>  discussing?  The Caddo and other Caddoan-speaking groups were certainly
> in
>  Louisiana at the time of the DeSoto expedition (Wally has a nice paper
> in an
>  anthology about the Caddoan place names in the Spanish accounts).  I
> only bring
>  it up here because there is pretty clearly some Caddoan influence in
> Biloxi and
>  Ofo, to wit, the word for 'corn'.
>
>  Ofo:                        a-cé ki           'corn'
> Biloxi:                     a-yé:ki           'corn'
> Pawnee:                     ré:k  su       'corn'
> Pawnee:                     ni kii s         'corn' (Gilmore 1919)
> Arikara:                     ne:    s^u?    'corn'
> Wichita:                      té:    s ?       'corn'
> Caddo:                          ki  si?       'corn'
>
> Ofo c (=ch) is a regular reflex of earlier *y, so a Siouan form *a-yé:ki
> can be
>  compared to a possible Caddoan prototype something like *Ré:kisu? where
> R is my
>  indeterminate sonorant covering the n/r/t correspondence set. This term
> for
>  'corn' is unique to the southeastern Siouan subgroup.  Tutelo, the other
>  attested language in this Ohio Valley Siouan subgroup, does not share
> the term,
>  reinforcing the notion that the borrowing went from Caddoan to Ofo and
> Biloxi,
>  not the other way around.  In any event, Tutelo, Ofo and Biloxi in the
> South,
>  like Mandan, Crow and Hidatsa in the Northwest, had apparently separated
> from
>  the rest of Siouan well before the in­troduction of any domesticated
> cultigen
>  except the gourd.
>
>  I'm afraid *Re:kisu? is my own Haas-style "boxcar reconstruction" from
> the
>  Caddoan cognate set.  At least various of the pieces seem represented
> across the
>  family!  Biloxi and Ofo initial a- in these items would be the normal
> reflex of
>  the noun prefix *wa- after initial labial resonants had been lost, so it
> is
>  separable.  Caddoan -su? at the end of the term may have been
> interpreted as su
>  'seed' by Siouan speakers.
>
>  So, if Caddoan was in touch directly or indirectly with Biloxi and Ofo,
> could
>  Caddo ukkih be connected with Choctaw hokeh.  (Recall that Choctaw has no
>  distinction between o and u and between e and i.)  The phonemic match is
> awfully
>  close.  As Pam says, the Choctaw form looks as though is it based on the
> verb
>  'be'.  Is the Caddo form made up of native morphology, or is it a stray
> term
>  that could have been borrowed?
>
>  Bob
>
>