Quapaw designation (fwd)

Alan Hartley ahartley at d.umn.edu
Tue Feb 3 19:50:03 UTC 2004


Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> That's funny.  My recollection was that it was Ives who told me what I
> passed on here.  Maybe at different points in his thought processes, or
> maybe it was Dave Costa or someone else, but it came from an
> Algonquianist.

Dave Pentland said (4 years ago):

> the name ocipwe:(w)- ...
> it's an group name with prefixed o(t)- and final -V:w (as in kiristino:, and
> (o)maske:ko:w 'Swampy Cree'), but -(c)ipw- is not a phonologically possible root
> in Algonquian and must therefore be a foreign word.

and later--

> Proto-Algonquian did not allow short *i in the first syllable of a word...
> The non-Alg part could be either /ipw/ (with prefix *wet-, automatically
> palatalizing to phonetic [c^] before *i), or /tipw/ (with prefix *we-).

I guess all we can safely say at this point is that Ojibway is of
unknown origin (how I hate to say that!)

The o- prefix *does* occur in, e.g., early forms of Maskegon, Menominee,
Miami, Mississagi, Monsoni, Otagamie, Sauk, all of which are
etymologically transparent (swamp, wild rice, downstream, big-river
mouth, moose, opposite shore, river-mouth, respectively).

Alan



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