birch (was Missouri)

David Costa pankihtamwa at earthlink.net
Sat Jan 3 00:57:10 UTC 2004


Tho one problem is that this would actually produce a form *wi:kekopimin$ya,
not *wi:kopimin$ya (the /o/ should really be /we/), so you'd need haplology
to make this work, and I can't think of any other examples of haplology in
Algonquian derivation. Plus, do we know that basswood bark was used for
houses? I always thought the salient usage of basswood bark was for cordage.

> An analogous term is the Proto-Algonquian name *wi:kopiminSya
> 'basswood', lit. 'house-bark tree' from wi:k- 'house, dwell' + -ekop-
> 'bark' + -eminSy-a- 'tree'.



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