tree tree

[David Costa]

> Apart, perhaps, from the widespread cognacy of 'acorn' in the form 'tree
> berry' couldn't you argue that 'oak' had become the unmarked kind of 'tree'?

Kind of doubt it. I don't think acorns were tremendously important to the
livelihood of Algonquians. Plus, the semantic composition of this word *is*
odd; it's not normal for an Algonquian noun, generic or not, to be composed
of two parts, both meaning the same basic thing.

However, what I think you're describing does happen in a few places: the
Proto-Algonquian word for what was probably the yellow poplar, */asa:twiya/,
shifts its meaning to plain 'tree' in the plains languages Cheyenne,
Arapaho, Gros Ventre, & Nawathinehena. This probably happened by shifting
this term to mean 'cottonwoods' in the high plains, with cottonwoods then
becoming the 'unmarked kind of tree'.

Dave