Epenthetic Initials (RE: Word for 'prairie' in Hochunk)

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Quick tyro question-- Is the leading ho- on (almost) every second word
> of the list below the Hochunk equivalent of the MVS locative prefix *o-,
> OP u-, 'in'?

Yes.  Winnebago has an epenthetic h on vowel-initial words, with certain
exceptions, e.g., not on bare stem initial of verbs inflected as ?-stems,
and I think also not on monosyllables of the form V(V).  To some extent
the first class is the set of verbs of the form of the second class.  The
usual logic of Winnebago grammars is to treat the h as organic and delete
it when some other element precedes, but I don't know if this is the
linguists talking or the speakers they worked with.  With Winnebago, the
linguists and the speakers are fairly commonly one and the same, of
course.  For an interesting comparison, with Dakota it's Boas & Deloria
(Deloria speaking?) who particularly insist on initial epenthetic ? with
vowel-initial forms.

I believe it was also specifically Deloria who draws attention to final -?
(< -?e (?)) as a declarative.