'eight' some more

[Michael Mccafferty]

Alan,

Yeah, no doubt it's unusual. In fact, Bob joked a couple of years ago
about this and suggested that it reminded him of a jackalope. My sense is
that it may not even be one word but two. It's hard to say, since the -8-
could stand for /-wa/ or the contraction /-o(o)/. However, to someone who
knows Miami-Illinois and the the historical sources of that language,
<MONS8PELEA> jumps out as clearly as, say, "Jacksonsville" would to a
speaker of English.

Michael

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Alan Hartley wrote:

> Michael wrote:
>
> > Linguistically speaking, Marquette’s <MONS8PELEA> consists of two
> > elements. The first is Old Illinois /mooswa/‘deer’, phonetic [moonswa]~
> > [moonzwa].
> ...
> > <-pelea>, the second segment of <MONS8PELEA>, is transparently Miami-
> > Illinois /pile:wa/‘turkey’.
>
> Nice analysis, but wouldn't 'deer-turkey' be a very peculiar construction?
>
> Alan
>
>
>