Vowel Correspondences

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> At least a few of the uN/aN correspondences signal loanwords.  The one that
> comes to mind is 'squash/pumpkin' with LA wagmu; DA wamna, both from Algonquian
> either directly or indirectly.

Of course, I also wonder about 'hawk' in the same sense, though I do doubt
'hawk' is a loanword.

Could wagmu(N) ~ wamna(N) reflect an internal avoidance of {w, m} + u(N)?

> > In some cases Kaw may have u-umlaut for *i.
>
> These are cases of genuine Umlaut, with *i > u" only if another u" is
> the next vowel to the right.  Shouldn't happen otherwise except for that
> peculiar Kaw benefactive in /gu"/.  I assume the mechanism in the latter
> case is analogical rather than phonological though.

The benefactive is one example.  Analogy could definitely play a role
there.  I'll see if I can locate another.  I kind of think there were
some.

> > There are some cases of *e, *o > i, u in the Crow-Hidatsa and Southeastern
> > peripheries, too, I guess.
>
> Yeah, I'm still not entirely clear on just what the correspondences and
> changes are with Crow and Hidatsa vs. the rest.  Wes had it linked to
> vowel length.

That's what I recall, too.

> In the SE there are problems created by notation and also by the
> Southeastern areal feature by which some /i/ may be phonetically [e].
> Mary Haas's paper on "The Last Words of Biloxi" points out that [e] is
> an allophone of the phoneme /i/, whereas the actual phoneme /e/ is
> always [epsilon].  Unfortunately a lot of Siouanists have tended to
> write [e] and [epsilon] with the same phoneme symbol.

Hmm.  Rory, would this tie in with your variant e's?

> Ofo appears to share this trait, and I have a short discussion of it in
> that little Ofo pamphlet I prepared for the Siouan Conf. a couple of
> years back in Rapid City.

Spearfish?