Biloxi update

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> There is much about Biloxi morphosyntax that needs clarification.
> Einaudi's sketch is a beginning, but the definitive Biloxi grammar is
> yet to be written. ...
>
> Hint:  Take Dorsey's two series of stop consonants (plain and with
> subscript dots) seriously.  They represent distinct phonological series
> that were missed by virtually everybody after Dorsey.

I have a few additional suggestions.

Einaudi simplified the over-differentiated vowel system recorded by Dorsey
by deleting the diacritics.  This is a good first approximation, but
doesn't quite work.  For example s<u-circumflex>pi 'black' => supi by this
approach, whereas <u-circumflex> is Dorsey's <schwa> and comparative
evidence suggests that the form must be sapi, cf. Da sapa, OP sabe, etc.,
with <schwa> for /a/.

Einaudi didn't really appreciate the pervasiveness of the "irregular" or
"syncopating" or "second" paradigms in Siouan languages, and I think she
didn't look carefully enough at things like the posibility of conditioned
differences in paradigms for, e.g., different kinds of "k" initial stems.
Naturally any examination of this should take into consideration the
identity of the "k" initial morpheme involved and, in this way and others,
of contrasts between k and k-dot - the two series of stops Bob refers to.

Dale Nicklas and Bob Rankin have demonstrated that a certain familiarity
with Muskogean is very useful in understanding Biloxi!

One should always read Haas's paper.  Not least for her advice in properly
handling Dosey & Swanton!

> Another hint:  A single linguist per language guarantees totally
> inadequate coverage.  There is still much to analyze in Dakotan, and
> numerous linguists have been trying to understand how that language
> works for well over 150 years. The other Siouan languages haven't seen
> nearly as much work.  There's plenty to do with both texts and speakers
> in a variety of languages, and if it's done right, both speakers and
> linguists will appreciate the effort.

I've always thought it might be instructive to comapre the volume of
material on an relatively neglected Indo-European language like, say,
Albanian, or, for that matter something extinct and ill-represented, like
Oscan or Umbrian, with the volume of material on Dakota.  I suspect the IE
language wins every time!  Haven't done the math, though.