Biloxi update

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Tue Oct 12 17:03:49 UTC 2004


On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
> I saw in another email [from Koontz] that it's suggested that knowledge
> of Muskogean helps with Biloxi.  But Muskogean of course is a different
> family.  Is this because of close proximity and influence, ...

Without getting into the rest, the answer up to this point is yes.  That
is, there are influences, loans, etc., that are presumably due to close
proximity.

In regard to the earlier question on divergence, I'd say that all three
Southeastern languages are obviously Siouan though rather divergent.
Tutelo strikes me as more typically Siouan, but this is a fuzzy
sort of judgement.  In some ways Dakota is rather atypical, for example,
contradiction in terms as that may seem.

In contrast, Catawba and Woccon don't seem Siouan at all, but are related
to Siouan by systematic cognates.  The term Siouan-Catawban (or
Catawban-Siouan) seems appropriate.



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