Areal Phonology

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2005 mmccaffe at indiana.edu wrote:
> > Not, I suppose, any French-speaking ones?
>
> It's true, John, that native /h/ generally blew in one French ear and
> out the other, but the sound was recorded occasionally by the historic
> French. You see it from time to time in the early Miami-Illinois
> dictionaries.

Yes, I wondered as I wrote that if I might not be doing some of the French
authorities an injustice.  On the whole I've been fairly impressed by what
I've seen of early French work on American languages.  I wondered about
French sources for Shawnee only because English sources had beenmentioned
so pointedly.

David Costa has explained to me off-line that some very accurate native
Shawnee sources neglect initial h on the apparent grounds that it is
predictable / optional.  He agrees that no outside sources mention it
before the mid 19th Century.  I wonder if English sources might be astute
enough to notice this, too, specifically because some English dialects
also treat h in this way.  Of course, English sources can seldom resist
adding initial h in transcribing Cockney usage, so this seems a weak
suggestion.

I don't believe there are any sources for Wi or IO that omit h- where it
occurs, perhaps because it is not at all clear that it is predictable.
By which I mean, perhaps only a Siouan comparativist could think it was
predictable.  Anyway, it's interesting to learn that epentehtic intiial h
is so widely distributed in the Algonquian languages, especially ones with
some sort of historical connection to the Old Northwest, given that this
area seems to be a nexus of the similar phenomena in Siouan.  (I guess
Biloxi would be a bit far afield from the Old Northwest, and Shawnee is,
mostly, too.)