Lakota chaNnuNpa

[Rory M Larson]

Jumping in a little late on the "pipe" discussion ...

David wrote:
> Buechel suggests that chaNnuNpa derives from chaNli 'tobacco' plus uNpa
'to smoke'. Many speakers change "l" to "n" after a nasal vowel when the
consonant closes the syllable (e.g. akaNl is often pronounced akaNn), so
the development chaNli > chaNl > chaNn is probably regular, and the
etymology would be chaNli-uNpa.

I compared this with the situation in Omaha, and Osage (LaFlesche):


         tobacco                pipe

La.      chaNli                 chaNnuNpa

Os.      noNni'                 noNni'oNba

Om.      nini'                  nini'ba


>>From this set, assuming that [ch,n,n] < R (funny-r) before VN, and [l,n,n]
< r after VN (not really sure about these), then I suppose we could
reconstruct:

MVS      *RaNri'                *RaNri'-uNpa


Or perhaps the dubious phoneme sets are due to 'tobacco' being borrowed
after Dakotan and Dhegihan diverged.

Comparativist comments?

Rory