From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Nov 2 00:04:57 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 17:04:57 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Rory: > Just to be sure we're clear here, by "nasally-released stop", I mean a > full stop that is released as the corresponding nasal consonant, not as > one that is preceded by one. Thus, for *W I propose *pm/*bm, not *mb, > and for *R I propose *tn/*dn, not *nd. Of course, these might easily > have reflexes mb and nd by metathesis, but that's not what I'm proposing > for the originals. I'm afraid I think that nasal-onset is nuch more likely (and common) than a nasal release, and seems more consistant with the distribution of *R in words. Perhaps the difference between *r, *R, and *CR is that *r was nasal throughout [n] in initial position, and probably oral or nasal medially, depending on whether or not the following vowel was nasal, while *R has an oral release, e.g., [nd], and *CR has just the oral part, e.g., [Cr] where r is a tap. In a few cases *CR comes to behave as *Nr [md, nd], when *R has becomes complete oral. In essenve, I'm positing an extra nasalization initially, which affects *r, *w, *R, *W and *pr clusters. The last presumably have a tendency to become *pR, or actually *WR [md, mnd]. How would you make pm and tn uniquely likely given the distrition of these sets within word forms and the outcome of *W and *R in the various branches? > Since we know that some cases of *W and *R arose from clustering of *w > or *r with an obstruentizing consonant, we can suppose that they all did: > therefore laryngeals. This is a very reasonable hypothesis for research, > but it is not solid as an argument. I don't know. It tends to combine the distributional facts with the usual suspects to produce something attested in American languages. As it can be seen, I think we don't need to assume that *R is is *?r or *hr, but such things are found. In fact, I think Bob is considering that *?-stems with A1 m- and A2 n- in Dakotan may represent *w-?VNand *r-?VN in a very real way. I tend to explain these as *w-V and a form imported from the *r-stems, with OP A2 z^- from *y-V being the original form. We'd expect A2 *c^h-VN in Dakotan. In anye vent, in *h-stems we have A1 *p-h... and A2 s^-..., maybe from A2 **y-h... perhaps via *z^-h... From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Nov 2 03:24:02 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 21:24:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W and R In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob wrote: > In favor of your idea of CN with a nasal release, I think you'll find in Riggs a notation that he heard Dakota (D-dialect) words /ob/ and comparable sequences as phonetically [obm] on occasion. I included that in the paper I did at the Chicago SCLC 4 or 5 years ago. That's very interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. > I don't think it matters one way or the other whether we postulate w/rN, Nr/w, or Hr/w, w/rH as long as there are no conflicting correspondence sets. What I'm writing as N or H (=h/?) here are all equally just "features" right now. [...] > I still think the "solutions" are all pretty much notational variants and can't really agree that one feature is more "natural" (or economical . . . whatever) in these instances. If we are only concerned about the existence of the particular correspondence sets, then W and R are sufficient. But if we start postulating things like w/rN vs. Nw/r or w/rH vs. Hw/r, then we are talking about the mechanics of production, which is a perfectly valid question and one which has bearing on the possibilities for the historical development of correspondence sets as well. We're a bit limited, and easily prejudiced, by the algebraic nature of our alphabetic representation system. In the case of continuants like w and r combined with nasality or aitchiness, we actually have features occurring independently at at least two of three different locations, which can be in any temporal order, including simultaneous. What we really need is a more analogue representation system that can be handled separately at each independent level. Thus, (going off on a tangent here to set up a framework for discussions) we might try: Nasal N N N N Oral r r r w w w r Laryngeal H H H H which represents seven sample sounds: Nr, rN, nasal-r, Hw, wH, aspirated-w, and finally nasal-aspirated-r. To make this analogue, however, we need to let the symbols continue arbitrarily long, so as to be able to show relative timing: Nasal NNNNN Oral rrrr Laryngeal HHHHH This would show an aitchy r, with the aitchiness starting just before the r, with nasalization added to the whole thing halfway through, and the nasalization continuing for some time after both the r and the aitchiness have ended together. Liquid or semivowel type things, as well as vowels, are pretty independent of what goes on nasally and laryngeally. Stops are not. Making a stop implies that both nasal and oral passages are closed, and the stoppage of the air flow will interfere with laryngeal production as well if the stoppage is prolonged. Nasal Oral TTTT*eeee TTTT*eeee TT*eeee Laryngeal VVVV HH VVVV HHHVV The above give possible representations of tte, hte, and tHe, respectively. V in the laryngeal track stands for voicing, T in the oral track stands for full alveolar closure, and vowel is represented by the appropriate letter in the oral track. Note that a stop is asymmetrical, in that it has a characteristic click only upon release. I mark this click with *. The click is the one element that cannot be extended. This lets us write nasal consonants a little differently. Nasal NNNNN Oral TTTTiiii Laryngeal VVVVVVVV This is how we might represent ni, for 'water', in Omaha. The first part has full alveolar closure, followed by i. It's all voiced, and at least the alveolar closure part is all nasal, with nasality probably extending a bit beyond it. If we hear it as niN, then the nasality extends just about all the way to the end of the vowel. The shift from a nasal vowel to a stop requires both oral and nasal passages to close at about the same time. Ideally, it should be: Nasal NNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV to get aNba, where P in the oral track means full labial closure. However, closing both nasal and oral passages at exactly the same instant is dicey, leading to a range of pronunciations between Nasal NNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we may hear as aba (since oral vowels seem to be more prominent than nasal ones), and Nasal NNNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we will definitely hear as aNmba. Hence, we will tend to get epenthetic mb/mp or nd/nt combinations anywhere that we have clearly defined nasal vowels immediately preceding a labial or alveolar stop. Now let's look at what I mean by a nasally-released stop. Nasal *NN Oral aaaaPPPPaaaa Laryngeal VVVV VVVV This is what we might write as apm^a (where m^ means voiceless m). The key point is that the stop is released into the nasal passage rather than the oral one. The click of the stop is in the same (nasal) place for any nasally-released stop. This is entirely different from simply a stop followed by a random nasal, such as, say, igmu: Nasal NNNNNN Oral iiiiKK*.PPuuuu Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVVVV where K in the oral track means full velar closure and . in the oral track means a minimal unformed vowel or schwa. Our standard alphabetic representation system can't easily distinguish between: Nasal NNNN Oral TTT*.TTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV and Nasal *NNNN Oral TTTTTTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVV , both of which we would probably write dna. The former has an orally released stop followed by a nasal consonant in the same location, from which it is unavoidably separated by oral release-click and schwa before the tongue can return to full alveolar closure again. The latter is a nasally-released stop in which full alveolar closure is never relaxed until after the nasal consonant has been expressed. So if we suppose that *W and *R involved any sort of combination of nasal consonant and stop, we have three distinct options, not just two. We can have nasal consonant preceding oral stop; we can have nasal consonant following oral stop; or we can have nasally-released stop. The first two possibilities are clusters; the latter is a single phoneme. I would imagine (this is not necessary to the argument) that *W and *R were originally tense and unvoiced, and that the various reflexes came about from weakening them in order to spit them out more easily. So let's try a well-known word: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV which gives us RakHota, assuming *R is a tense, voiceless, nasally-released stop. The shift from the initial stop to the following vowel is marked separately in the three different tracks. In the nasal track, it is marked by briefly opening the nasal passage to allow the release-click. In the oral track, it is marked by releasing full alveolar closure. And in the larygeal track, it is marked by shifting from voiceless to voiced. To reduce duration of the stop, we want to make these transitions happen sooner. The first step in weakening the initial stop would be to reduce the length of time the stop is held: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV This allows voicing to spread back from the vowel even to the full stop (optional): Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV The nasal release may take place sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Finally, given that there is no explosive release-click in the oral passage, the shift from full closure to vowel may be slow and sloppy. The tongue might maintain only partial closure once the nasal release-click has occurred, which would mark the place of the full closure, but would no longer prevent speech breath from leaking through. In this case, the most likely actualization of lax alveolar closure would be an l. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant would be a rapid glide: td*nl. It would be rather unstable, and the likely spinoffs would be the four consonants t, d, n, and l. One route would be to reduce the oral track from the front, and/or allow the nasal release sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNNN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Going this route, opening the nasal passage eventually occurs before alveolar closure. This eliminates the stop altogether, and we are left with an initial consonant that sounds pretty much like n. The residual nasalized l will probably be dropped in analogy with pre-existent [n], and in the interest of making that consonant even shorter: Nasal NNN Oral TTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This gives us nakHota. Another route would be to bring the relaxing of the tongue forward in the oral track with respect to the nasal release. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Following this route, oral release eventually catches up to nasal release. If the vowel follows quickly after the lax l, the l will be blown apart by the new oral explosion that replaces the nasal release-click: Nasal NN Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This renders the nasal release accoustically much less relevant, and it may be dropped: Nasal Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This leaves us with dakHota. Finally, the lax oral l may entirely replace full alveolar closure, while never being allowed to precede the nasal opening. This would imply that most of the reduction takes place in front on the oral track: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NNN Oral TTllaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNN Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant is a nasalized l. Nasalization might be dropped to give us: Nasal Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV or lakHota. In short, to reduce a nasally-released stop, we have three likely paths: 1. The nasal passage opens early, before the oral passage closes. This gives us a nasal consonant (m, n). 2. The oral passage opens earlier with respect to opening of the nasal passage, leading to an oral release. The result is an oral stop (p/b, t/d). 3. The oral closure weakens after nasal release. The beginning of the stop is reduced up to the point of weakening, so that it is marked orally only by the semivowel or liquid that replaced its tail. The result is a nasalized version of that weak consonant, in which the nasalization may go away: (w, l). The reflexes we get repeatedly across Siouan, as I understand, are [p,b,m,w] <*W and [t,d,n,l] <*R. Perhaps there are other possible phonotactic routes to explain the reflexes of *W and *R. If so, I would propose trying to analyze them in the manner I've done here for the nasally-released stop hypothesis. I'd also like to invite criticism of my own analysis from anyone who's actually made it this far! Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Nov 2 17:06:29 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 11:06:29 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John: > How would you make pm and tn uniquely likely given the distrition of these sets within word forms and the outcome of *W and *R in the various branches? I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 2 22:14:52 2006 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 22:14:52 +0000 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Siouanists, Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put something together on positionals in Siouan. We have information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can help from those or other languages, we would be grateful. The positional so called are elements which refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals for different noun classes of a similar type. So this type of distinction can be shown in various word classes. We would be grateful for any contributions Bruce Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Nov 3 03:17:52 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 20:17:52 -0700 Subject: Lakota dictionary (fwd) Message-ID: The interesting part, perhaps, is the description of the actual ms at the bottom. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:21:18 -0500 From: Carl Masthay To: azurebreeze at yahoo.com Subject: Lakota dictionary Wenona, If you want to post this. Carl ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Carl Masthay 28 Oct 2006 Subject: Lakota dictionary Mary Lynn Hall: You may have been the one who mentioned this back in January along with your recent follow-up telephone call to me. The Antiques Roadshow estimate of the 1866 work was an exorbitant "$100,000 to $150,000." This is another example where they have no darned clue about the value of some things and simply overvalue them to drive prices up. I would have put its value at about $40,000 to $60,000 based on other rare manuscripts and rare books that I've gained a gleaning about, but what drives its price down is that a masterly work in Lakota was already compiled and published at 852 pages in 1970 by Fr. Buechel /BEE-kl/ (of which I own a copy); thus the Lahcotah dictionary is already obsolete, tho perhaps containing some words and phrases unrecorded in Buechel. Notice the price given below. Carl > >>From the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (golla at ssila.org), SSILA Bulletin 246.4 In the Media ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * Rare Lakota dictionary turns up on PBS antiques program ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In the Tampa, Florida, "Antiques Roadshow" that was rebroadcast on October 23 (it was filmed during the summer of 2005 and first broadcast last January), appraiser Thomas Lecky was handed a book in near-perfect condition called "Lahcotah: Dictionary of the Sioux Language." The book, bound with staples, was written in December 1866 by army officers and Indian guides at Fort Laramie, an important stop on the Oregon Trail. "This is the first book printed in Wyoming," Thomas, a rare manuscript specialist at Christie's in New York, told the owner, who is the great-great-nephew of William Sylvanus Starring, one of the book's authors....Thomas put the dictionary's value between sixty and eighty thousand dollars. -- For the complete story, visit the Antiques Roadshow website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/roadshow/series/highlights/2006/tampa/fts_h our2_2.html From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Nov 3 06:27:11 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 23:27:11 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these > sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would > challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Distributionally, I don't think nasally release stops are particularly common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ as [obm] and, hypothetically /el/ as [edn], are more common, but notice that these follow oral vowels, whereas *R and *W precede vowels, generally oral ones. In fact, with only a very few exceptions *R and *W are strictly word initial. Apart from the last observation, within the context of Siouan, since there are such strong analogies between *R and *r in second position in clusters, we'd have to wonder if *R = tn meant that *pr tended to develop as *ptn and *Sr as *Stn. I suppose that might explain why *p and *S tend to dissappear in these contexts. :-) (Taking *S to be s^ ~ s ~ ...) > Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm > understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, > while Bob favors ... I'll leave Bob the task of explaining his own views, but it would be fair to say that I suspect *R and *W to be [nd] and [mb], though not as contrasting segments, i.e., not *r : *t : *R as r : t (or d) : nd. I suspect that *r represents something like [n] in initial position and [r ~ n] medially, with medial n occurring when one of the adjacent vowels was nasal (and with that nasality tending to spread to the other vowel). If *r occurred initially before an oral vowel, it may have been orally released, leading to something like /ra/ = [nda], while /raN/ = [na(N)]. Medially /ara/ = [ara] while /aNra/ and /araN/ = [aNnaN]. In fact, I suspect that /aNra/ = [anda ~ aNna ~ aNnaN] and /araN/ = [adna ~ aNnaN ~ anaN], but that for some reason [nd] only came to contrast with [r] initially. Where *r and *R contrast initially, the reflexes of *R tend to be more stop like. Usually the stop portion prevails, but sometimes the nasal one does, as in OP. In phonetic terms it is a question of timing. Where *t and *p are final in Dakotan they tend to become *r and *w, or, in practical terms [d] and [b] or [n] and [m]. As Bob reports, if [n] and [m] are preceded by an oral vowel, there can be some tendency to [dn] and [bm]. In *pr most languages tend to [bd] or [md] and even [d], which parallels the tendency of *R [nd] itself to become [d]. Where *s^r > *s^R and this appears as s^n it may be no accident that this is encountered as hn > n. Perhaps the phonetics of the cluster in these cases is essentially a breathy [nd], i.e., [hnd]. To some extent I suspect that what I analyze as *pr > *pR and *s^r > *s^R is really just a way of saying that *r tends to be longer and less *r-like - more stop-like - as the second element of a cluster. I don't know why *s^r should be more prone to this than *sr or *xr. As far as I know there are only three languages where *R in or out of clusters ends up contrasting with both *r and *t. Most places it becomes one or the other. But in Dakotan *R yields the l ~ d ~ n shibboleth, while in OP it is n before oral vowels and in Winnebago it is /d/ (often written "t") which is distinct from /r/ and from /-j^- ~ -c^/ which is the reflex of *t. In Osage *R merges with *t. In Ioway-Otoe it merges with *r. This is essentially what happens outside of Mississippi Valley, too. The extent to which and appearance of a contrast like *r : *R : *t seems to endure until the very last minute, only to resolve into something like *r : *t just before we make it's acquaintance is something of a clue. In effect *R is the cases where *r is more *t-like, and these cases represent a particular set of environments for *r - initial position and certain cluster-final positions. Or, think of *R as something like Dakotan l, etc. Teton l is an alternate form of t in final position, the position where *t becomes more *r-like, and an alternate form of y (*r) after b and s^ and in initial position, contexts where *r becomes more *t-like. It's true that there are initial cases of *r before oral vowels that appear as *r, not *R, but these are mostly cases where there is a frequent set of prefixes. So when we get *r > y initially in Dakotan, this is with inalienable nouns or with verbs, where there are (C)V prefixes alternating with zero in front of the *r. Perhaps this originally led to *r = [n] ~ [nd] alternations, but it looks like the *r-like range won out when there were prefixes. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Nov 3 20:20:44 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:20:44 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Nov 3 20:14:49 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:14:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W and R Message-ID: I'll take this on when I return. I'm in GA this week at my 50th high school reunion. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson Sent: Wed 11/1/2006 9:24 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Funny W and R Bob wrote: > In favor of your idea of CN with a nasal release, I think you'll find in Riggs a notation that he heard Dakota (D-dialect) words /ob/ and comparable sequences as phonetically [obm] on occasion. I included that in the paper I did at the Chicago SCLC 4 or 5 years ago. That's very interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. > I don't think it matters one way or the other whether we postulate w/rN, Nr/w, or Hr/w, w/rH as long as there are no conflicting correspondence sets. What I'm writing as N or H (=h/?) here are all equally just "features" right now. [...] > I still think the "solutions" are all pretty much notational variants and can't really agree that one feature is more "natural" (or economical . . . whatever) in these instances. If we are only concerned about the existence of the particular correspondence sets, then W and R are sufficient. But if we start postulating things like w/rN vs. Nw/r or w/rH vs. Hw/r, then we are talking about the mechanics of production, which is a perfectly valid question and one which has bearing on the possibilities for the historical development of correspondence sets as well. We're a bit limited, and easily prejudiced, by the algebraic nature of our alphabetic representation system. In the case of continuants like w and r combined with nasality or aitchiness, we actually have features occurring independently at at least two of three different locations, which can be in any temporal order, including simultaneous. What we really need is a more analogue representation system that can be handled separately at each independent level. Thus, (going off on a tangent here to set up a framework for discussions) we might try: Nasal N N N N Oral r r r w w w r Laryngeal H H H H which represents seven sample sounds: Nr, rN, nasal-r, Hw, wH, aspirated-w, and finally nasal-aspirated-r. To make this analogue, however, we need to let the symbols continue arbitrarily long, so as to be able to show relative timing: Nasal NNNNN Oral rrrr Laryngeal HHHHH This would show an aitchy r, with the aitchiness starting just before the r, with nasalization added to the whole thing halfway through, and the nasalization continuing for some time after both the r and the aitchiness have ended together. Liquid or semivowel type things, as well as vowels, are pretty independent of what goes on nasally and laryngeally. Stops are not. Making a stop implies that both nasal and oral passages are closed, and the stoppage of the air flow will interfere with laryngeal production as well if the stoppage is prolonged. Nasal Oral TTTT*eeee TTTT*eeee TT*eeee Laryngeal VVVV HH VVVV HHHVV The above give possible representations of tte, hte, and tHe, respectively. V in the laryngeal track stands for voicing, T in the oral track stands for full alveolar closure, and vowel is represented by the appropriate letter in the oral track. Note that a stop is asymmetrical, in that it has a characteristic click only upon release. I mark this click with *. The click is the one element that cannot be extended. This lets us write nasal consonants a little differently. Nasal NNNNN Oral TTTTiiii Laryngeal VVVVVVVV This is how we might represent ni, for 'water', in Omaha. The first part has full alveolar closure, followed by i. It's all voiced, and at least the alveolar closure part is all nasal, with nasality probably extending a bit beyond it. If we hear it as niN, then the nasality extends just about all the way to the end of the vowel. The shift from a nasal vowel to a stop requires both oral and nasal passages to close at about the same time. Ideally, it should be: Nasal NNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV to get aNba, where P in the oral track means full labial closure. However, closing both nasal and oral passages at exactly the same instant is dicey, leading to a range of pronunciations between Nasal NNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we may hear as aba (since oral vowels seem to be more prominent than nasal ones), and Nasal NNNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we will definitely hear as aNmba. Hence, we will tend to get epenthetic mb/mp or nd/nt combinations anywhere that we have clearly defined nasal vowels immediately preceding a labial or alveolar stop. Now let's look at what I mean by a nasally-released stop. Nasal *NN Oral aaaaPPPPaaaa Laryngeal VVVV VVVV This is what we might write as apm^a (where m^ means voiceless m). The key point is that the stop is released into the nasal passage rather than the oral one. The click of the stop is in the same (nasal) place for any nasally-released stop. This is entirely different from simply a stop followed by a random nasal, such as, say, igmu: Nasal NNNNNN Oral iiiiKK*.PPuuuu Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVVVV where K in the oral track means full velar closure and . in the oral track means a minimal unformed vowel or schwa. Our standard alphabetic representation system can't easily distinguish between: Nasal NNNN Oral TTT*.TTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV and Nasal *NNNN Oral TTTTTTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVV , both of which we would probably write dna. The former has an orally released stop followed by a nasal consonant in the same location, from which it is unavoidably separated by oral release-click and schwa before the tongue can return to full alveolar closure again. The latter is a nasally-released stop in which full alveolar closure is never relaxed until after the nasal consonant has been expressed. So if we suppose that *W and *R involved any sort of combination of nasal consonant and stop, we have three distinct options, not just two. We can have nasal consonant preceding oral stop; we can have nasal consonant following oral stop; or we can have nasally-released stop. The first two possibilities are clusters; the latter is a single phoneme. I would imagine (this is not necessary to the argument) that *W and *R were originally tense and unvoiced, and that the various reflexes came about from weakening them in order to spit them out more easily. So let's try a well-known word: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV which gives us RakHota, assuming *R is a tense, voiceless, nasally-released stop. The shift from the initial stop to the following vowel is marked separately in the three different tracks. In the nasal track, it is marked by briefly opening the nasal passage to allow the release-click. In the oral track, it is marked by releasing full alveolar closure. And in the larygeal track, it is marked by shifting from voiceless to voiced. To reduce duration of the stop, we want to make these transitions happen sooner. The first step in weakening the initial stop would be to reduce the length of time the stop is held: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV This allows voicing to spread back from the vowel even to the full stop (optional): Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV The nasal release may take place sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Finally, given that there is no explosive release-click in the oral passage, the shift from full closure to vowel may be slow and sloppy. The tongue might maintain only partial closure once the nasal release-click has occurred, which would mark the place of the full closure, but would no longer prevent speech breath from leaking through. In this case, the most likely actualization of lax alveolar closure would be an l. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant would be a rapid glide: td*nl. It would be rather unstable, and the likely spinoffs would be the four consonants t, d, n, and l. One route would be to reduce the oral track from the front, and/or allow the nasal release sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNNN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Going this route, opening the nasal passage eventually occurs before alveolar closure. This eliminates the stop altogether, and we are left with an initial consonant that sounds pretty much like n. The residual nasalized l will probably be dropped in analogy with pre-existent [n], and in the interest of making that consonant even shorter: Nasal NNN Oral TTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This gives us nakHota. Another route would be to bring the relaxing of the tongue forward in the oral track with respect to the nasal release. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Following this route, oral release eventually catches up to nasal release. If the vowel follows quickly after the lax l, the l will be blown apart by the new oral explosion that replaces the nasal release-click: Nasal NN Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This renders the nasal release accoustically much less relevant, and it may be dropped: Nasal Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This leaves us with dakHota. Finally, the lax oral l may entirely replace full alveolar closure, while never being allowed to precede the nasal opening. This would imply that most of the reduction takes place in front on the oral track: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NNN Oral TTllaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNN Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant is a nasalized l. Nasalization might be dropped to give us: Nasal Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV or lakHota. In short, to reduce a nasally-released stop, we have three likely paths: 1. The nasal passage opens early, before the oral passage closes. This gives us a nasal consonant (m, n). 2. The oral passage opens earlier with respect to opening of the nasal passage, leading to an oral release. The result is an oral stop (p/b, t/d). 3. The oral closure weakens after nasal release. The beginning of the stop is reduced up to the point of weakening, so that it is marked orally only by the semivowel or liquid that replaced its tail. The result is a nasalized version of that weak consonant, in which the nasalization may go away: (w, l). The reflexes we get repeatedly across Siouan, as I understand, are [p,b,m,w] <*W and [t,d,n,l] <*R. Perhaps there are other possible phonotactic routes to explain the reflexes of *W and *R. If so, I would propose trying to analyze them in the manner I've done here for the nasally-released stop hypothesis. I'd also like to invite criticism of my own analysis from anyone who's actually made it this far! Rory From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Fri Nov 3 21:58:25 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 15:58:25 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) > For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. That [*mw and *nr] is in reference to John's [*W = *mb, *R = *nd], right? Or do you mean that you would accept *mw and *nr as phonological instantiations of *W and *R, while favoring laryngeals as conditioning their origin? (Don't feel you have to answer now-- I'm perfectly happy to wait till next week. Have a good time in Georgia!) Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boris at terracom.net Sat Nov 4 01:33:02 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 19:33:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Rankin, Robert L Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 2:21 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu; siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.26/516 - Release Date: 11/3/2006 2:20 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.26/516 - Release Date: 11/3/2006 2:20 PM From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Sat Nov 4 01:54:22 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 19:54:22 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these >> sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would >> challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? > Distributionally, I don't think nasally release stops are particularly > common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ > common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ as > [obm] and, hypothetically /el/ as [edn], are more common, but notice that > these follow oral vowels, whereas *R and *W precede vowels, generally oral > ones. In fact, with only a very few exceptions *R and *W are strictly > word initial. Alright, that sets up three considerations: 1. Nasally released stops are relatively rare (world-wide?); 2. Almost all *W and *R are word initial; 3. The vowel following *W or *R is usually oral. I don't think the first is a problem. We're dealing with a specific case, not a probability. World-wide, clicks are rare too, but that doesn't deter their presence in Khoi-San. Considerations 2 and 3 apply to any possible reconstruction. It's probably easiest to suppose that after *W and *R were established in the proto-language, all word interior cases and all cases preceding a nasal vowel merged with other phonemes, perhaps *w and *r or *p and *t. Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? Consideration 3 is one that might raise a problem for the nasally released stop model. If the stop is released nasally, wouldn't we expect the following vowel to be more likely nasal than oral? My defense here would be that a nasally released stop is about the nasal click, not the nasal sonority. In a couple of previous postings, I suggested that the stop and the nasal click itself may have been voiceless, with the nasal opening quickly closed again before the main voicing of the following vowel. If the following vowel were nasal, however, nasality would have extended from the click to the end of the vowel. Voicing would have followed nasality back to its beginning and into the stop, leaving the stop itself as a rump prefix to what is now primarily a nasal consonant. The rump is dropped, and we are left with m or n, which is presumably construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV A nasally released stop before an oral vowel. The nasal opening is brief, and the nasal consonant is unvoiced. The sequence is phonologically unique, and fairly stable. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV A nasally released stop before a nasal vowel. Nasalization is prolonged, and mostly in synch with vocalization. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV Vocalization extends back to support the entire nasal sequence. Now we have a clear n sound preceded by a stop that has no purpose but to set up a nasal click before the n that is replacing it in phonological prominence. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV The duration of the stop erodes to a bare nubbin to support the click, allowing the word to be spoken more quickly. Nasal NNNNNNNN Oral TTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV The stop and the click finally disappear. We are left with a bare n (or nasalized *r). Hence, it may be that placing a nasal vowel after a nasally released stop will tend to destroy the stop and replace it with the corresponding nasal consonant. You might try pronouncing these sequences to test them. My sense is that a nasally released consonant before an oral vowel is about as distinctive and stable as a glottalized stop, but that if you try it before a nasal vowel the stop will tend to be replaced by the corresponding nasal consonant. If this is correct, then I think that that rule might account for why *W and *R are seldom followed by nasal vowels. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Nov 6 08:30:08 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 01:30:08 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > I don't think the first is a problem. We're dealing with a specific case, > not a probability. World-wide, clicks are rare too, but that doesn't deter > their presence in Khoi-San. Still, we don't usually hypothesize them when they are not attested in the daughter languages. > Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R > and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the > other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently > distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically > pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan > positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the > interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? I wondered if this case was bothering you, since you mentioned it earlier. This is pretty much the major case of "word internal" *W. Of course, it is word internal mainly by the grace of how we now analyze and write the elements involved. My take on this is that akha and ama < *akha and *aWa are the result of lumping two elements following a noun into one: nu=akha 'the man' < *pro-a=kha nu=ama 'the men' < *pro-a=Wa My gloss for ama above is farily notional. It is awkward to add or "the moving man" or to write "the slightly off topic/newly topicalized man." Historically I believe these forms both involve an underlying *pro-a, with an appended -a, analogous in structure to Dakotan relict forms like he-(y)a 'louse', wiN-(y)a(N) 'woman', iN-(y)a(N) 'stone', thi-(y)a=ta 'in (the) dwelling', etc., not to mention s^uNk-a. The same morpheme appears as =ra 'the' in Winnebago hee=ra 'the louse', etc. And, of course, it also appears inOP tti-a=di 'in(to) (the) dwelling', tti-a=tta 'to(ward) (the) dwelling'. That is, in all these forms we see an old thematic element -a added to the stem. This element is mostly lost in modern morphology, but it is preserved in Dakotan when the thematic form has replaced the underlying form (heya replaces he, except in compounds, etc.) or when something else follows, as with Dakotan thiyata or OP nu=(a)kha or tti-(a)di. Sometimes it becomes a morpheme itself - or remains one? - as in Winnebago. So, the element following *pro-a > OP nu-a is either *kha or *Wa. I don't have any concrete explanation for these elements in terms of obviosu correspondents in other branches. A simple match like PreDakotan *k-ha and *Wa would be nice of course! I assume that some sort of highly reduced morpheme sequence is a possibility instead. Assuming something matching the other languages is a desideratum, how about: *kha < *k(iN)-ha *Wa < *p(i) -ha About all I can say in defense of these is that (a) an element A1 he, A2 s^e, A3 -- is found after the obviative articles, even =ma obviative collective, which is =ma=s^e in vocatives addresed to collected groups, and (b) we see -p acting like *W in Dakotan, in forms like hakab 'afterward'. In these -b cases I think the usual assumption is that -b derives from =pha, not =pi, I think, and I'm not trying to contradict that, only argue that -p(h)# in Dakotan comes out like *W. If there's anything in these latter musings, it would mean that forms like nu=akha and nu=ama derive from something like *pro-a=k(i)=ha and *pro-a=p(i)=ha with quite a stack-up of enclitic elements. I'd have to assume that *pro-a=pi was well on the way to becomming *Ro-a=W by the time the =ha (or whatever it is - ha 'declarative'?) was added (for whatever reason). I also have to assume that a fairly verbal style of presenting nouns was once the norm in Dhegiha. (Before you object, think of people who say "(if) you know what I'm saying" after every new topic sentence (?) in English, usually reduced to /(fyu)na m se:n/ or /namse:n/.) I do have one possible confirmation for this. The quotative (or reportive) =ama could conceivably come from *a=pi=ha 'they say' via a=W=ha > ama. In this little exegesis it may have to think of *R and *W as d ~ n and b ~ m, but in a language where the unaspirated stops are t and p. This is pretty much the situation in Dakotan, for example. > Consideration 3 is one that might raise a problem for the nasally released > stop model. If the stop is released nasally, wouldn't we expect the > following vowel to be more likely nasal than oral? That's what I'm thinking. > construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: > > Nasal *NN > Oral TTTTTaaaaaa > Laryngeal VVVVVV I'm thinking more along the lines of Nasality Tier N | Segmental Tier # C V [+ resonant] R V n u In effect "orality" spreads outward from oral vowels and pushes into the inherently nasal resonants, producing prenasalized stops initially, and, presumably, in the reverse fashion, post-nasalized stops finally. This helps explain how *pr "bd" becomes *R "nd" If we think of "bd" as essentially "md" then the difference between md and nd is basically one of assimilation of place in "md." The asimilation occurs most easily in strict initial position (in nouns) and least easily in internal position (in stem initials of verbs). Where md occurs in first persons the environment is somewhat intermediate - and there's a reason to be more aware of the m- - so we get preservation of md (now bdh) in OP, etc., and loss in Chiwere and Winnebago. Incidentally, the same languagfes that tend t reduce *pr to *R in cases with a following oral vowel tend to reduce *pr to just n before nasal vowels, e.g., *pr > nu, to, etc., 'male' (also inthe homophonpus root 'potato') and *priN > niN 'water'. Dakotan, which keeps *pr as bl across the board has mniN 'water'. And, of course, when A => iN before ktA IRREALIS, you get ble 'I go' changing (historically) to mniN as in mniN=kte 'I will go'. So, *r and *R and *w and *W end up contrasting sets, and it helps to think of them in that sense, but, to a fair extent, *r and *R and *w and *W may not have been contrasting sets in Proto-Mississippi Valley. The difference between the "normal" and "funny" resonants is that the latter have been subject to a morphologically significant and analogically revised set of sound changes that draw them closer to the corresponding stops, but not always all the way. In many cases some stops (e..g, final ones in Dakotan, or initial ones in *Cr clusters) get drawn into the *R/W pattern from the other direction. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Nov 6 08:37:00 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 01:37:00 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <006901c6ffb1$2ba3fee0$38ea5442@alscom> Message-ID: On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Alan Knutson wrote: > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and > *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like > resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> > *W and **raNr.. > *R I think that's pretty much what Bob is saying when he traces *W and *R to *wa-w... and *wa-r... However, I don't think he requires them to be nasal. I'm not clear how much of the behavior of *W and *R is due to this sort of ancestry in all cases. It is clearly the case with places where *pr > *R within Mississippi Valley. However, it is not clear that all *R and *W have this sort of explanation. Perhaps they all reflect some sort of lost initial element preceding *w and *r. In spite of the OP evolution of *W and *R as m and n, I don't think we need to assume a nasal vowel in a hypothetical lost prefixal element *CV-. In fact, as long as we are assuming that *CV- is *wa- we would have trouble justifying a nasal vowel here. But we do know that there are Siouan languages which lack nasal vowels (Hidatsa) and which nasalize all initial resonants, at least in principle. From boris at terracom.net Mon Nov 6 13:11:33 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 07:11:33 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Similar to Korean where word initial 'r' is pronounced 'n'. Ie. Pres Roh pronounced Noh. Alan K -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Koontz John E Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 2:37 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Alan Knutson wrote: > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and > *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like > resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> > *W and **raNr.. > *R I think that's pretty much what Bob is saying when he traces *W and *R to *wa-w... and *wa-r... However, I don't think he requires them to be nasal. I'm not clear how much of the behavior of *W and *R is due to this sort of ancestry in all cases. It is clearly the case with places where *pr > *R within Mississippi Valley. However, it is not clear that all *R and *W have this sort of explanation. Perhaps they all reflect some sort of lost initial element preceding *w and *r. In spite of the OP evolution of *W and *R as m and n, I don't think we need to assume a nasal vowel in a hypothetical lost prefixal element *CV-. In fact, as long as we are assuming that *CV- is *wa- we would have trouble justifying a nasal vowel here. But we do know that there are Siouan languages which lack nasal vowels (Hidatsa) and which nasalize all initial resonants, at least in principle. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 6 15:21:24 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 09:21:24 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <006901c6ffb1$2ba3fee0$38ea5442@alscom> Message-ID: Alan, > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R It sounds like you have some ideas about this. Would you be willing to share? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 7 16:48:58 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 10:48:58 -0600 Subject: Positionals Message-ID: You might want to start with the bibliography at the end of: The History and Development of Siouan Positionals. In Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, 57:202-227 (2004). I used a lot of synchronic grammars and text collections as sources. I also short-changed Crow and Hidatsa for lack of information at the time. John and Randy are happily remedying this as we speak. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of shokooh Ingham Sent: Thu 11/2/2006 4:14 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Positionals Dear Siouanists, Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put something together on positionals in Siouan. We have information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can help from those or other languages, we would be grateful. The positional so called are elements which refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals for different noun classes of a similar type. So this type of distinction can be shown in various word classes. We would be grateful for any contributions Bruce Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From boris at terracom.net Tue Nov 7 17:04:14 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 11:04:14 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Currently I am thinking along the lines of a phoneme with the following distribution (using R as a cover term for these resonants) : R > n/ #__ V[-nas] r/ #__ V[+nas] r elsewhere This would be similar in some ways to the Korean distribution (n initial, r elsewhere) and also to some groups in South and Central America (if I remember correctly). There also has been an r/n alternation reconstructed for some archaic stem forms in I-E. So perhaps one doesn't have to go to far afield. It also indicates that it might be useful to look at the exceptions to this type of distribution to see what information they might give. Alan K -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Rory M Larson Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 9:21 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W Alan, > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R It sounds like you have some ideas about this. Would you be willing to share? Rory -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.32/523 - Release Date: 11/7/2006 1:40 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Wed Nov 8 01:49:01 2006 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 17:49:01 -0800 Subject: Moon phases Message-ID: Can anyone translate for me the Lakota names for the moon's phases? Euro-Americans see the moon - and identify the phases as: New Moon Waxing Crescent Half Moon Waxing Gibbous Full moon Waning Gibbous (the other half) Half moon (the other half) Waning crescent (The other half) As I understand it, "waxing" means growing or approaching full moon, "waning" means shrinking or receding from full moon, and "gibbous" means full bodied or bulging half moon. At some point, I was listening to some Lakota elders discuss this.....but all I caught was Islayata hanhepi wi (or "right sided moon"). Presuming that Lakota culture may not have a use for all the "phases" that I have described above.....what would be the traditional way to describe the moon phases in Lakota language? Be a friend... Help support the Lakota Communities on Pine Ridge, go to: http://FriendsofPineRidgeReservation.org --------------------------------- Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ti at fa-kuan.muc.de Wed Nov 8 08:56:47 2006 From: ti at fa-kuan.muc.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?A.W._T=FCting?=) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 09:56:47 +0100 Subject: Moon phases In-Reply-To: <20061108014901.91476.qmail@web50911.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: That's what Bruce is giving in his dictionary: wit'e [wit?é] - new moon ('dead moon') wi lechála (lecála?) - early crescent moon wi ókhiseya - first quarter moon (but Buechel: wíokhiseya(?) - okhíseya - half) wi mimákanyela [wi mimákxaNyela] - full first quarter moon (B: monn between First quarter and Full Moon, i.e., when it is gibbous) wi mimá - the Full Moon wi makatahan [ wi makxátaNhaN] - full third quarter moon (B: the moon between Full Moon and Third Quarter) wi yaspapi [wi yas^pápi] - third quarter moon (B: wíyas^papi(?)) wi t'inkta kanyela [wi t?íNkta kxaNyela] - moon between third quarter and new moon ("near to be dying") (kok'eluta [kok?éluta] - full moon red in the morning) Alfred Am 08.11.2006 um 02:49 schrieb Jonathan Holmes: > Can anyone translate for me the Lakota names for the moon's phases?  > > Euro-Americans see the moon - and identify the phases as: > New Moon > Waxing Crescent > Half Moon > Waxing Gibbous > Full moon > Waning Gibbous (the other half) > Half moon (the other half) > Waning crescent (The other half) From johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de Wed Nov 8 09:36:47 2006 From: johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de (Johannes Helmbrecht) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:36:47 +0100 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: <20061102221452.16913.qmail@web26814.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Caroline, dear Bruce, excuse me for not responding earlier to your inquiry. Of course, I am willing to provide the desired Hocank data with respect to positionals. Unfortunately, I have no ready to distribute paper on this topic in Hocank. So, perhaps, some general remarks on the positionals in Hocank will help for the beginning; illustrating data have to be extracted then from our text corpus later on. 1) The positionals are frequently employed as auxiliaries together with a full verb [V + POS]. In this construction, they indicate either progressive aspect, or the spatial position (sitting, standing, lying) of the transitve/ intransive subject (S/A in typological terms), or both. 2) They are personally inflected for S/A, but the conjugation pattern varies between the first conjugation (quite regular), second conjugation (regular, too) and some irregular mixture of of both. We find cases in which only the full verb is inflected in this construction, we find cases in which V and POS are both inflected, and we find cases in which only POS is inflected. I have to admit that I did not find a rationale for the distribution of the personal inflection among V and POS yet. 3) The positionals can also be used as auxiliaries with a nominal predicate indicating the spatial position of S, but this usage is rather rare and dispreferred by speakers. Clauses with non-verbal predicates are usually formed with other auxiliaries of 'being' 4) Besides the three basic positional auxiliaries, =naNk (sitting), =jee/ =jaa (standing), and =ak/aNk (lying), there is a fourth one =naNaNk (with a long nasalized vowel)for 3PL, but without any spatial meaning (this semantic component seems to be neutralized in this form). 5) All four positionals are combined with deictic affixes to produce demonstrative pronouns distinguishing proximate and distal, sitting/ lying/ standing, and sg and pl. These demonstratives can be used as nominal attributes (determiners), or as independent referential expressions, i.e. heads of a NP. 6) These demonstratives can also be used as relative pronouns indicating both, the spatial position of the S/A of the relative clause, and progressive aspect of the predicate of the relative clause. I guess these are the essentials with regard to positionals in Hocank. I'll tell you, if further important aspects of the positionals in Hocank come to my mind. Best, Johannes Datum: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 22:14:52 +0000 (GMT) Antwort an: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Von: shokooh Ingham An: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Betreff: Positionals > Dear Siouanists, > Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put > something together on positionals in Siouan. We have > information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but > are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder > whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is > aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can > help from those or other languages, we would be > grateful. The positional so called are elements which > refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or > physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota > uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya > 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items > which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally > arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this > sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and > even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that > Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals > for different noun classes of a similar type. So this > type of distinction can be shown in various word > classes. We would be grateful for any contributions > > Bruce > > > Send instant messages to your online friends > http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com -- Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht Universität Regensburg Institut für Medien-, Informations- und Kulturwissenschaft (IMIK) Universitätsstr. 31 93053 Regensburg Tel.: ++49(0)941 943-3388 ++49(0)941 943-3387 (Sekr. Frau Stitz) Fax: ++49(0)941 943-2429 E-Mail: johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 8 17:36:05 2006 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 17:36:05 +0000 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks Bob Bruce --- "Rankin, Robert L" wrote: > You might want to start with the bibliography at the > end of: > > > The History and Development of Siouan Positionals. > In Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, > 57:202-227 (2004). > > > > I used a lot of synchronic grammars and text > collections as sources. I also short-changed Crow > and Hidatsa for lack of information at the time. > John and Randy are happily remedying this as we > speak. > > > > Bob > > > ________________________________ > > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of > shokooh Ingham > Sent: Thu 11/2/2006 4:14 PM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Positionals > > > > Dear Siouanists, > Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put > something together on positionals in Siouan. We > have > information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but > are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder > whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is > aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone > can > help from those or other languages, we would be > grateful. The positional so called are elements > which > refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or > physical shape of items, rather in the way that > Lakota > uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and > hiyeya > 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items > which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally > arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this > sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and > even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that > Yurok has a distinction of different forms of > numerals > for different noun classes of a similar type. So > this > type of distinction can be shown in various word > classes. We would be grateful for any > contributions > > Bruce > > > Send instant messages to your online friends > http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com > > > > Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 15:21:09 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:21:09 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <01b001c7028e$c57773a0$05eb5442@alscom> Message-ID: Alan wrote: > Currently I am thinking along the lines of a phoneme with the following distribution (using R as a cover term for these resonants) : R > n/ #__ V[-nas] r/ #__ V[+nas] r elsewhere This would be similar in some ways to the Korean distribution (n initial, r elsewhere) and also to some groups in South and Central America (if I remember correctly). There also has been an r/n alternation reconstructed for some archaic stem forms in I-E. So perhaps one doesn't have to go to far afield. It also indicates that it might be useful to look at the exceptions to this type of distribution to see what information they might give. So if I'm reading your notation correctly, we originally have one phoneme *R. R -> r everywhere except initially before a non-nasal vowel, in which case it goes to n. Is that a correct restatement? If so, I have two general questions. 1. Do the distribution sets support the idea that *R and *r could be allophones in Siouan? I understand that *R is usually initial, and usually precedes an oral vowel. Does *r occur in this position as well? If so, could such words be explained as cases where the initial *r was once either preceded by another syllable or followed by a nasal vowel? 2. In modern languages like Korean that show this allophonic distribution, exactly what is the phonological nature of these sounds? I would imagine that either the "n" or the "r" would probably be a nasalized tapped r. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 17:11:26 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:11:26 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R >> and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the >> other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently >> distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically >> pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan >> positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the >> interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? > > I wondered if this case was bothering you, since you mentioned it earlier. > This is pretty much the major case of "word internal" *W. Of course, it > is word internal mainly by the grace of how we now analyze and write the > elements involved. My take on this is that akha and ama < *akha and *aWa > are the result of lumping two elements following a noun into one: > > nu=akha 'the man' < *pro-a=kha > nu=ama 'the men' < *pro-a=Wa [...] It's not the Dhegihan *aWa case that's bothering me. I agree that *aWa is almost certainly recently derived from two separate morphemes, *a + *Wa, which would make *W originally initial in that case too, and I don't think I have any disagreements with any of the material you presented in support of that view. What I'm having trouble with is visualizing how *W could have been *mb and *R *nd without their respective reflexes getting mixed up across Siouan with the reflexes of internal stops preceded by nasal vowels. Epenthetically, I think we have many effective cases of mp/mb and nt/nd in words such as 'day', 'moccasin', or 'face'. My question is: Why were these sounds never reinterpreted as *W and *R to give us, e.g., OP a'ma/Os ha'pa/La. awe'tu for 'day', OP hime'/Os hape'/La. ha'wa for 'moccasin', or OP ine'/Os itse'/La. ile' for 'face', if mb = *W and nd = *R and the originals of these terms were actually pronounced something like *(h)aNmpa, *haNmpa, and *iNnte' ? I see only three avenues to wriggle out of the problem here, and none of them is very satisfying to me: 1. There is a voicing difference in the stop that prevents any confusion. Hence, internal mp is never confused with mb, and internal nt is never confused with nd. 2. The nasality of the vowel was kept so strictly separate from the following stop that epenthetic mp and nt never occurred internally. 3. The speakers of all Siouan languages throughout history, so far as we can tell, systematically distinguished word-initial sounds from equivalent word-interior sounds, and for *mp and *nt regularly reduced the former rather than the latter. I did originally consider the idea of pre-nasalized stops for *W and *R, but I found the issue of internal epenthetic developments, and consequent confusion between the two sets, to be too much of a problem. It was after that that the idea of nasally-released stops first occurred to me. These would still give us the basic nasal and stop features we would like, while staying completely distinct and distinguishable from the matter of internal nasal vowel followed by stop consonant. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 17:18:23 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:18:23 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: >> >> Nasal *NN >> Oral TTTTTaaaaaa >> Laryngeal VVVVVV > > I'm thinking more along the lines of > > Nasality Tier N > | > Segmental Tier # C V > [+ resonant] > R V > n u John, could you give a legend for this? Obviously, we're using a somewhat different tier structure here, and I'm not sure I can follow your argument at this point without more of an explanation for the symbols you're using. Thanks, Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Nov 13 22:59:49 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:59:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Thai has all three, l, r, n, in different contexts. One of our grad students who kept a pretty hefty accent in her English used to regale us with her rendition of "phonological rules", which was "phonorogican lunes" [fonorajikan lu:nz]. (n>n, l>r, r>n, but not in that order). On a more serious note, Siouan already has complementarity among l, r, n, d in languages like Crow, so I think any such distribution of W/R would have run afoul of preexisting alternations. A couple of weeks ago I provisionally expressed a willingness to go with /mb/ and /nd/ as single phonemes. These would have to be single units, not clusters, and such segments are not terribly common, especially in the eastern 2/3 of North America. They're found in the South Pacific, West Africa and perhaps South America mostly. I'm having strong second thoughts about positing them in Siouan at all. Siouan has real nasal vowels but no real nasal syllable codas -- all such codas are just offglides of nasal vowels preceding voiced stops. These generated (merely phonetic) nasal codas don't cause behavior like R or W. So I'd have to say that it's unlikely W and R were like them. Maybe relative chronology could help, but I'm still not very convinced. I think, at the moment, I prefer to stick to what we know plus a suspicion and ? or h are involved with funny R and W. I also generally feel that solutions that rely crucially on the "invisible superstructure" of phonology, like "tiers", "minus-alpha greek letter variables", etc. are not likely to prove useful, but that's just me. I used to infuriate some of my colleagues on the dictionary project with this attitude. Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. In modern languages like Korean that show this allophonic distribution, exactly what is the phonological nature of these sounds? I would imagine that either the "n" or the "r" would probably be a nasalized tapped r. From BARudes at aol.com Tue Nov 14 03:28:12 2006 From: BARudes at aol.com (Blair Rudes) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 22:28:12 EST Subject: Funny W Message-ID: I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe Saussure’s solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Having said that, I do not know if it will help further the discussion or not, but I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such roots. Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent from the Catawba data. But I would love to be proven wrong. In any event, the Catawba data would at least push the chronology back somewhat. Blair -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Nov 14 14:48:42 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 08:48:42 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Thai has all three, l, r, n, in different contexts. One of our grad students who kept a pretty hefty accent in her English used to regale us with her rendition of "phonological rules", which was "phonorogican lunes" [fonorajikan lu:nz]. (n>n, l>r, r>n, but not in that order). I wonder if the Thai phoneme is actually polymorphic, or if we just have trouble classifying it with our alphabet? How would we classify an alveolarly restrictive consonant that is lateral like [l], tapped like [r], and nasal like [n]? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 15:55:31 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:55:31 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Naw, they're really different sounds, I think. At least 2 of them contrast in other contexts; Thai has both /kr/ and /kl/ as phoneme clusters. > I wonder if the Thai phoneme is actually polymorphic, or if we just have trouble classifying it with our alphabet? How would we classify an alveolarly restrictive consonant that is lateral like [l], tapped like [r], and nasal like [n]? I'd have to hear one to decide. :-) Bob From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 16:00:07 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:00:07 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Let me see what I can do about putting together a list. The ones from *wr may be difficult because there are many, but the more "mysterious" ones aren't all that numerous. Maybe John Koontz already has a comprehensive list -- he's spent quite a bit of time on this phenomenon. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of BARudes at aol.com Sent: Mon 11/13/2006 9:28 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Funny W I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe Saussure's solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Having said that, I do not know if it will help further the discussion or not, but I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such roots. Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent from the Catawba data. But I would love to be proven wrong. In any event, the Catawba data would at least push the chronology back somewhat. Blair From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Nov 14 16:27:37 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:27:37 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) > For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob, is this what you meant when you said you had provisionally accepted *W = *mb, *R = *nd a couple of weeks ago? If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 19:45:02 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:45:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: > If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? "Slots" or "pigeon holes" would need to be open, of course, but there is a bigger problem. The reconstructions have to be made to jibe with what we know of the morphology. And there just aren't any prefixes that undergo syncope with the shape *pV or *tV. P and t are just not candidates for the ancestral form of bl-, br-, bdh-, etc. clusters (there aren't viable reconstructions with the dental at all. 'Cat' and 'squash', the only remote possibilities, are only found in some languages and likely diffused). The only good candidate is *w, because we have *wa- 'inanim. absolutive', wi- 'animate absolutive', wa- '1st sg. actor', etc., all of which undergo syncope. So we know of prefixal morphemes or portmanteaux with the shapes /wi, we, wa, wo, bu/ but not /pi, pe/ and the instrumentals /pa, po, pu/ don't undergo syncope or had different sources (with /W/). * /ti, te, ta, to, tu/ prefixes are equally unknown. Perhaps worst of all, the mysterious /W/ phonemes virtually all tend to fit with the 'absolutive' semantics. The only exception I can think of is our Dhegiha *-aWa, and it is restricted to a single subgroup and is of unknown origin. I would agree that it, and -akha, were bi-morphemic, but which two morphemes? The -ha of -akha is likely a variant of the same -he that we get in -the, -khe, athaNhe, niNkhe, niNkha, etc. But what about the rest? This would make a nice paper for whoever sorts it out. :-) Bob From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Wed Nov 15 01:03:47 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:03:47 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? I think I should have asked this a little differently: *W < *pw, *R < *tr ? Or even *W < *wVw, *R < *rVr ? I.e., derived from, not necessarily equal to. > "Slots" or "pigeon holes" would need to be open, of course, but there is a bigger problem. The reconstructions have to be made to jibe with what we know of the morphology. And there just aren't any prefixes that undergo syncope with the shape *pV or *tV. [...] This morphemic argument is intriguing, but I need to level set a little to follow it. My understanding is that we have many cases of *R that arose within branches of Siouan from clusters like stop + *r. *W is less common, and some cases of both *R and *W apparently go back to proto-Siouan. I thought these were the cases referred to as "unexplained". If this is all correct, then I had meant the question only for the ones apparently going back to proto-Siouan or before. Do we know enough about pre-proto-Siouan phonology and morphology to limit what clusters could have existed in proto-Siouan or its near ancestors? If so, how? And are we assuming that all consonant clusters in proto-Siouan must be the result of syncope of a morphemic prefix? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Nov 15 05:57:01 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:57:01 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 BARudes at aol.com wrote: > I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical > phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe > Saussure’s solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the > discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Blair, I know you're not that old! > I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and > Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W > in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such > roots. I can produce a few off the top of my head, thinking really in terms of Proto-Mississippi Valley. I'm not fully convinced *R and *W are distinctive in Siouan proper as a whole. Actually, anyone with an Omaha vocabulary source can produce the list using words that start with m or n followed by an oral vowel for *W and *R (where there is no bl- cognate for the *R form in Dakotan). Or any word that starts with d (recently usually written t) in Winnebago, for *R only. Or most b-words in Santee for *W, and most words with root-initial l ~ d ~ n in Dakotan for *R. *Wa= 'by cuting' (outer instrumental) *Wa 'snow' *We 'spring' (the season) *Wi 'sun, moon' (occasionally nasal, e.g., in Dhegiha) *Wo= 'by shooting' (outer instrumental) *Wo 'blackhaw' (? I need to verify this one) I think there's a 'boat' word in the *W's. *Ra= 'by heat, spontaneously' (outer instrumental) *Ra-ka 'to consider to be' (source of Dakotan diminutive?) *Re 'this' (sometimes *re) *Rek- 'mother's brother' *ReS- 'urine ~ urinate' (S = s ~ s^ ~ x) I think one of the usual Dhegiha clans, interpreted as 'ice' in Ponca is *Ruxe referring to some subtype of buffalo. Unfortunately, most of the easily remember n- examples in Omaha-Ponca are from *pr, e.g., nu 'man, male', nu 'potato', ne 'lake' (not the usual word in Omaha). Ditto for d-words in Winnebago, e.g., dok, do, de. > Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W > are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and > Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent > from the Catawba data. This is why I tend to speculate about allophony. Incidentally, I don't mean anything like #mb or #nd with fully syllabic nasals, except (?) in Santee md for Teton bl. I gather nobody hears anything but bd today. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Nov 15 06:52:43 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:52:43 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > > I'm thinking more along the lines of > > > > Nasality Tier N > > | > > Segmental Tier # C V > > [+ resonant] > > R V > > n u > > John, could you give a legend for this? Obviously, we're using a somewhat > different tier structure here, and I'm not sure I can follow your argument > at this point without more of an explanation for the symbols you're using. It's just a stab at representing the notation of what used to be contemporary phonology, I'm afraid. It may not be current any more. The | is a link between tiers - just a line, really. The [ =/- feature] notation indicates presence (+) or absence (-) of a phonological feature. At one point all segments (more or less phonemes, but not arrived at by contrastive analysis) were resolved into sets of features, and there were knock-down, drag-out arguments over which ones to use and in how many languages. In this context I am just using it as a way of abstracting some common "feature" from several sounds, e.g., [+ nasal] characterizes nasal stops (m, n, etc.) and nasal vowels. Goldsmith's autosegmental arguments in the mid to late 1970s prompted interest in the idea of what he called autosegments. I believe he meant "sounds autonymous from - or independent of - regular segmental phonology." Goldsmith was interested in treating things like pitch accent, vowel harmony, and nasal spreading in terms of these autosegments - segments that spread across regular segments or occupied the same space as them but on a different tier or plain. He talked about non-linear phonology, meaning it seems to me "multi-linear" or "multi-tiered" phonology, not anything like what a mathematician would mean by non-linear. (Goldsmith seemed to have a genious for inappropriate and confusing coinages.) This was right about the time I took my last phonology course and privately abandoned any notion of looking for work that required me to keep up with this paticular kind of competitive dogma development. It seemed to me glancing up from Siouan at intervals that things rapidly went from the idea of using tiers inhabited by special autosegments that accounted for special "spreading" or "zonal" phenomena to treating all phonological systems as comprised of a theoretically defined set of tiers. I think people liked this approach because it made it easier to talk about stress accentuation in terms of feet, and also because it provided a great way of reducing things like coda and onset simplications to problems in symbolic logic. Modern linguists have always had a serious weakness for the argument from the logic of the notation. "The notation makes it really easy to express this, so the fact that it happens is a natural consequence of the fabric of the universe. QED." Maybe the Latin of this would be "argument ex notatio"? I've always preferred a simpler, conceivably heretical approach, which is to use the notation that makes it easy to describe what is happening and let someone else worry whether this meant it was a law of nature. In more formal terms (and I wasn't bent on achieving that above) there are certain set tiers in all segmental systems. A very tongue-in-cheek version of them would be: - syllables (little rows of sigmas linked to stuff above them) - syllables have onsets, cores (resonance peaks - usually vowels), and codas ('tails' - colas in the Teton dialect of Romance) - C V skeletons (which link up to the onsets, cores, and codas) - hand-waving tiers (this is where your spreading nasality goes) - the tier in which you place the actual segmental notation - the tier in which you write acute accents and breves if you are doing stress accent or H and L and maybe M if you are doing pitch accent Any professionals who are standing back gasping in horror or at least peeling their eyebrows out of their hairline should feel free to jump in and clarify this at any point. If you feel it should be done offline, and perhaps much of it should, please include both Rory and myself. I for one would be grateful. A reference or two and a basic synopsis wouldn't hurt on the list. === So, to get back to the actual point I was trying to make: Actually, what's missing here is a non-N (an O?) following the N and linking to the V. In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. If the word has an N attached to the following vowel "organically" then the effect is that r and w become n and m. If the first vowel is oral then the orality and nasality engage in a struggle for the soul of the r or w and settle on a compromise that sounds like nd or mb. Not "n-dah" and "m-bah" to parody the syllabic nasals of Swahili, but "raised n"-d and "raised m"-b - a much more subtle affect akin to speaking with a cold. The initial b of "bandaid" reduced to "mbadaid." In intervocalic positions there is no stray N of initial nasalization, and you get just plain r or w. I don't insist on either the details or the actual argument. I'm just looking for ways to explain what we see. I assume Proto-(MV)Siouan was a real language with a plausible, real phonology. I don't want to mistake PMV for one of the current languages or their phonologies, even if I appeal to those for cognate sets or as instances of plausible phonologies and plausible rules. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 20 01:41:49 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:41:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John, Thanks for the explanation of Goldsmith's segmental theory. That supplements what I was able to get from Wikipedia after our exchange previously, and is very helpful. Although I sort of follow the broad idea, I think I'm still missing an explanation of the specific symbols used. > So, to get back to the actual point I was trying to make: > > Actually, what's missing here is a non-N (an O?) following the N and > linking to the V. I had considered using something like that in the scheme I made up. I decided that it was easier to see the nasalization if I just left the non-nasal part of the tier blank. > In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an > automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. Do you mean just in proto-Siouan, or universally? > If > the word has an N attached to the following vowel "organically" then the > effect is that r and w become n and m. If the first vowel is oral then > the orality and nasality engage in a struggle for the soul of the r or w > and settle on a compromise that sounds like nd or mb. Not "n-dah" and > "m-bah" to parody the syllabic nasals of Swahili, but "raised n"-d and > "raised m"-b - a much more subtle affect akin to speaking with a cold. The > initial b of "bandaid" reduced to "mbadaid." > > In intervocalic positions there is no stray N of initial nasalization, and > you get just plain r or w. This cold-speak idea is fascinating, but I'm not sure that's actually nasalization you're describing here. The point of nasalization is that the sound goes out your nose, while the point of having a cold is to clog up the nasal passage and prevent that from happening. I think what you're actually touching on here is, first, that it is possible for vocalization to occur while a full stop is in place, and second, that that is not the normal way we make voiced stops. Try closing your mouth, pinching your nose, and then vocalizing. You can actually do it for up to a second or so before the air pressure above your vocal cords builds up enough to counteract what your diaphragm can produce from below. If you let it into your mouth, your cheeks puff up; if you let it into your nasal passage, the root of your nose expands; and if you keep it out of both areas, your throat swells. But you can do it. And it sounds weird. I think the subtle effect you describe for "bandaid" probably applies to the interior nd, but is not obligatory for the leading b, unless something nasal precedes it. When you hit a nasal consonant plus stop while suffering from a clogged nasal passage, you try to vocalize for the preceding nasal consonant, which is full oral closure, and now also full nasal closure, thanks to the clog. This produces the same weird sound derived experimentally above. It's a muffled, interior vocalization sound, which may well sound rather like a nasal, because a true nasal also muffles a sound by running it through a complicated set of interior channels. It may also be produced partly in the same place, insofar as it gets partway into the nasal cavity before it is stopped. This also means that I was wrong in supposing that voiced stop consonants are voiced all the way through. If I hold my hand on my throat and say DA-DA-DA-DA very slowly, I do not feel vocal vibration while the stop is in place. If I try forcing vocalization through it, I get the cold-speak sound you describe. The difference between a voiced and a voiceless stop seems not to be that the stop itself is voiced in the former, but that the release click is. Thus: Nasal Oral TTTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV is /ta/, while Nasal Oral TTTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVV is /da/. Normal "bandaid" is Nasal NNNNN Oral PPPP*aaaaTTTTTTTT*eeeeTTTT* Laryngeal VVVVVVVVV VVVVV VV , while cold-speak "bandaid" is Nasal Oral PPPP*aaaaTTTTTTTT*eeeeTTTT* Laryngeal VVVVVVVVV VVVVV VV , retaining alveolar closure with vocalization, but losing the nasal escape. (Legend. Nasal: N - nasal passage open; blank - nasal passage closed. Oral: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click of a stop; a/e - the vowels. Laryngeal: V - vocal cords vibrating; blank - vocal cords not vibrating. ) > I'm just > looking for ways to explain what we see. I assume Proto-(MV)Siouan was a > real language with a plausible, real phonology. I don't want to mistake > PMV for one of the current languages or their phonologies, even if I > appeal to those for cognate sets or as instances of plausible phonologies > and plausible rules. I fully agree. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Nov 25 01:06:27 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:06:27 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > > In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an > > automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. > > Do you mean just in proto-Siouan, or universally? Just in certain Siouan languages, in some cases proto-languages, e.g., perhaps in Proto-Dakotan and perhaps in Pre-Omaha-Ponca. Apparently in Hidatsa. > This cold-speak idea is fascinating, but I'm not sure that's actually > nasalization you're describing here. The point of nasalization is that the > sound goes out your nose, while the point of having a cold is to clog up > the nasal passage and prevent that from happening. I've noticed this inconsistancy before and I believe that the resolution of it is that nasalization is not "air through the nose instead of the mouth" but "resonance in the nasal cavity as well as the oral cavity." Colds may not make it easier to breathe through the nose, but they certainly play hob with your ability to control which cavity is resonating. In particular, English speakers with colds tend to substitute voiced stops for nasal stops: "I'b cubbig id 'oo blow by dose." But the "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Sat Nov 25 17:19:26 2006 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu (Mark J Awakuni-Swetland) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:19:26 -0600 Subject: discourse analysis inquiry Message-ID: Aloha all, I have a graduate student who has inquired about some foundational readings in anthropological linguistics... discourse analysis. This is a bit out of my area. Does anyone on the List have any suggestions for us to coniser? You can contact me off-list if you wish. Many thanks. Mark Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Anthropology-Geography Ethnic Studies (Native American Studies) University of Nebraska-Lincoln 841 Oldfather Hall Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Office: 402-472-3455 FAX: 402-472-9642 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 27 15:01:18 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:01:18 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John wrote: > But the > "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's > what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent > this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are > not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. That makes sense. I think using mb, nd, etc. with the caveat that the prenasalization is short and non-syllabic is quite clear. Of course, we'd still have the problem of these same sounds arising epenthetically in interior positions wherever a stop is preceded by a nasal vowel. If English orthography is a problem, we could represent these stops more precisely as: Nasal: N Oral: PPPP*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /mba/, and Nasal: N Oral: TTTT*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /nda/. (Nasal track: N - nasalization; Oral track: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click; a - the vowel; Laryngeal track: V - voicing.) These would be in contrast to my idea of nasally released stops: Nasal: *NN Oral: PPPPPaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /pm^a/, and Nasal: *NN Oral: TTTTTaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /tn^a/. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Nov 27 20:28:50 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:28:50 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: Guys, I'd like to bring up the extreme distributional skewing of */mb/, */nd/ if you consider them distinct phonological segments. I explain the skewing as the interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials, i.e., morphological and phonological clusters. If we ignore the morphology and go with the unit phonemes (which I admit we're sort of doing using the symbols W and R), how do we explain why these units only occur in very narrowly defined contexts? Don't we already have enough trouble with /glottal stop/? Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson Sent: Mon 11/27/2006 9:01 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W John wrote: > But the > "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's > what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent > this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are > not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. That makes sense. I think using mb, nd, etc. with the caveat that the prenasalization is short and non-syllabic is quite clear. Of course, we'd still have the problem of these same sounds arising epenthetically in interior positions wherever a stop is preceded by a nasal vowel. If English orthography is a problem, we could represent these stops more precisely as: Nasal: N Oral: PPPP*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /mba/, and Nasal: N Oral: TTTT*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /nda/. (Nasal track: N - nasalization; Oral track: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click; a - the vowel; Laryngeal track: V - voicing.) These would be in contrast to my idea of nasally released stops: Nasal: *NN Oral: PPPPPaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /pm^a/, and Nasal: *NN Oral: TTTTTaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /tn^a/. Rory From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 27 22:45:59 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:45:59 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Guys, > > I'd like to bring up the extreme distributional skewing of */mb/, */nd/ if you consider them distinct phonological segments. > > I explain the skewing as the interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials, i.e., morphological and phonological clusters. > > If we ignore the morphology and go with the unit phonemes (which I admit we're sort of doing using the symbols W and R), how do we > explain why these units only occur in very narrowly defined contexts? Don't we already have enough trouble with /glottal stop/? > > Bob Exactly what narrowly defined contexts are we talking about here? I understand that *W and *R are virtually all word-initial before oral vowels. Any other restrictions? I'd be very open to the idea that *W and *R result from an interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials. That seems like a very reasonable explanation of their origin. I don't think that should affect the question of their phonological configuration though, unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 28 20:39:02 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:39:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: > Exactly what narrowly defined contexts are we talking about here? I understand that *W and *R are virtually all word-initial before oral vowels. Any other restrictions? I haven't checked to see if the "oral" restriction is real. Seems strange to me that it would be, but it's up to the evidence. Altho' it might well be that you'd get /m/ and /n/ in the more nasal environment on a regular basis. > I'd be very open to the idea that *W and *R result from an interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials. That seems like a very reasonable explanation of their origin. I don't think that should affect the question of their phonological configuration though, unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. wa- 'absolutive' wi- 'absolutive' for many animates wa- '1st sg. actor' As I've said before, those would be my guesses. All three have tended to undergo syncope. *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Wed Nov 29 01:01:46 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:01:46 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I haven't checked to see if the "oral" restriction is real. Seems strange to me that it would be, but it's up to the evidence. Altho' it might well be that you'd get /m/ and /n/ in the more nasal environment on a regular basis. That was my line of thought too, assuming the "oral" restriction is real. >> [...] unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. > wa- 'absolutive' > wi- 'absolutive' for many animates > wa- '1st sg. actor' > As I've said before, those would be my guesses. Then we'd also need the reactive initial(s). > All three have tended to undergo syncope. Yielding a stop, such as p ? Or do other values occur after the syncope? > *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Is this *w-r cluster leading to *wR actually attested as such, or do we only have cases where the *w has developed full oral closure, as in Dakotan blo/bdo/mdo situations? > Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. I like the idea of reduplication. Given the rather parallel nature of *W and *R, could both of them have arisen from syncope of *w- and *r- prefixes against an initial of the same type? I.e., *w-w > *W, *r-r > *R ? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Wed Nov 29 03:18:27 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:18:27 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: > wa- 'absolutive' > wi- 'absolutive' for many animates > wa- '1st sg. actor' > As I've said before, those would be my guesses. > All three have tended to undergo syncope. > Yielding a stop, such as p ? Or do other values occur after the syncope? [m] before /?/ or maybe nasal vowels [b] before /r/ (or l, d, dh, n, etc.) [p] before /h/, and voiceless obstruents such as /p, t, k, s, s^/ > *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Is this *w-r cluster leading to *wR actually attested as such, or do we only have cases where the *w has developed full oral closure, as in Dakotan blo/bdo/mdo situations? [b] and [m] are allophones or, in some languages, former allophones, of /w/. > Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. I like the idea of reduplication. Given the rather parallel nature of *W and *R, could both of them have arisen from syncope of *w- and *r- prefixes against an initial of the same type? I.e., *w-w > *W, *r-r > *R ? That's my thought, but unfortunately I don't see a lot of evidence for reduplicated deictic particles. Then again, I haven't looked for them. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Nov 2 00:04:57 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 17:04:57 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Rory: > Just to be sure we're clear here, by "nasally-released stop", I mean a > full stop that is released as the corresponding nasal consonant, not as > one that is preceded by one. Thus, for *W I propose *pm/*bm, not *mb, > and for *R I propose *tn/*dn, not *nd. Of course, these might easily > have reflexes mb and nd by metathesis, but that's not what I'm proposing > for the originals. I'm afraid I think that nasal-onset is nuch more likely (and common) than a nasal release, and seems more consistant with the distribution of *R in words. Perhaps the difference between *r, *R, and *CR is that *r was nasal throughout [n] in initial position, and probably oral or nasal medially, depending on whether or not the following vowel was nasal, while *R has an oral release, e.g., [nd], and *CR has just the oral part, e.g., [Cr] where r is a tap. In a few cases *CR comes to behave as *Nr [md, nd], when *R has becomes complete oral. In essenve, I'm positing an extra nasalization initially, which affects *r, *w, *R, *W and *pr clusters. The last presumably have a tendency to become *pR, or actually *WR [md, mnd]. How would you make pm and tn uniquely likely given the distrition of these sets within word forms and the outcome of *W and *R in the various branches? > Since we know that some cases of *W and *R arose from clustering of *w > or *r with an obstruentizing consonant, we can suppose that they all did: > therefore laryngeals. This is a very reasonable hypothesis for research, > but it is not solid as an argument. I don't know. It tends to combine the distributional facts with the usual suspects to produce something attested in American languages. As it can be seen, I think we don't need to assume that *R is is *?r or *hr, but such things are found. In fact, I think Bob is considering that *?-stems with A1 m- and A2 n- in Dakotan may represent *w-?VNand *r-?VN in a very real way. I tend to explain these as *w-V and a form imported from the *r-stems, with OP A2 z^- from *y-V being the original form. We'd expect A2 *c^h-VN in Dakotan. In anye vent, in *h-stems we have A1 *p-h... and A2 s^-..., maybe from A2 **y-h... perhaps via *z^-h... From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Nov 2 03:24:02 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 21:24:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W and R In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bob wrote: > In favor of your idea of CN with a nasal release, I think you'll find in Riggs a notation that he heard Dakota (D-dialect) words /ob/ and comparable sequences as phonetically [obm] on occasion. I included that in the paper I did at the Chicago SCLC 4 or 5 years ago. That's very interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. > I don't think it matters one way or the other whether we postulate w/rN, Nr/w, or Hr/w, w/rH as long as there are no conflicting correspondence sets. What I'm writing as N or H (=h/?) here are all equally just "features" right now. [...] > I still think the "solutions" are all pretty much notational variants and can't really agree that one feature is more "natural" (or economical . . . whatever) in these instances. If we are only concerned about the existence of the particular correspondence sets, then W and R are sufficient. But if we start postulating things like w/rN vs. Nw/r or w/rH vs. Hw/r, then we are talking about the mechanics of production, which is a perfectly valid question and one which has bearing on the possibilities for the historical development of correspondence sets as well. We're a bit limited, and easily prejudiced, by the algebraic nature of our alphabetic representation system. In the case of continuants like w and r combined with nasality or aitchiness, we actually have features occurring independently at at least two of three different locations, which can be in any temporal order, including simultaneous. What we really need is a more analogue representation system that can be handled separately at each independent level. Thus, (going off on a tangent here to set up a framework for discussions) we might try: Nasal N N N N Oral r r r w w w r Laryngeal H H H H which represents seven sample sounds: Nr, rN, nasal-r, Hw, wH, aspirated-w, and finally nasal-aspirated-r. To make this analogue, however, we need to let the symbols continue arbitrarily long, so as to be able to show relative timing: Nasal NNNNN Oral rrrr Laryngeal HHHHH This would show an aitchy r, with the aitchiness starting just before the r, with nasalization added to the whole thing halfway through, and the nasalization continuing for some time after both the r and the aitchiness have ended together. Liquid or semivowel type things, as well as vowels, are pretty independent of what goes on nasally and laryngeally. Stops are not. Making a stop implies that both nasal and oral passages are closed, and the stoppage of the air flow will interfere with laryngeal production as well if the stoppage is prolonged. Nasal Oral TTTT*eeee TTTT*eeee TT*eeee Laryngeal VVVV HH VVVV HHHVV The above give possible representations of tte, hte, and tHe, respectively. V in the laryngeal track stands for voicing, T in the oral track stands for full alveolar closure, and vowel is represented by the appropriate letter in the oral track. Note that a stop is asymmetrical, in that it has a characteristic click only upon release. I mark this click with *. The click is the one element that cannot be extended. This lets us write nasal consonants a little differently. Nasal NNNNN Oral TTTTiiii Laryngeal VVVVVVVV This is how we might represent ni, for 'water', in Omaha. The first part has full alveolar closure, followed by i. It's all voiced, and at least the alveolar closure part is all nasal, with nasality probably extending a bit beyond it. If we hear it as niN, then the nasality extends just about all the way to the end of the vowel. The shift from a nasal vowel to a stop requires both oral and nasal passages to close at about the same time. Ideally, it should be: Nasal NNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV to get aNba, where P in the oral track means full labial closure. However, closing both nasal and oral passages at exactly the same instant is dicey, leading to a range of pronunciations between Nasal NNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we may hear as aba (since oral vowels seem to be more prominent than nasal ones), and Nasal NNNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we will definitely hear as aNmba. Hence, we will tend to get epenthetic mb/mp or nd/nt combinations anywhere that we have clearly defined nasal vowels immediately preceding a labial or alveolar stop. Now let's look at what I mean by a nasally-released stop. Nasal *NN Oral aaaaPPPPaaaa Laryngeal VVVV VVVV This is what we might write as apm^a (where m^ means voiceless m). The key point is that the stop is released into the nasal passage rather than the oral one. The click of the stop is in the same (nasal) place for any nasally-released stop. This is entirely different from simply a stop followed by a random nasal, such as, say, igmu: Nasal NNNNNN Oral iiiiKK*.PPuuuu Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVVVV where K in the oral track means full velar closure and . in the oral track means a minimal unformed vowel or schwa. Our standard alphabetic representation system can't easily distinguish between: Nasal NNNN Oral TTT*.TTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV and Nasal *NNNN Oral TTTTTTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVV , both of which we would probably write dna. The former has an orally released stop followed by a nasal consonant in the same location, from which it is unavoidably separated by oral release-click and schwa before the tongue can return to full alveolar closure again. The latter is a nasally-released stop in which full alveolar closure is never relaxed until after the nasal consonant has been expressed. So if we suppose that *W and *R involved any sort of combination of nasal consonant and stop, we have three distinct options, not just two. We can have nasal consonant preceding oral stop; we can have nasal consonant following oral stop; or we can have nasally-released stop. The first two possibilities are clusters; the latter is a single phoneme. I would imagine (this is not necessary to the argument) that *W and *R were originally tense and unvoiced, and that the various reflexes came about from weakening them in order to spit them out more easily. So let's try a well-known word: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV which gives us RakHota, assuming *R is a tense, voiceless, nasally-released stop. The shift from the initial stop to the following vowel is marked separately in the three different tracks. In the nasal track, it is marked by briefly opening the nasal passage to allow the release-click. In the oral track, it is marked by releasing full alveolar closure. And in the larygeal track, it is marked by shifting from voiceless to voiced. To reduce duration of the stop, we want to make these transitions happen sooner. The first step in weakening the initial stop would be to reduce the length of time the stop is held: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV This allows voicing to spread back from the vowel even to the full stop (optional): Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV The nasal release may take place sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Finally, given that there is no explosive release-click in the oral passage, the shift from full closure to vowel may be slow and sloppy. The tongue might maintain only partial closure once the nasal release-click has occurred, which would mark the place of the full closure, but would no longer prevent speech breath from leaking through. In this case, the most likely actualization of lax alveolar closure would be an l. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant would be a rapid glide: td*nl. It would be rather unstable, and the likely spinoffs would be the four consonants t, d, n, and l. One route would be to reduce the oral track from the front, and/or allow the nasal release sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNNN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Going this route, opening the nasal passage eventually occurs before alveolar closure. This eliminates the stop altogether, and we are left with an initial consonant that sounds pretty much like n. The residual nasalized l will probably be dropped in analogy with pre-existent [n], and in the interest of making that consonant even shorter: Nasal NNN Oral TTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This gives us nakHota. Another route would be to bring the relaxing of the tongue forward in the oral track with respect to the nasal release. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Following this route, oral release eventually catches up to nasal release. If the vowel follows quickly after the lax l, the l will be blown apart by the new oral explosion that replaces the nasal release-click: Nasal NN Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This renders the nasal release accoustically much less relevant, and it may be dropped: Nasal Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This leaves us with dakHota. Finally, the lax oral l may entirely replace full alveolar closure, while never being allowed to precede the nasal opening. This would imply that most of the reduction takes place in front on the oral track: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NNN Oral TTllaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNN Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant is a nasalized l. Nasalization might be dropped to give us: Nasal Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV or lakHota. In short, to reduce a nasally-released stop, we have three likely paths: 1. The nasal passage opens early, before the oral passage closes. This gives us a nasal consonant (m, n). 2. The oral passage opens earlier with respect to opening of the nasal passage, leading to an oral release. The result is an oral stop (p/b, t/d). 3. The oral closure weakens after nasal release. The beginning of the stop is reduced up to the point of weakening, so that it is marked orally only by the semivowel or liquid that replaced its tail. The result is a nasalized version of that weak consonant, in which the nasalization may go away: (w, l). The reflexes we get repeatedly across Siouan, as I understand, are [p,b,m,w] <*W and [t,d,n,l] <*R. Perhaps there are other possible phonotactic routes to explain the reflexes of *W and *R. If so, I would propose trying to analyze them in the manner I've done here for the nasally-released stop hypothesis. I'd also like to invite criticism of my own analysis from anyone who's actually made it this far! Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Nov 2 17:06:29 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 11:06:29 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John: > How would you make pm and tn uniquely likely given the distrition of these sets within word forms and the outcome of *W and *R in the various branches? I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 2 22:14:52 2006 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 22:14:52 +0000 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Siouanists, Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put something together on positionals in Siouan. We have information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can help from those or other languages, we would be grateful. The positional so called are elements which refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals for different noun classes of a similar type. So this type of distinction can be shown in various word classes. We would be grateful for any contributions Bruce Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Nov 3 03:17:52 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 20:17:52 -0700 Subject: Lakota dictionary (fwd) Message-ID: The interesting part, perhaps, is the description of the actual ms at the bottom. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:21:18 -0500 From: Carl Masthay To: azurebreeze at yahoo.com Subject: Lakota dictionary Wenona, If you want to post this. Carl ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Carl Masthay 28 Oct 2006 Subject: Lakota dictionary Mary Lynn Hall: You may have been the one who mentioned this back in January along with your recent follow-up telephone call to me. The Antiques Roadshow estimate of the 1866 work was an exorbitant "$100,000 to $150,000." This is another example where they have no darned clue about the value of some things and simply overvalue them to drive prices up. I would have put its value at about $40,000 to $60,000 based on other rare manuscripts and rare books that I've gained a gleaning about, but what drives its price down is that a masterly work in Lakota was already compiled and published at 852 pages in 1970 by Fr. Buechel /BEE-kl/ (of which I own a copy); thus the Lahcotah dictionary is already obsolete, tho perhaps containing some words and phrases unrecorded in Buechel. Notice the price given below. Carl > >>From the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (golla at ssila.org), SSILA Bulletin 246.4 In the Media ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * Rare Lakota dictionary turns up on PBS antiques program ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In the Tampa, Florida, "Antiques Roadshow" that was rebroadcast on October 23 (it was filmed during the summer of 2005 and first broadcast last January), appraiser Thomas Lecky was handed a book in near-perfect condition called "Lahcotah: Dictionary of the Sioux Language." The book, bound with staples, was written in December 1866 by army officers and Indian guides at Fort Laramie, an important stop on the Oregon Trail. "This is the first book printed in Wyoming," Thomas, a rare manuscript specialist at Christie's in New York, told the owner, who is the great-great-nephew of William Sylvanus Starring, one of the book's authors....Thomas put the dictionary's value between sixty and eighty thousand dollars. -- For the complete story, visit the Antiques Roadshow website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/roadshow/series/highlights/2006/tampa/fts_h our2_2.html From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Nov 3 06:27:11 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 23:27:11 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these > sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would > challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Distributionally, I don't think nasally release stops are particularly common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ as [obm] and, hypothetically /el/ as [edn], are more common, but notice that these follow oral vowels, whereas *R and *W precede vowels, generally oral ones. In fact, with only a very few exceptions *R and *W are strictly word initial. Apart from the last observation, within the context of Siouan, since there are such strong analogies between *R and *r in second position in clusters, we'd have to wonder if *R = tn meant that *pr tended to develop as *ptn and *Sr as *Stn. I suppose that might explain why *p and *S tend to dissappear in these contexts. :-) (Taking *S to be s^ ~ s ~ ...) > Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm > understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, > while Bob favors ... I'll leave Bob the task of explaining his own views, but it would be fair to say that I suspect *R and *W to be [nd] and [mb], though not as contrasting segments, i.e., not *r : *t : *R as r : t (or d) : nd. I suspect that *r represents something like [n] in initial position and [r ~ n] medially, with medial n occurring when one of the adjacent vowels was nasal (and with that nasality tending to spread to the other vowel). If *r occurred initially before an oral vowel, it may have been orally released, leading to something like /ra/ = [nda], while /raN/ = [na(N)]. Medially /ara/ = [ara] while /aNra/ and /araN/ = [aNnaN]. In fact, I suspect that /aNra/ = [anda ~ aNna ~ aNnaN] and /araN/ = [adna ~ aNnaN ~ anaN], but that for some reason [nd] only came to contrast with [r] initially. Where *r and *R contrast initially, the reflexes of *R tend to be more stop like. Usually the stop portion prevails, but sometimes the nasal one does, as in OP. In phonetic terms it is a question of timing. Where *t and *p are final in Dakotan they tend to become *r and *w, or, in practical terms [d] and [b] or [n] and [m]. As Bob reports, if [n] and [m] are preceded by an oral vowel, there can be some tendency to [dn] and [bm]. In *pr most languages tend to [bd] or [md] and even [d], which parallels the tendency of *R [nd] itself to become [d]. Where *s^r > *s^R and this appears as s^n it may be no accident that this is encountered as hn > n. Perhaps the phonetics of the cluster in these cases is essentially a breathy [nd], i.e., [hnd]. To some extent I suspect that what I analyze as *pr > *pR and *s^r > *s^R is really just a way of saying that *r tends to be longer and less *r-like - more stop-like - as the second element of a cluster. I don't know why *s^r should be more prone to this than *sr or *xr. As far as I know there are only three languages where *R in or out of clusters ends up contrasting with both *r and *t. Most places it becomes one or the other. But in Dakotan *R yields the l ~ d ~ n shibboleth, while in OP it is n before oral vowels and in Winnebago it is /d/ (often written "t") which is distinct from /r/ and from /-j^- ~ -c^/ which is the reflex of *t. In Osage *R merges with *t. In Ioway-Otoe it merges with *r. This is essentially what happens outside of Mississippi Valley, too. The extent to which and appearance of a contrast like *r : *R : *t seems to endure until the very last minute, only to resolve into something like *r : *t just before we make it's acquaintance is something of a clue. In effect *R is the cases where *r is more *t-like, and these cases represent a particular set of environments for *r - initial position and certain cluster-final positions. Or, think of *R as something like Dakotan l, etc. Teton l is an alternate form of t in final position, the position where *t becomes more *r-like, and an alternate form of y (*r) after b and s^ and in initial position, contexts where *r becomes more *t-like. It's true that there are initial cases of *r before oral vowels that appear as *r, not *R, but these are mostly cases where there is a frequent set of prefixes. So when we get *r > y initially in Dakotan, this is with inalienable nouns or with verbs, where there are (C)V prefixes alternating with zero in front of the *r. Perhaps this originally led to *r = [n] ~ [nd] alternations, but it looks like the *r-like range won out when there were prefixes. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Nov 3 20:20:44 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:20:44 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Nov 3 20:14:49 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:14:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W and R Message-ID: I'll take this on when I return. I'm in GA this week at my 50th high school reunion. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson Sent: Wed 11/1/2006 9:24 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Funny W and R Bob wrote: > In favor of your idea of CN with a nasal release, I think you'll find in Riggs a notation that he heard Dakota (D-dialect) words /ob/ and comparable sequences as phonetically [obm] on occasion. I included that in the paper I did at the Chicago SCLC 4 or 5 years ago. That's very interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. > I don't think it matters one way or the other whether we postulate w/rN, Nr/w, or Hr/w, w/rH as long as there are no conflicting correspondence sets. What I'm writing as N or H (=h/?) here are all equally just "features" right now. [...] > I still think the "solutions" are all pretty much notational variants and can't really agree that one feature is more "natural" (or economical . . . whatever) in these instances. If we are only concerned about the existence of the particular correspondence sets, then W and R are sufficient. But if we start postulating things like w/rN vs. Nw/r or w/rH vs. Hw/r, then we are talking about the mechanics of production, which is a perfectly valid question and one which has bearing on the possibilities for the historical development of correspondence sets as well. We're a bit limited, and easily prejudiced, by the algebraic nature of our alphabetic representation system. In the case of continuants like w and r combined with nasality or aitchiness, we actually have features occurring independently at at least two of three different locations, which can be in any temporal order, including simultaneous. What we really need is a more analogue representation system that can be handled separately at each independent level. Thus, (going off on a tangent here to set up a framework for discussions) we might try: Nasal N N N N Oral r r r w w w r Laryngeal H H H H which represents seven sample sounds: Nr, rN, nasal-r, Hw, wH, aspirated-w, and finally nasal-aspirated-r. To make this analogue, however, we need to let the symbols continue arbitrarily long, so as to be able to show relative timing: Nasal NNNNN Oral rrrr Laryngeal HHHHH This would show an aitchy r, with the aitchiness starting just before the r, with nasalization added to the whole thing halfway through, and the nasalization continuing for some time after both the r and the aitchiness have ended together. Liquid or semivowel type things, as well as vowels, are pretty independent of what goes on nasally and laryngeally. Stops are not. Making a stop implies that both nasal and oral passages are closed, and the stoppage of the air flow will interfere with laryngeal production as well if the stoppage is prolonged. Nasal Oral TTTT*eeee TTTT*eeee TT*eeee Laryngeal VVVV HH VVVV HHHVV The above give possible representations of tte, hte, and tHe, respectively. V in the laryngeal track stands for voicing, T in the oral track stands for full alveolar closure, and vowel is represented by the appropriate letter in the oral track. Note that a stop is asymmetrical, in that it has a characteristic click only upon release. I mark this click with *. The click is the one element that cannot be extended. This lets us write nasal consonants a little differently. Nasal NNNNN Oral TTTTiiii Laryngeal VVVVVVVV This is how we might represent ni, for 'water', in Omaha. The first part has full alveolar closure, followed by i. It's all voiced, and at least the alveolar closure part is all nasal, with nasality probably extending a bit beyond it. If we hear it as niN, then the nasality extends just about all the way to the end of the vowel. The shift from a nasal vowel to a stop requires both oral and nasal passages to close at about the same time. Ideally, it should be: Nasal NNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV to get aNba, where P in the oral track means full labial closure. However, closing both nasal and oral passages at exactly the same instant is dicey, leading to a range of pronunciations between Nasal NNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we may hear as aba (since oral vowels seem to be more prominent than nasal ones), and Nasal NNNNN Oral aaaaPPP*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV which we will definitely hear as aNmba. Hence, we will tend to get epenthetic mb/mp or nd/nt combinations anywhere that we have clearly defined nasal vowels immediately preceding a labial or alveolar stop. Now let's look at what I mean by a nasally-released stop. Nasal *NN Oral aaaaPPPPaaaa Laryngeal VVVV VVVV This is what we might write as apm^a (where m^ means voiceless m). The key point is that the stop is released into the nasal passage rather than the oral one. The click of the stop is in the same (nasal) place for any nasally-released stop. This is entirely different from simply a stop followed by a random nasal, such as, say, igmu: Nasal NNNNNN Oral iiiiKK*.PPuuuu Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVVVV where K in the oral track means full velar closure and . in the oral track means a minimal unformed vowel or schwa. Our standard alphabetic representation system can't easily distinguish between: Nasal NNNN Oral TTT*.TTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVVV and Nasal *NNNN Oral TTTTTTTaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVVVVV , both of which we would probably write dna. The former has an orally released stop followed by a nasal consonant in the same location, from which it is unavoidably separated by oral release-click and schwa before the tongue can return to full alveolar closure again. The latter is a nasally-released stop in which full alveolar closure is never relaxed until after the nasal consonant has been expressed. So if we suppose that *W and *R involved any sort of combination of nasal consonant and stop, we have three distinct options, not just two. We can have nasal consonant preceding oral stop; we can have nasal consonant following oral stop; or we can have nasally-released stop. The first two possibilities are clusters; the latter is a single phoneme. I would imagine (this is not necessary to the argument) that *W and *R were originally tense and unvoiced, and that the various reflexes came about from weakening them in order to spit them out more easily. So let's try a well-known word: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV which gives us RakHota, assuming *R is a tense, voiceless, nasally-released stop. The shift from the initial stop to the following vowel is marked separately in the three different tracks. In the nasal track, it is marked by briefly opening the nasal passage to allow the release-click. In the oral track, it is marked by releasing full alveolar closure. And in the larygeal track, it is marked by shifting from voiceless to voiced. To reduce duration of the stop, we want to make these transitions happen sooner. The first step in weakening the initial stop would be to reduce the length of time the stop is held: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV HHVVV VVVV This allows voicing to spread back from the vowel even to the full stop (optional): Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV The nasal release may take place sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Finally, given that there is no explosive release-click in the oral passage, the shift from full closure to vowel may be slow and sloppy. The tongue might maintain only partial closure once the nasal release-click has occurred, which would mark the place of the full closure, but would no longer prevent speech breath from leaking through. In this case, the most likely actualization of lax alveolar closure would be an l. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant would be a rapid glide: td*nl. It would be rather unstable, and the likely spinoffs would be the four consonants t, d, n, and l. One route would be to reduce the oral track from the front, and/or allow the nasal release sooner: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNNN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Going this route, opening the nasal passage eventually occurs before alveolar closure. This eliminates the stop altogether, and we are left with an initial consonant that sounds pretty much like n. The residual nasalized l will probably be dropped in analogy with pre-existent [n], and in the interest of making that consonant even shorter: Nasal NNN Oral TTaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This gives us nakHota. Another route would be to bring the relaxing of the tongue forward in the oral track with respect to the nasal release. Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NN Oral TTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Following this route, oral release eventually catches up to nasal release. If the vowel follows quickly after the lax l, the l will be blown apart by the new oral explosion that replaces the nasal release-click: Nasal NN Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This renders the nasal release accoustically much less relevant, and it may be dropped: Nasal Oral TT*aaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV This leaves us with dakHota. Finally, the lax oral l may entirely replace full alveolar closure, while never being allowed to precede the nasal opening. This would imply that most of the reduction takes place in front on the oral track: Nasal *NNN Oral TTTTlaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal *NNN Oral TTllaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV HHVVV VVVV Nasal NNN Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV At this point, the initial consonant is a nasalized l. Nasalization might be dropped to give us: Nasal Oral llaaaaKK*ooooTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV HHVVV VVVV or lakHota. In short, to reduce a nasally-released stop, we have three likely paths: 1. The nasal passage opens early, before the oral passage closes. This gives us a nasal consonant (m, n). 2. The oral passage opens earlier with respect to opening of the nasal passage, leading to an oral release. The result is an oral stop (p/b, t/d). 3. The oral closure weakens after nasal release. The beginning of the stop is reduced up to the point of weakening, so that it is marked orally only by the semivowel or liquid that replaced its tail. The result is a nasalized version of that weak consonant, in which the nasalization may go away: (w, l). The reflexes we get repeatedly across Siouan, as I understand, are [p,b,m,w] <*W and [t,d,n,l] <*R. Perhaps there are other possible phonotactic routes to explain the reflexes of *W and *R. If so, I would propose trying to analyze them in the manner I've done here for the nasally-released stop hypothesis. I'd also like to invite criticism of my own analysis from anyone who's actually made it this far! Rory From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Fri Nov 3 21:58:25 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 15:58:25 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) > For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. That [*mw and *nr] is in reference to John's [*W = *mb, *R = *nd], right? Or do you mean that you would accept *mw and *nr as phonological instantiations of *W and *R, while favoring laryngeals as conditioning their origin? (Don't feel you have to answer now-- I'm perfectly happy to wait till next week. Have a good time in Georgia!) Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boris at terracom.net Sat Nov 4 01:33:02 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 19:33:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Rankin, Robert L Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 2:21 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu; siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.26/516 - Release Date: 11/3/2006 2:20 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.26/516 - Release Date: 11/3/2006 2:20 PM From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Sat Nov 4 01:54:22 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 19:54:22 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these >> sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would >> challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? > Distributionally, I don't think nasally release stops are particularly > common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ > common compared to prensalized stops. Bob's example of forms like /ob/ as > [obm] and, hypothetically /el/ as [edn], are more common, but notice that > these follow oral vowels, whereas *R and *W precede vowels, generally oral > ones. In fact, with only a very few exceptions *R and *W are strictly > word initial. Alright, that sets up three considerations: 1. Nasally released stops are relatively rare (world-wide?); 2. Almost all *W and *R are word initial; 3. The vowel following *W or *R is usually oral. I don't think the first is a problem. We're dealing with a specific case, not a probability. World-wide, clicks are rare too, but that doesn't deter their presence in Khoi-San. Considerations 2 and 3 apply to any possible reconstruction. It's probably easiest to suppose that after *W and *R were established in the proto-language, all word interior cases and all cases preceding a nasal vowel merged with other phonemes, perhaps *w and *r or *p and *t. Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? Consideration 3 is one that might raise a problem for the nasally released stop model. If the stop is released nasally, wouldn't we expect the following vowel to be more likely nasal than oral? My defense here would be that a nasally released stop is about the nasal click, not the nasal sonority. In a couple of previous postings, I suggested that the stop and the nasal click itself may have been voiceless, with the nasal opening quickly closed again before the main voicing of the following vowel. If the following vowel were nasal, however, nasality would have extended from the click to the end of the vowel. Voicing would have followed nasality back to its beginning and into the stop, leaving the stop itself as a rump prefix to what is now primarily a nasal consonant. The rump is dropped, and we are left with m or n, which is presumably construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: Nasal *NN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV A nasally released stop before an oral vowel. The nasal opening is brief, and the nasal consonant is unvoiced. The sequence is phonologically unique, and fairly stable. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVV A nasally released stop before a nasal vowel. Nasalization is prolonged, and mostly in synch with vocalization. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV Vocalization extends back to support the entire nasal sequence. Now we have a clear n sound preceded by a stop that has no purpose but to set up a nasal click before the n that is replacing it in phonological prominence. Nasal *NNNNNNN Oral TTTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV The duration of the stop erodes to a bare nubbin to support the click, allowing the word to be spoken more quickly. Nasal NNNNNNNN Oral TTaaaaaa Laryngeal VVVVVVVV The stop and the click finally disappear. We are left with a bare n (or nasalized *r). Hence, it may be that placing a nasal vowel after a nasally released stop will tend to destroy the stop and replace it with the corresponding nasal consonant. You might try pronouncing these sequences to test them. My sense is that a nasally released consonant before an oral vowel is about as distinctive and stable as a glottalized stop, but that if you try it before a nasal vowel the stop will tend to be replaced by the corresponding nasal consonant. If this is correct, then I think that that rule might account for why *W and *R are seldom followed by nasal vowels. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Nov 6 08:30:08 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 01:30:08 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > I don't think the first is a problem. We're dealing with a specific case, > not a probability. World-wide, clicks are rare too, but that doesn't deter > their presence in Khoi-San. Still, we don't usually hypothesize them when they are not attested in the daughter languages. > Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R > and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the > other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently > distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically > pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan > positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the > interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? I wondered if this case was bothering you, since you mentioned it earlier. This is pretty much the major case of "word internal" *W. Of course, it is word internal mainly by the grace of how we now analyze and write the elements involved. My take on this is that akha and ama < *akha and *aWa are the result of lumping two elements following a noun into one: nu=akha 'the man' < *pro-a=kha nu=ama 'the men' < *pro-a=Wa My gloss for ama above is farily notional. It is awkward to add or "the moving man" or to write "the slightly off topic/newly topicalized man." Historically I believe these forms both involve an underlying *pro-a, with an appended -a, analogous in structure to Dakotan relict forms like he-(y)a 'louse', wiN-(y)a(N) 'woman', iN-(y)a(N) 'stone', thi-(y)a=ta 'in (the) dwelling', etc., not to mention s^uNk-a. The same morpheme appears as =ra 'the' in Winnebago hee=ra 'the louse', etc. And, of course, it also appears inOP tti-a=di 'in(to) (the) dwelling', tti-a=tta 'to(ward) (the) dwelling'. That is, in all these forms we see an old thematic element -a added to the stem. This element is mostly lost in modern morphology, but it is preserved in Dakotan when the thematic form has replaced the underlying form (heya replaces he, except in compounds, etc.) or when something else follows, as with Dakotan thiyata or OP nu=(a)kha or tti-(a)di. Sometimes it becomes a morpheme itself - or remains one? - as in Winnebago. So, the element following *pro-a > OP nu-a is either *kha or *Wa. I don't have any concrete explanation for these elements in terms of obviosu correspondents in other branches. A simple match like PreDakotan *k-ha and *Wa would be nice of course! I assume that some sort of highly reduced morpheme sequence is a possibility instead. Assuming something matching the other languages is a desideratum, how about: *kha < *k(iN)-ha *Wa < *p(i) -ha About all I can say in defense of these is that (a) an element A1 he, A2 s^e, A3 -- is found after the obviative articles, even =ma obviative collective, which is =ma=s^e in vocatives addresed to collected groups, and (b) we see -p acting like *W in Dakotan, in forms like hakab 'afterward'. In these -b cases I think the usual assumption is that -b derives from =pha, not =pi, I think, and I'm not trying to contradict that, only argue that -p(h)# in Dakotan comes out like *W. If there's anything in these latter musings, it would mean that forms like nu=akha and nu=ama derive from something like *pro-a=k(i)=ha and *pro-a=p(i)=ha with quite a stack-up of enclitic elements. I'd have to assume that *pro-a=pi was well on the way to becomming *Ro-a=W by the time the =ha (or whatever it is - ha 'declarative'?) was added (for whatever reason). I also have to assume that a fairly verbal style of presenting nouns was once the norm in Dhegiha. (Before you object, think of people who say "(if) you know what I'm saying" after every new topic sentence (?) in English, usually reduced to /(fyu)na m se:n/ or /namse:n/.) I do have one possible confirmation for this. The quotative (or reportive) =ama could conceivably come from *a=pi=ha 'they say' via a=W=ha > ama. In this little exegesis it may have to think of *R and *W as d ~ n and b ~ m, but in a language where the unaspirated stops are t and p. This is pretty much the situation in Dakotan, for example. > Consideration 3 is one that might raise a problem for the nasally released > stop model. If the stop is released nasally, wouldn't we expect the > following vowel to be more likely nasal than oral? That's what I'm thinking. > construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: > > Nasal *NN > Oral TTTTTaaaaaa > Laryngeal VVVVVV I'm thinking more along the lines of Nasality Tier N | Segmental Tier # C V [+ resonant] R V n u In effect "orality" spreads outward from oral vowels and pushes into the inherently nasal resonants, producing prenasalized stops initially, and, presumably, in the reverse fashion, post-nasalized stops finally. This helps explain how *pr "bd" becomes *R "nd" If we think of "bd" as essentially "md" then the difference between md and nd is basically one of assimilation of place in "md." The asimilation occurs most easily in strict initial position (in nouns) and least easily in internal position (in stem initials of verbs). Where md occurs in first persons the environment is somewhat intermediate - and there's a reason to be more aware of the m- - so we get preservation of md (now bdh) in OP, etc., and loss in Chiwere and Winnebago. Incidentally, the same languagfes that tend t reduce *pr to *R in cases with a following oral vowel tend to reduce *pr to just n before nasal vowels, e.g., *pr > nu, to, etc., 'male' (also inthe homophonpus root 'potato') and *priN > niN 'water'. Dakotan, which keeps *pr as bl across the board has mniN 'water'. And, of course, when A => iN before ktA IRREALIS, you get ble 'I go' changing (historically) to mniN as in mniN=kte 'I will go'. So, *r and *R and *w and *W end up contrasting sets, and it helps to think of them in that sense, but, to a fair extent, *r and *R and *w and *W may not have been contrasting sets in Proto-Mississippi Valley. The difference between the "normal" and "funny" resonants is that the latter have been subject to a morphologically significant and analogically revised set of sound changes that draw them closer to the corresponding stops, but not always all the way. In many cases some stops (e..g, final ones in Dakotan, or initial ones in *Cr clusters) get drawn into the *R/W pattern from the other direction. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Nov 6 08:37:00 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 01:37:00 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <006901c6ffb1$2ba3fee0$38ea5442@alscom> Message-ID: On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Alan Knutson wrote: > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and > *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like > resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> > *W and **raNr.. > *R I think that's pretty much what Bob is saying when he traces *W and *R to *wa-w... and *wa-r... However, I don't think he requires them to be nasal. I'm not clear how much of the behavior of *W and *R is due to this sort of ancestry in all cases. It is clearly the case with places where *pr > *R within Mississippi Valley. However, it is not clear that all *R and *W have this sort of explanation. Perhaps they all reflect some sort of lost initial element preceding *w and *r. In spite of the OP evolution of *W and *R as m and n, I don't think we need to assume a nasal vowel in a hypothetical lost prefixal element *CV-. In fact, as long as we are assuming that *CV- is *wa- we would have trouble justifying a nasal vowel here. But we do know that there are Siouan languages which lack nasal vowels (Hidatsa) and which nasalize all initial resonants, at least in principle. From boris at terracom.net Mon Nov 6 13:11:33 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 07:11:33 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Similar to Korean where word initial 'r' is pronounced 'n'. Ie. Pres Roh pronounced Noh. Alan K -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Koontz John E Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 2:37 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, Alan Knutson wrote: > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and > *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like > resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> > *W and **raNr.. > *R I think that's pretty much what Bob is saying when he traces *W and *R to *wa-w... and *wa-r... However, I don't think he requires them to be nasal. I'm not clear how much of the behavior of *W and *R is due to this sort of ancestry in all cases. It is clearly the case with places where *pr > *R within Mississippi Valley. However, it is not clear that all *R and *W have this sort of explanation. Perhaps they all reflect some sort of lost initial element preceding *w and *r. In spite of the OP evolution of *W and *R as m and n, I don't think we need to assume a nasal vowel in a hypothetical lost prefixal element *CV-. In fact, as long as we are assuming that *CV- is *wa- we would have trouble justifying a nasal vowel here. But we do know that there are Siouan languages which lack nasal vowels (Hidatsa) and which nasalize all initial resonants, at least in principle. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 6 15:21:24 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 09:21:24 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <006901c6ffb1$2ba3fee0$38ea5442@alscom> Message-ID: Alan, > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R It sounds like you have some ideas about this. Would you be willing to share? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 7 16:48:58 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 10:48:58 -0600 Subject: Positionals Message-ID: You might want to start with the bibliography at the end of: The History and Development of Siouan Positionals. In Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, 57:202-227 (2004). I used a lot of synchronic grammars and text collections as sources. I also short-changed Crow and Hidatsa for lack of information at the time. John and Randy are happily remedying this as we speak. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of shokooh Ingham Sent: Thu 11/2/2006 4:14 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Positionals Dear Siouanists, Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put something together on positionals in Siouan. We have information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can help from those or other languages, we would be grateful. The positional so called are elements which refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals for different noun classes of a similar type. So this type of distinction can be shown in various word classes. We would be grateful for any contributions Bruce Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From boris at terracom.net Tue Nov 7 17:04:14 2006 From: boris at terracom.net (Alan Knutson) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 11:04:14 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Currently I am thinking along the lines of a phoneme with the following distribution (using R as a cover term for these resonants) : R > n/ #__ V[-nas] r/ #__ V[+nas] r elsewhere This would be similar in some ways to the Korean distribution (n initial, r elsewhere) and also to some groups in South and Central America (if I remember correctly). There also has been an r/n alternation reconstructed for some archaic stem forms in I-E. So perhaps one doesn't have to go to far afield. It also indicates that it might be useful to look at the exceptions to this type of distribution to see what information they might give. Alan K -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Rory M Larson Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 9:21 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W Alan, > Just a thought here, could it be possible that these two sets, *W and *R, are the result of the loss of a nasal vowel between two like resonants with the nasal feature being retained. For example **waNw...> *W and **raNr.. > *R It sounds like you have some ideas about this. Would you be willing to share? Rory -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 11/4/2006 5:30 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.13.32/523 - Release Date: 11/7/2006 1:40 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From okibjonathan at yahoo.com Wed Nov 8 01:49:01 2006 From: okibjonathan at yahoo.com (Jonathan Holmes) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 17:49:01 -0800 Subject: Moon phases Message-ID: Can anyone translate for me the Lakota names for the moon's phases? Euro-Americans see the moon - and identify the phases as: New Moon Waxing Crescent Half Moon Waxing Gibbous Full moon Waning Gibbous (the other half) Half moon (the other half) Waning crescent (The other half) As I understand it, "waxing" means growing or approaching full moon, "waning" means shrinking or receding from full moon, and "gibbous" means full bodied or bulging half moon. At some point, I was listening to some Lakota elders discuss this.....but all I caught was Islayata hanhepi wi (or "right sided moon"). Presuming that Lakota culture may not have a use for all the "phases" that I have described above.....what would be the traditional way to describe the moon phases in Lakota language? Be a friend... Help support the Lakota Communities on Pine Ridge, go to: http://FriendsofPineRidgeReservation.org --------------------------------- Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ti at fa-kuan.muc.de Wed Nov 8 08:56:47 2006 From: ti at fa-kuan.muc.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?A.W._T=FCting?=) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 09:56:47 +0100 Subject: Moon phases In-Reply-To: <20061108014901.91476.qmail@web50911.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: That's what Bruce is giving in his dictionary: wit'e [wit??] - new moon ('dead moon') wi lech?la (lec?la?) - early crescent moon wi ?khiseya - first quarter moon (but Buechel: w?okhiseya(?) - okh?seya - half) wi mim?kanyela [wi mim?kxaNyela] - full first quarter moon (B: monn between First quarter and Full Moon, i.e., when it is gibbous) wi mim? - the Full Moon wi makatahan [ wi makx?taNhaN] - full third quarter moon (B: the moon between Full Moon and Third Quarter) wi yaspapi [wi yas^p?pi] - third quarter moon (B: w?yas^papi(?)) wi t'inkta kanyela [wi t??Nkta kxaNyela] - moon between third quarter and new moon ("near to be dying") (kok'eluta [kok??luta] - full moon red in the morning) Alfred Am 08.11.2006 um 02:49 schrieb Jonathan Holmes: > Can anyone translate for me the Lakota names for the moon's phases?? > > Euro-Americans see the moon - and?identify the phases as: > New Moon > Waxing Crescent > Half Moon > Waxing Gibbous > Full moon > Waning Gibbous (the other half) > Half moon (the other half) > Waning crescent (The other half) From johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de Wed Nov 8 09:36:47 2006 From: johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de (Johannes Helmbrecht) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:36:47 +0100 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: <20061102221452.16913.qmail@web26814.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Caroline, dear Bruce, excuse me for not responding earlier to your inquiry. Of course, I am willing to provide the desired Hocank data with respect to positionals. Unfortunately, I have no ready to distribute paper on this topic in Hocank. So, perhaps, some general remarks on the positionals in Hocank will help for the beginning; illustrating data have to be extracted then from our text corpus later on. 1) The positionals are frequently employed as auxiliaries together with a full verb [V + POS]. In this construction, they indicate either progressive aspect, or the spatial position (sitting, standing, lying) of the transitve/ intransive subject (S/A in typological terms), or both. 2) They are personally inflected for S/A, but the conjugation pattern varies between the first conjugation (quite regular), second conjugation (regular, too) and some irregular mixture of of both. We find cases in which only the full verb is inflected in this construction, we find cases in which V and POS are both inflected, and we find cases in which only POS is inflected. I have to admit that I did not find a rationale for the distribution of the personal inflection among V and POS yet. 3) The positionals can also be used as auxiliaries with a nominal predicate indicating the spatial position of S, but this usage is rather rare and dispreferred by speakers. Clauses with non-verbal predicates are usually formed with other auxiliaries of 'being' 4) Besides the three basic positional auxiliaries, =naNk (sitting), =jee/ =jaa (standing), and =ak/aNk (lying), there is a fourth one =naNaNk (with a long nasalized vowel)for 3PL, but without any spatial meaning (this semantic component seems to be neutralized in this form). 5) All four positionals are combined with deictic affixes to produce demonstrative pronouns distinguishing proximate and distal, sitting/ lying/ standing, and sg and pl. These demonstratives can be used as nominal attributes (determiners), or as independent referential expressions, i.e. heads of a NP. 6) These demonstratives can also be used as relative pronouns indicating both, the spatial position of the S/A of the relative clause, and progressive aspect of the predicate of the relative clause. I guess these are the essentials with regard to positionals in Hocank. I'll tell you, if further important aspects of the positionals in Hocank come to my mind. Best, Johannes Datum: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 22:14:52 +0000 (GMT) Antwort an: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Von: shokooh Ingham An: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Betreff: Positionals > Dear Siouanists, > Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put > something together on positionals in Siouan. We have > information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but > are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder > whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is > aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can > help from those or other languages, we would be > grateful. The positional so called are elements which > refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or > physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota > uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya > 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items > which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally > arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this > sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and > even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that > Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals > for different noun classes of a similar type. So this > type of distinction can be shown in various word > classes. We would be grateful for any contributions > > Bruce > > > Send instant messages to your online friends > http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com -- Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht Universit?t Regensburg Institut f?r Medien-, Informations- und Kulturwissenschaft (IMIK) Universit?tsstr. 31 93053 Regensburg Tel.: ++49(0)941 943-3388 ++49(0)941 943-3387 (Sekr. Frau Stitz) Fax: ++49(0)941 943-2429 E-Mail: johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 8 17:36:05 2006 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 17:36:05 +0000 Subject: Positionals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks Bob Bruce --- "Rankin, Robert L" wrote: > You might want to start with the bibliography at the > end of: > > > The History and Development of Siouan Positionals. > In Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, > 57:202-227 (2004). > > > > I used a lot of synchronic grammars and text > collections as sources. I also short-changed Crow > and Hidatsa for lack of information at the time. > John and Randy are happily remedying this as we > speak. > > > > Bob > > > ________________________________ > > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of > shokooh Ingham > Sent: Thu 11/2/2006 4:14 PM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Positionals > > > > Dear Siouanists, > Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put > something together on positionals in Siouan. We > have > information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but > are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder > whether anyone can help. Obviously this enquiry is > aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone > can > help from those or other languages, we would be > grateful. The positional so called are elements > which > refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or > physical shape of items, rather in the way that > Lakota > uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and > hiyeya > 'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items > which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally > arranged and numerous. In Mandan I notice that this > sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and > even in verbs by suffix. By comparison I know that > Yurok has a distinction of different forms of > numerals > for different noun classes of a similar type. So > this > type of distinction can be shown in various word > classes. We would be grateful for any > contributions > > Bruce > > > Send instant messages to your online friends > http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com > > > > Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 15:21:09 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:21:09 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: <01b001c7028e$c57773a0$05eb5442@alscom> Message-ID: Alan wrote: > Currently I am thinking along the lines of a phoneme with the following distribution (using R as a cover term for these resonants) : R > n/ #__ V[-nas] r/ #__ V[+nas] r elsewhere This would be similar in some ways to the Korean distribution (n initial, r elsewhere) and also to some groups in South and Central America (if I remember correctly). There also has been an r/n alternation reconstructed for some archaic stem forms in I-E. So perhaps one doesn't have to go to far afield. It also indicates that it might be useful to look at the exceptions to this type of distribution to see what information they might give. So if I'm reading your notation correctly, we originally have one phoneme *R. R -> r everywhere except initially before a non-nasal vowel, in which case it goes to n. Is that a correct restatement? If so, I have two general questions. 1. Do the distribution sets support the idea that *R and *r could be allophones in Siouan? I understand that *R is usually initial, and usually precedes an oral vowel. Does *r occur in this position as well? If so, could such words be explained as cases where the initial *r was once either preceded by another syllable or followed by a nasal vowel? 2. In modern languages like Korean that show this allophonic distribution, exactly what is the phonological nature of these sounds? I would imagine that either the "n" or the "r" would probably be a nasalized tapped r. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 17:11:26 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:11:26 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> Being rare and distinctive would be an advantage to preserving *W and *R >> and keeping them from merging sporadically with other sets. If, on the >> other hand, they were pre-nasalized stops, then what would consistently >> distinguish them in their reflex pattern from all the epenthetically >> pre-nasalized interior stops following nasal vowels? If the Dhegihan >> positional *aWa' was actualized as *ampa' or *amba', why wouldn't the >> interior consonant in 'day', *aN'pa or *aN'ba, have developed as *a'Wa ? > > I wondered if this case was bothering you, since you mentioned it earlier. > This is pretty much the major case of "word internal" *W. Of course, it > is word internal mainly by the grace of how we now analyze and write the > elements involved. My take on this is that akha and ama < *akha and *aWa > are the result of lumping two elements following a noun into one: > > nu=akha 'the man' < *pro-a=kha > nu=ama 'the men' < *pro-a=Wa [...] It's not the Dhegihan *aWa case that's bothering me. I agree that *aWa is almost certainly recently derived from two separate morphemes, *a + *Wa, which would make *W originally initial in that case too, and I don't think I have any disagreements with any of the material you presented in support of that view. What I'm having trouble with is visualizing how *W could have been *mb and *R *nd without their respective reflexes getting mixed up across Siouan with the reflexes of internal stops preceded by nasal vowels. Epenthetically, I think we have many effective cases of mp/mb and nt/nd in words such as 'day', 'moccasin', or 'face'. My question is: Why were these sounds never reinterpreted as *W and *R to give us, e.g., OP a'ma/Os ha'pa/La. awe'tu for 'day', OP hime'/Os hape'/La. ha'wa for 'moccasin', or OP ine'/Os itse'/La. ile' for 'face', if mb = *W and nd = *R and the originals of these terms were actually pronounced something like *(h)aNmpa, *haNmpa, and *iNnte' ? I see only three avenues to wriggle out of the problem here, and none of them is very satisfying to me: 1. There is a voicing difference in the stop that prevents any confusion. Hence, internal mp is never confused with mb, and internal nt is never confused with nd. 2. The nasality of the vowel was kept so strictly separate from the following stop that epenthetic mp and nt never occurred internally. 3. The speakers of all Siouan languages throughout history, so far as we can tell, systematically distinguished word-initial sounds from equivalent word-interior sounds, and for *mp and *nt regularly reduced the former rather than the latter. I did originally consider the idea of pre-nasalized stops for *W and *R, but I found the issue of internal epenthetic developments, and consequent confusion between the two sets, to be too much of a problem. It was after that that the idea of nasally-released stops first occurred to me. These would still give us the basic nasal and stop features we would like, while staying completely distinct and distinguishable from the matter of internal nasal vowel followed by stop consonant. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 13 17:18:23 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:18:23 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> construed as a nasal allomorph of *w or *r. Thus, e.g.: >> >> Nasal *NN >> Oral TTTTTaaaaaa >> Laryngeal VVVVVV > > I'm thinking more along the lines of > > Nasality Tier N > | > Segmental Tier # C V > [+ resonant] > R V > n u John, could you give a legend for this? Obviously, we're using a somewhat different tier structure here, and I'm not sure I can follow your argument at this point without more of an explanation for the symbols you're using. Thanks, Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Nov 13 22:59:49 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:59:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Thai has all three, l, r, n, in different contexts. One of our grad students who kept a pretty hefty accent in her English used to regale us with her rendition of "phonological rules", which was "phonorogican lunes" [fonorajikan lu:nz]. (n>n, l>r, r>n, but not in that order). On a more serious note, Siouan already has complementarity among l, r, n, d in languages like Crow, so I think any such distribution of W/R would have run afoul of preexisting alternations. A couple of weeks ago I provisionally expressed a willingness to go with /mb/ and /nd/ as single phonemes. These would have to be single units, not clusters, and such segments are not terribly common, especially in the eastern 2/3 of North America. They're found in the South Pacific, West Africa and perhaps South America mostly. I'm having strong second thoughts about positing them in Siouan at all. Siouan has real nasal vowels but no real nasal syllable codas -- all such codas are just offglides of nasal vowels preceding voiced stops. These generated (merely phonetic) nasal codas don't cause behavior like R or W. So I'd have to say that it's unlikely W and R were like them. Maybe relative chronology could help, but I'm still not very convinced. I think, at the moment, I prefer to stick to what we know plus a suspicion and ? or h are involved with funny R and W. I also generally feel that solutions that rely crucially on the "invisible superstructure" of phonology, like "tiers", "minus-alpha greek letter variables", etc. are not likely to prove useful, but that's just me. I used to infuriate some of my colleagues on the dictionary project with this attitude. Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. In modern languages like Korean that show this allophonic distribution, exactly what is the phonological nature of these sounds? I would imagine that either the "n" or the "r" would probably be a nasalized tapped r. From BARudes at aol.com Tue Nov 14 03:28:12 2006 From: BARudes at aol.com (Blair Rudes) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 22:28:12 EST Subject: Funny W Message-ID: I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe Saussure?s solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Having said that, I do not know if it will help further the discussion or not, but I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such roots. Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent from the Catawba data. But I would love to be proven wrong. In any event, the Catawba data would at least push the chronology back somewhat. Blair -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Nov 14 14:48:42 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 08:48:42 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Thai has all three, l, r, n, in different contexts. One of our grad students who kept a pretty hefty accent in her English used to regale us with her rendition of "phonological rules", which was "phonorogican lunes" [fonorajikan lu:nz]. (n>n, l>r, r>n, but not in that order). I wonder if the Thai phoneme is actually polymorphic, or if we just have trouble classifying it with our alphabet? How would we classify an alveolarly restrictive consonant that is lateral like [l], tapped like [r], and nasal like [n]? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 15:55:31 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:55:31 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Naw, they're really different sounds, I think. At least 2 of them contrast in other contexts; Thai has both /kr/ and /kl/ as phoneme clusters. > I wonder if the Thai phoneme is actually polymorphic, or if we just have trouble classifying it with our alphabet? How would we classify an alveolarly restrictive consonant that is lateral like [l], tapped like [r], and nasal like [n]? I'd have to hear one to decide. :-) Bob From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 16:00:07 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:00:07 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: Let me see what I can do about putting together a list. The ones from *wr may be difficult because there are many, but the more "mysterious" ones aren't all that numerous. Maybe John Koontz already has a comprehensive list -- he's spent quite a bit of time on this phenomenon. Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of BARudes at aol.com Sent: Mon 11/13/2006 9:28 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Funny W I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe Saussure's solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Having said that, I do not know if it will help further the discussion or not, but I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such roots. Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent from the Catawba data. But I would love to be proven wrong. In any event, the Catawba data would at least push the chronology back somewhat. Blair From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Tue Nov 14 16:27:37 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:27:37 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > I'm not as familiar as you and Bob are with the total distribution of these sets over Siouan. Could you suggest some actual problems that would challenge a nasally-released stop interpretation for *W and *R? Or which would favor an alternative interpretation? (If I'm understanding aright, you favor prenasal stops: *W = *mb, *R = *nd, while Bob favors laryngeal-semivowel clusters: *W = *?w/*hw, *R = *?r/*hr. Correct?) > For me these could be written *mw and *nr respectively. There are some problems in that these would have to be intermediate clusters. We don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan. Bob, is this what you meant when you said you had provisionally accepted *W = *mb, *R = *nd a couple of weeks ago? If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 14 19:45:02 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:45:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W Message-ID: > If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? "Slots" or "pigeon holes" would need to be open, of course, but there is a bigger problem. The reconstructions have to be made to jibe with what we know of the morphology. And there just aren't any prefixes that undergo syncope with the shape *pV or *tV. P and t are just not candidates for the ancestral form of bl-, br-, bdh-, etc. clusters (there aren't viable reconstructions with the dental at all. 'Cat' and 'squash', the only remote possibilities, are only found in some languages and likely diffused). The only good candidate is *w, because we have *wa- 'inanim. absolutive', wi- 'animate absolutive', wa- '1st sg. actor', etc., all of which undergo syncope. So we know of prefixal morphemes or portmanteaux with the shapes /wi, we, wa, wo, bu/ but not /pi, pe/ and the instrumentals /pa, po, pu/ don't undergo syncope or had different sources (with /W/). * /ti, te, ta, to, tu/ prefixes are equally unknown. Perhaps worst of all, the mysterious /W/ phonemes virtually all tend to fit with the 'absolutive' semantics. The only exception I can think of is our Dhegiha *-aWa, and it is restricted to a single subgroup and is of unknown origin. I would agree that it, and -akha, were bi-morphemic, but which two morphemes? The -ha of -akha is likely a variant of the same -he that we get in -the, -khe, athaNhe, niNkhe, niNkha, etc. But what about the rest? This would make a nice paper for whoever sorts it out. :-) Bob From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Wed Nov 15 01:03:47 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:03:47 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >> If we don't reconstruct *m, *n in Proto-Siouan, how about a reconstruction of *W = *pw, *R = *tr ? Would this slot be open? I think I should have asked this a little differently: *W < *pw, *R < *tr ? Or even *W < *wVw, *R < *rVr ? I.e., derived from, not necessarily equal to. > "Slots" or "pigeon holes" would need to be open, of course, but there is a bigger problem. The reconstructions have to be made to jibe with what we know of the morphology. And there just aren't any prefixes that undergo syncope with the shape *pV or *tV. [...] This morphemic argument is intriguing, but I need to level set a little to follow it. My understanding is that we have many cases of *R that arose within branches of Siouan from clusters like stop + *r. *W is less common, and some cases of both *R and *W apparently go back to proto-Siouan. I thought these were the cases referred to as "unexplained". If this is all correct, then I had meant the question only for the ones apparently going back to proto-Siouan or before. Do we know enough about pre-proto-Siouan phonology and morphology to limit what clusters could have existed in proto-Siouan or its near ancestors? If so, how? And are we assuming that all consonant clusters in proto-Siouan must be the result of syncope of a morphemic prefix? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Nov 15 05:57:01 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:57:01 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 BARudes at aol.com wrote: > I share with Bob a mistrust of abstract solutions to problems in historical > phonology; I would have been one of those skeptical folks who did not believe > Saussure?s solution to Indo-European vocalic alternations until the > discovery of the supporting Hittite data. Blair, I know you're not that old! > I would be happy to provide the (presumed) cognates in the Esaw and > Saraw dialects of Catawba, as well as Woccon, for the roots that show *R and *W > in Siouan if someone (Bob ?, John ?) would send me a complete list of such > roots. I can produce a few off the top of my head, thinking really in terms of Proto-Mississippi Valley. I'm not fully convinced *R and *W are distinctive in Siouan proper as a whole. Actually, anyone with an Omaha vocabulary source can produce the list using words that start with m or n followed by an oral vowel for *W and *R (where there is no bl- cognate for the *R form in Dakotan). Or any word that starts with d (recently usually written t) in Winnebago, for *R only. Or most b-words in Santee for *W, and most words with root-initial l ~ d ~ n in Dakotan for *R. *Wa= 'by cuting' (outer instrumental) *Wa 'snow' *We 'spring' (the season) *Wi 'sun, moon' (occasionally nasal, e.g., in Dhegiha) *Wo= 'by shooting' (outer instrumental) *Wo 'blackhaw' (? I need to verify this one) I think there's a 'boat' word in the *W's. *Ra= 'by heat, spontaneously' (outer instrumental) *Ra-ka 'to consider to be' (source of Dakotan diminutive?) *Re 'this' (sometimes *re) *Rek- 'mother's brother' *ReS- 'urine ~ urinate' (S = s ~ s^ ~ x) I think one of the usual Dhegiha clans, interpreted as 'ice' in Ponca is *Ruxe referring to some subtype of buffalo. Unfortunately, most of the easily remember n- examples in Omaha-Ponca are from *pr, e.g., nu 'man, male', nu 'potato', ne 'lake' (not the usual word in Omaha). Ditto for d-words in Winnebago, e.g., dok, do, de. > Based on the few such roots I am familiar with, I suspect that *R and *W > are internal Siouan developments that post-date the split of Siouan and > Catawban, and I do not think the conditioning factors will be apparent > from the Catawba data. This is why I tend to speculate about allophony. Incidentally, I don't mean anything like #mb or #nd with fully syllabic nasals, except (?) in Santee md for Teton bl. I gather nobody hears anything but bd today. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Nov 15 06:52:43 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:52:43 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > > I'm thinking more along the lines of > > > > Nasality Tier N > > | > > Segmental Tier # C V > > [+ resonant] > > R V > > n u > > John, could you give a legend for this? Obviously, we're using a somewhat > different tier structure here, and I'm not sure I can follow your argument > at this point without more of an explanation for the symbols you're using. It's just a stab at representing the notation of what used to be contemporary phonology, I'm afraid. It may not be current any more. The | is a link between tiers - just a line, really. The [ =/- feature] notation indicates presence (+) or absence (-) of a phonological feature. At one point all segments (more or less phonemes, but not arrived at by contrastive analysis) were resolved into sets of features, and there were knock-down, drag-out arguments over which ones to use and in how many languages. In this context I am just using it as a way of abstracting some common "feature" from several sounds, e.g., [+ nasal] characterizes nasal stops (m, n, etc.) and nasal vowels. Goldsmith's autosegmental arguments in the mid to late 1970s prompted interest in the idea of what he called autosegments. I believe he meant "sounds autonymous from - or independent of - regular segmental phonology." Goldsmith was interested in treating things like pitch accent, vowel harmony, and nasal spreading in terms of these autosegments - segments that spread across regular segments or occupied the same space as them but on a different tier or plain. He talked about non-linear phonology, meaning it seems to me "multi-linear" or "multi-tiered" phonology, not anything like what a mathematician would mean by non-linear. (Goldsmith seemed to have a genious for inappropriate and confusing coinages.) This was right about the time I took my last phonology course and privately abandoned any notion of looking for work that required me to keep up with this paticular kind of competitive dogma development. It seemed to me glancing up from Siouan at intervals that things rapidly went from the idea of using tiers inhabited by special autosegments that accounted for special "spreading" or "zonal" phenomena to treating all phonological systems as comprised of a theoretically defined set of tiers. I think people liked this approach because it made it easier to talk about stress accentuation in terms of feet, and also because it provided a great way of reducing things like coda and onset simplications to problems in symbolic logic. Modern linguists have always had a serious weakness for the argument from the logic of the notation. "The notation makes it really easy to express this, so the fact that it happens is a natural consequence of the fabric of the universe. QED." Maybe the Latin of this would be "argument ex notatio"? I've always preferred a simpler, conceivably heretical approach, which is to use the notation that makes it easy to describe what is happening and let someone else worry whether this meant it was a law of nature. In more formal terms (and I wasn't bent on achieving that above) there are certain set tiers in all segmental systems. A very tongue-in-cheek version of them would be: - syllables (little rows of sigmas linked to stuff above them) - syllables have onsets, cores (resonance peaks - usually vowels), and codas ('tails' - colas in the Teton dialect of Romance) - C V skeletons (which link up to the onsets, cores, and codas) - hand-waving tiers (this is where your spreading nasality goes) - the tier in which you place the actual segmental notation - the tier in which you write acute accents and breves if you are doing stress accent or H and L and maybe M if you are doing pitch accent Any professionals who are standing back gasping in horror or at least peeling their eyebrows out of their hairline should feel free to jump in and clarify this at any point. If you feel it should be done offline, and perhaps much of it should, please include both Rory and myself. I for one would be grateful. A reference or two and a basic synopsis wouldn't hurt on the list. === So, to get back to the actual point I was trying to make: Actually, what's missing here is a non-N (an O?) following the N and linking to the V. In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. If the word has an N attached to the following vowel "organically" then the effect is that r and w become n and m. If the first vowel is oral then the orality and nasality engage in a struggle for the soul of the r or w and settle on a compromise that sounds like nd or mb. Not "n-dah" and "m-bah" to parody the syllabic nasals of Swahili, but "raised n"-d and "raised m"-b - a much more subtle affect akin to speaking with a cold. The initial b of "bandaid" reduced to "mbadaid." In intervocalic positions there is no stray N of initial nasalization, and you get just plain r or w. I don't insist on either the details or the actual argument. I'm just looking for ways to explain what we see. I assume Proto-(MV)Siouan was a real language with a plausible, real phonology. I don't want to mistake PMV for one of the current languages or their phonologies, even if I appeal to those for cognate sets or as instances of plausible phonologies and plausible rules. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 20 01:41:49 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:41:49 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John, Thanks for the explanation of Goldsmith's segmental theory. That supplements what I was able to get from Wikipedia after our exchange previously, and is very helpful. Although I sort of follow the broad idea, I think I'm still missing an explanation of the specific symbols used. > So, to get back to the actual point I was trying to make: > > Actually, what's missing here is a non-N (an O?) following the N and > linking to the V. I had considered using something like that in the scheme I made up. I decided that it was easier to see the nasalization if I just left the non-nasal part of the tier blank. > In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an > automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. Do you mean just in proto-Siouan, or universally? > If > the word has an N attached to the following vowel "organically" then the > effect is that r and w become n and m. If the first vowel is oral then > the orality and nasality engage in a struggle for the soul of the r or w > and settle on a compromise that sounds like nd or mb. Not "n-dah" and > "m-bah" to parody the syllabic nasals of Swahili, but "raised n"-d and > "raised m"-b - a much more subtle affect akin to speaking with a cold. The > initial b of "bandaid" reduced to "mbadaid." > > In intervocalic positions there is no stray N of initial nasalization, and > you get just plain r or w. This cold-speak idea is fascinating, but I'm not sure that's actually nasalization you're describing here. The point of nasalization is that the sound goes out your nose, while the point of having a cold is to clog up the nasal passage and prevent that from happening. I think what you're actually touching on here is, first, that it is possible for vocalization to occur while a full stop is in place, and second, that that is not the normal way we make voiced stops. Try closing your mouth, pinching your nose, and then vocalizing. You can actually do it for up to a second or so before the air pressure above your vocal cords builds up enough to counteract what your diaphragm can produce from below. If you let it into your mouth, your cheeks puff up; if you let it into your nasal passage, the root of your nose expands; and if you keep it out of both areas, your throat swells. But you can do it. And it sounds weird. I think the subtle effect you describe for "bandaid" probably applies to the interior nd, but is not obligatory for the leading b, unless something nasal precedes it. When you hit a nasal consonant plus stop while suffering from a clogged nasal passage, you try to vocalize for the preceding nasal consonant, which is full oral closure, and now also full nasal closure, thanks to the clog. This produces the same weird sound derived experimentally above. It's a muffled, interior vocalization sound, which may well sound rather like a nasal, because a true nasal also muffles a sound by running it through a complicated set of interior channels. It may also be produced partly in the same place, insofar as it gets partway into the nasal cavity before it is stopped. This also means that I was wrong in supposing that voiced stop consonants are voiced all the way through. If I hold my hand on my throat and say DA-DA-DA-DA very slowly, I do not feel vocal vibration while the stop is in place. If I try forcing vocalization through it, I get the cold-speak sound you describe. The difference between a voiced and a voiceless stop seems not to be that the stop itself is voiced in the former, but that the release click is. Thus: Nasal Oral TTTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVV is /ta/, while Nasal Oral TTTT*aaaa Laryngeal VVVVV is /da/. Normal "bandaid" is Nasal NNNNN Oral PPPP*aaaaTTTTTTTT*eeeeTTTT* Laryngeal VVVVVVVVV VVVVV VV , while cold-speak "bandaid" is Nasal Oral PPPP*aaaaTTTTTTTT*eeeeTTTT* Laryngeal VVVVVVVVV VVVVV VV , retaining alveolar closure with vocalization, but losing the nasal escape. (Legend. Nasal: N - nasal passage open; blank - nasal passage closed. Oral: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click of a stop; a/e - the vowels. Laryngeal: V - vocal cords vibrating; blank - vocal cords not vibrating. ) > I'm just > looking for ways to explain what we see. I assume Proto-(MV)Siouan was a > real language with a plausible, real phonology. I don't want to mistake > PMV for one of the current languages or their phonologies, even if I > appeal to those for cognate sets or as instances of plausible phonologies > and plausible rules. I fully agree. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Nov 25 01:06:27 2006 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:06:27 -0700 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Rory M Larson wrote: > > In essence, I'm suggesting that all words get an > > automatic initial added N that only comes home to roost on r and w. > > Do you mean just in proto-Siouan, or universally? Just in certain Siouan languages, in some cases proto-languages, e.g., perhaps in Proto-Dakotan and perhaps in Pre-Omaha-Ponca. Apparently in Hidatsa. > This cold-speak idea is fascinating, but I'm not sure that's actually > nasalization you're describing here. The point of nasalization is that the > sound goes out your nose, while the point of having a cold is to clog up > the nasal passage and prevent that from happening. I've noticed this inconsistancy before and I believe that the resolution of it is that nasalization is not "air through the nose instead of the mouth" but "resonance in the nasal cavity as well as the oral cavity." Colds may not make it easier to breathe through the nose, but they certainly play hob with your ability to control which cavity is resonating. In particular, English speakers with colds tend to substitute voiced stops for nasal stops: "I'b cubbig id 'oo blow by dose." But the "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. From mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Sat Nov 25 17:19:26 2006 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu (Mark J Awakuni-Swetland) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:19:26 -0600 Subject: discourse analysis inquiry Message-ID: Aloha all, I have a graduate student who has inquired about some foundational readings in anthropological linguistics... discourse analysis. This is a bit out of my area. Does anyone on the List have any suggestions for us to coniser? You can contact me off-list if you wish. Many thanks. Mark Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Anthropology-Geography Ethnic Studies (Native American Studies) University of Nebraska-Lincoln 841 Oldfather Hall Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Office: 402-472-3455 FAX: 402-472-9642 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 27 15:01:18 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:01:18 -0600 Subject: Funny W In-Reply-To: Message-ID: John wrote: > But the > "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's > what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent > this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are > not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. That makes sense. I think using mb, nd, etc. with the caveat that the prenasalization is short and non-syllabic is quite clear. Of course, we'd still have the problem of these same sounds arising epenthetically in interior positions wherever a stop is preceded by a nasal vowel. If English orthography is a problem, we could represent these stops more precisely as: Nasal: N Oral: PPPP*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /mba/, and Nasal: N Oral: TTTT*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /nda/. (Nasal track: N - nasalization; Oral track: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click; a - the vowel; Laryngeal track: V - voicing.) These would be in contrast to my idea of nasally released stops: Nasal: *NN Oral: PPPPPaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /pm^a/, and Nasal: *NN Oral: TTTTTaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /tn^a/. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Mon Nov 27 20:28:50 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:28:50 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: Guys, I'd like to bring up the extreme distributional skewing of */mb/, */nd/ if you consider them distinct phonological segments. I explain the skewing as the interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials, i.e., morphological and phonological clusters. If we ignore the morphology and go with the unit phonemes (which I admit we're sort of doing using the symbols W and R), how do we explain why these units only occur in very narrowly defined contexts? Don't we already have enough trouble with /glottal stop/? Bob ________________________________ From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson Sent: Mon 11/27/2006 9:01 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: RE: Funny W John wrote: > But the > "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's > what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent > this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are > not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one. That makes sense. I think using mb, nd, etc. with the caveat that the prenasalization is short and non-syllabic is quite clear. Of course, we'd still have the problem of these same sounds arising epenthetically in interior positions wherever a stop is preceded by a nasal vowel. If English orthography is a problem, we could represent these stops more precisely as: Nasal: N Oral: PPPP*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /mba/, and Nasal: N Oral: TTTT*aaaaa Laryngeal: V VVVVVV for /nda/. (Nasal track: N - nasalization; Oral track: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click; a - the vowel; Laryngeal track: V - voicing.) These would be in contrast to my idea of nasally released stops: Nasal: *NN Oral: PPPPPaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /pm^a/, and Nasal: *NN Oral: TTTTTaaaaa Laryngeal: VVVV for /tn^a/. Rory From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Mon Nov 27 22:45:59 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:45:59 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Guys, > > I'd like to bring up the extreme distributional skewing of */mb/, */nd/ if you consider them distinct phonological segments. > > I explain the skewing as the interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials, i.e., morphological and phonological clusters. > > If we ignore the morphology and go with the unit phonemes (which I admit we're sort of doing using the symbols W and R), how do we > explain why these units only occur in very narrowly defined contexts? Don't we already have enough trouble with /glottal stop/? > > Bob Exactly what narrowly defined contexts are we talking about here? I understand that *W and *R are virtually all word-initial before oral vowels. Any other restrictions? I'd be very open to the idea that *W and *R result from an interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials. That seems like a very reasonable explanation of their origin. I don't think that should affect the question of their phonological configuration though, unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Tue Nov 28 20:39:02 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:39:02 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: > Exactly what narrowly defined contexts are we talking about here? I understand that *W and *R are virtually all word-initial before oral vowels. Any other restrictions? I haven't checked to see if the "oral" restriction is real. Seems strange to me that it would be, but it's up to the evidence. Altho' it might well be that you'd get /m/ and /n/ in the more nasal environment on a regular basis. > I'd be very open to the idea that *W and *R result from an interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials. That seems like a very reasonable explanation of their origin. I don't think that should affect the question of their phonological configuration though, unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. wa- 'absolutive' wi- 'absolutive' for many animates wa- '1st sg. actor' As I've said before, those would be my guesses. All three have tended to undergo syncope. *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Wed Nov 29 01:01:46 2006 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:01:46 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I haven't checked to see if the "oral" restriction is real. Seems strange to me that it would be, but it's up to the evidence. Altho' it might well be that you'd get /m/ and /n/ in the more nasal environment on a regular basis. That was my line of thought too, assuming the "oral" restriction is real. >> [...] unless we can also estimate just what the hypothetical prefixes and initials were. > wa- 'absolutive' > wi- 'absolutive' for many animates > wa- '1st sg. actor' > As I've said before, those would be my guesses. Then we'd also need the reactive initial(s). > All three have tended to undergo syncope. Yielding a stop, such as p ? Or do other values occur after the syncope? > *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Is this *w-r cluster leading to *wR actually attested as such, or do we only have cases where the *w has developed full oral closure, as in Dakotan blo/bdo/mdo situations? > Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. I like the idea of reduplication. Given the rather parallel nature of *W and *R, could both of them have arisen from syncope of *w- and *r- prefixes against an initial of the same type? I.e., *w-w > *W, *r-r > *R ? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rankin at ku.edu Wed Nov 29 03:18:27 2006 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:18:27 -0600 Subject: Funny W. More cold water. Message-ID: > wa- 'absolutive' > wi- 'absolutive' for many animates > wa- '1st sg. actor' > As I've said before, those would be my guesses. > All three have tended to undergo syncope. > Yielding a stop, such as p ? Or do other values occur after the syncope? [m] before /?/ or maybe nasal vowels [b] before /r/ (or l, d, dh, n, etc.) [p] before /h/, and voiceless obstruents such as /p, t, k, s, s^/ > *R is the second member of a *w-r cluster in many cases. Is this *w-r cluster leading to *wR actually attested as such, or do we only have cases where the *w has developed full oral closure, as in Dakotan blo/bdo/mdo situations? [b] and [m] are allophones or, in some languages, former allophones, of /w/. > Other instances aren't so clear, e.g., the doublet demonstratives, *re: and *Re:. I suppose some sort of reduplication might have been involved in Re:, but that's speculation. I like the idea of reduplication. Given the rather parallel nature of *W and *R, could both of them have arisen from syncope of *w- and *r- prefixes against an initial of the same type? I.e., *w-w > *W, *r-r > *R ? That's my thought, but unfortunately I don't see a lot of evidence for reduplicated deictic particles. Then again, I haven't looked for them. Bob