Palu'e - Siouan Parallel

goodtracks at peoplepc.com goodtracks at peoplepc.com
Thu Oct 26 16:28:50 UTC 2006


This discussion by Mark Donohoe is interesting and begins to offer some 
explaination.
However, it is short of offering how the term, as is (waNda/ waNwaNda) could 
be conjugated.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU>
To: "Siouan List" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Cc: "Mark Donohue" <mark at donohue.cc>
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 2:19 AM
Subject: Palu'e - Siouan Parallel


> The following struck me as an interesting parallel to the hypothetical
> development of syncopating first persons in Mississippi Valley Siouan.
> It's a description from Dr. Mark Donohue of the historical phonology of
> the first person in Palu'e, an Austronesian language from Flores, in
> southern Indonesia.  My parallel Siouan forms are inserted interlinearly.
> I have used *tuNp-e 'to see', with theme-formant *-e.
>
> This grows out of a post on Language List.  I'm indebted to Mark Donohoe
> for all details of Palu'e and for revising my first attempt at the
> comparison into something like clarity.
>
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Mark Donohue wrote:
>> The language I'm looking at, Palu'e, has something similar going on.
>>
>> Historically: ku- '1SG' prefixes to a root like tusu 'milk' to yield
>> ku-tusu 'I suckle'
>
> *wa- Agt1 prefixes to a root like *tuNpe 'see' to yield *wa-tuNpe 'I see'.
>
>> then
>>
>> *k- > ?
>
> Proto-Siouan *w- > Proto-Mississippi Valley *h-
>
>> yields
>>
>> ?u-tusu
>
> PMV *ha-tuNpe     *(h)a- is the Mississippi Valley reflex of *wa- Agt1
>                  outside of Dakotan.
>
>> and pre-stressed reduction
>>
>> ?tusu
>
> *h-tuNpe          This is what we actually find, outside of Dakotan and
>                  the regular verbs.
>
>> this is attested in nearby languages such as Sika.
>
> Alas, in the Siouan family we only have the reduced form, if we don't
> count regularized Dakotan watuNwe.
>
>> But Palu'e doesn't like ? onsets, so it turned this into
>>
>> thusu
>
> Winnebago and Ioway-Otoe change *ht to *th and so on with all
> preaspirates.  Their verb 'to see', *a-ta, first person *a-h-ta 'I see',
> cf. Wi haac^a', IO a(a)'tha 'I see' vs. Wi haj^a', IO ada' 'he sees'.
> The most common examples involve forms with *pa- 'by pushing', which come
> out as Wi paa-, IO paa- Agt1 vs. WI wa, IO wa- Agt3 (bare stem *pa- >
> *wa-, regularly).
>
>> which later generalised over the entire paradigm for most verbs; some
>> generalised the 3sg n- (<*na-), as in *na-alap > **n-ala > nala
>> (unanalyzable, synchronically). For some roots the aspiration is now
>> synchronically best thought of as being a verbalising morpheme (as in
>> tusu 'milk' ~ thusu 'suckle').
>
> The aspiration doesn't generalize in this case in Siouan, but there are
> other places where paradigms do level on one irregular stem
> alternant.
>
> Comparable to the Palu'e n-inital stems perhaps are the points in Siouan
> morphology where an initial *r- (or its reflex) may reflect third person
> *i-, e.g., the *(r)aka 'by striking' instrumental and the similar *(r)iki
> dative forms, and maybe the third person inalienable nouns with initial *y
> in Dakotan (cf. c^haNte 'heart') and *r in Dhegiha (cf. OP naNde 'heart'),
> perhaps from *y-aNt-e ~ *i-(r)aNt-e.
>
> In Palu'e the reduction of the *CV-C... first person is from *ku-C... >
> *?u-C... > *?-C... and developments of that (Ch).  In Siouan the reduction
> is from *wa-C... > *ha-C... (?) > *h-C... and developments of that (CC,
> Ch).  The intermediate *ha-C... stage in Siouan is not usually adduced,
> though, in fact, in regular verbs *wa- does become ha- or a- in most
> languages, and it maybe perfectly reasonable to assume the *ha-C... stage.
>
> 



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