Ablaut et al

[Rory M Larson]

>> Correct.  I was disputing the rigid dichotomy you raised in your 
previous post to make a CVC hypothesis for proto-Siouan seem unreasonable. 
 I was not particularly disputing the substance of your thesis regarding 
the later development of ablaut in Siouan, and especially Dakotan.  By 
your solution, *-e goes away in the face of a suffixed *-a because it is 
phonologically weak.  By mine, it goes away because it is not really there 
at all.
>
> But it IS there in about 11 or 12 languages spread all over the eastern 
2/3 of the continent, that's my point.  So, once again, EITHER we have to 
put it there in Proto-Siouan underlying phonology, OR we have to 
reconstruct a phonological rule in Proto-Siouan that, in effect, says "all 
7 other vowels (i a o u iN, aN, uN) can occur unaccented word-finally, but 
we're going to use this rule to "predict" the most common one, (e). 

It is there at least in the orthographic renditions that linguists have 
built for these languages, and quite possibly in the heads of their 
speakers as well.  But the dichotomy does not hold if we assume that 
proto-Siouan words could end in phonemic consonants characterized by an 
unmarked vocal release.  If such a release were reinterpreted as a 
phonemic vowel by later speakers or their linguists, the vowel chosen 
would most likely be -e, and next most likely -i or -a.  It would probably 
not be o, u, iN, aN or uN, because those sounds are marked, either by 
rounding or by nasalization.  The pattern we see in your table is mostly 
-e, some -i, and possibly one case of -a, which squares well with that 
expectation.

This model does not imply that "all 7 other vowels (i a o u iN, aN, uN) 
can occur unaccented word-finally", but that "the most common one, (e)" 
cannot.  Rather, it would allow 9 possible CVC- patterns, where the accent 
is on the V: CVCa, CVCe, CVCi, CVCo, CVCu, CVCiN, CVCaN and CVCuN as well 
as CVC.  In this case, CVC and CVCe might have collapsed together at an 
early time, either before Siouan split, or separately in the various 
branches.  From that point on, there would be no contradiction between 
this model and yours.

I think this model has three advantages:

1. Ablaut in the non-Dakotan languages is explained naturally by your 
model of suffixes with initial a-.  If the final -e in Siouan verb roots 
is phonemic, then we have to do some rationalizing about relative 
"weakness" of vowels to tell why -e goes away before the a- in CVCe roots, 
while the other 7 vowels are preserved.  But if most CVCe roots are 
underlyingly CVC, then the -e is not there in the first place phonemically 
and the speakers would therefore never put it there if another vowel was 
suffixed to the final C.

2. It explains why -e is, I believe, not only the most common, but 
overwhelmingly the most common, ending we find, at least on active verb 
roots.  To the CVCe roots would be added all the presumably numerous CVC 
roots as well.

3. We do not have to suppose that proto-Dakotan roots had to go from CVCe 
to CVC to CVCa, first losing a final vowel, and then gaining a new one. 
The Dakotan -a ending would simply be that branch's phonemic 
reinterpretation of the unmarked vocal release after CVC, in contrast with 
the -e or -i reinterpretation possibly chosen by other Siouan languages. 
There would only be one step, from CVC to CVCa, with little phonetic 
difference between the two.


> That would go against 150 years of phonology UNLESS it's the only way to 
predict accent, in which case one might argue for it as Pat Shaw, Dick 
Carter and others have.  But since the status of phonemic vowel length has 
been clarified (by Bruce Hays and by yours truly and others), we can see 
that the highly exceptional CVC roots are no longer justified except in 
Dakotan.  I think that sums up my view more compactly than before.

I'm not familiar enough with the accent and vowel length discussion to 
argue on this.  My dispute is with the EITHER-OR dichotomy you propound 
above, which I feel invalidly excludes a very reasonable possibility in 
the middle.  I grant that your overall view of the CVC question, grounded 
on other considerations, may be correct.


Rory
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