Questions about historical pre-aspiration

[Rory Larson]

I have a question for the list about the phenomenon of historical pre-aspiration in Siouan and where evidence for it is found.  According to some of the notes I have so far read in the Common Siouan Dictionary (CSD, 2006), proto-Siouan-Catawban did not have a distinction between the simple stops and the Siouan pre-aspirated stops.  Siouan apparently developed pre-aspirated stops when the stop preceded an accented syllable.  In this case, *p- > *hp-, *t > *ht-, and *k > *hk.  In the daughter languages, these pre-aspirated stops might stay pre-aspirated, as in Osage, become tense stops (*pp-, *tt-, *kk-) as in Omaha, Ponca and Kaw, or become post-aspirate (*ph-, *th-, *kh-) as in Dakotan, and apparently Ioway-Otoe-Missouria, Ofo and Biloxi (the latter noted only thanks to David Kaufman’s recent Biloxi Dictionary).

However, it is also stated that historical pre-aspiration was simply lost in Crow, Hidatsa and Mandan.  Apparently, it went away in these languages without showing a trace that it ever existed.

I’m left wondering about Hoočaⁿk.  In the CSD, IOM historical pre-aspirates seem to be regularly marked with an ‘h’ after them, making them post-aspirates.  But the corresponding words in Hoočaⁿk are just as regularly unmarked.  Looking in the modern Hoočaⁿk dictionary of Johannes and Iren et. al., that seems to be the case there as well.

So does Hoočaⁿk join Missouri Valley Siouan and Mandan in not showing historical pre-aspiration?  And in either case, can we be sure that historical pre-aspiration is really a proto-Siouan phenomenon?  Or might it only have affected Southeastern and MVS?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Rory


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