[Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?

Thu Nov 20 19:16:01 UTC 2014

Getting back to one of my favourite subjects, the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, the archaeologists tell us that they dispersed to several peoples, the Wendat, Mohawk, Oneida and Abenaki.  If those peoples already knew something about the trade language, this could reinforce the impact.  One of the Wendat dialects (which I have named Northern Bear) was different from all the others by the absence of a particular phoneme that appeared as a -g- among the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and as a     -y- like sound among the other Wendat dialects.  I've long felt that it could have been the impact of a significant number of St. Lawrence Iroquoians that caused that change.

-----Original Message-----
From: Algonquiana [mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Michael McCafferty
Sent: November 20, 2014 2:07 PM
To: Monica Macaulay
Cc: Algonquiana
Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?

I imagine that seeking protection with another group would be one of the situations where bilingualism could occur.

Quoting Monica Macaulay <mmacaula at wisc.edu>:

> There?s a nice quote from Weinreich that I?ve always liked, on this
> topic:  ?The locus of language contact is in the mind of the
> bilingual.?  When I was an undergrad I kind of imagined these two
> clouds, Language A and Language B, and then magically they touched,
> and shared features.  Well, no.  ;-)  That contact is in the mind of
> the bilingual, or even better, in the minds of a bunch of them.
>
>> On Nov 20, 2014, at 12:38 PM, David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>> Generally what?s needed for this kind of borrowing is extensive
>> bilingualism. That can take the form of large numbers of people from
>> the ?other? group marrying in, or by a community gradually switching
>> languages. The longer the period of bilingualism, the greater the
>> influences that can be passed from one language to another. If the
>> nasal vowel passed from Mohawk to Mahican (probably the most
>> geographically plausible option), that might indicate that there was
>> a large group of Mohawks somewhere who switched from speaking
>> Iroquoian to Algonquian. Once the feature was established in Mahican,
>> it would have been much easier to pass into other Algonquian
>> languages, specifically Abenaki. (It?s already been established that
>> there are Mahican loanwords in Western Abenaki.)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>> Yes. Trade languages and their aboriginal use, I'm aware of. But I'm
>>> squeamish about accepting the notion that a handful of foreign terms
>>> borrowed into an unrelated language can have such a far-reaching
>>> effect phonologically on that language. Perhaps my imagination is
>>> limited. I will keep gnawing.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>>
>>> Quoting John Steckley <John.Steckley at humber.ca>:
>>>
>>>> Michael:
>>>>
>>>> Another potential source of that influence could be trade languages
>>>> or lingua franca.  When I worked on Gabriel Sagard's dictionary and
>>>> discovered the presence of the dialects of Wendat plus St. Lawrence
>>>> Iroquoian, I found that the St. Lawrence Iroquoian came in the form
>>>> of a trade language, with certain key items--awls, grapes,
>>>> beads--highlighted.  Trade languages existed in a variety of areas
>>>> in
>>>> pre- and post-contact Aboriginal North America.  In addition to
>>>> what I found with the St. Lawrence Iroquoian example, there was
>>>> Mobilian (which included Algonquian and Iroquoian entries) in the
>>>> southeast, and, of course, Chinook on the West Coast.  Being fluent
>>>> in a trade language used between Iroquoian and Algonquian speakers
>>>> could cause there to be some phonetic influences.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Algonquiana
>>>> [mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Michael McCafferty
>>>> Sent: November 20, 2014 12:55 PM
>>>> To: algonquiana at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
>>>>
>>>> Thank you so much, Ives, for your comments and, at least for me,
>>>> clearing away some of the fog.
>>>>
>>>> What I just cannot wrap my head around, though, is how a sound in
>>>> one language can influence the sound system of totally unrelated language.
>>>> All I can get at is that women from one language group married into
>>>> or were captured by another group speaking an unrelated language,
>>>> and in learning the unrelated language use sounds that were in
>>>> their native language that over time get adopted into the sound
>>>> system of their husbands. Is this the mechanism for this transfer?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Quoting "Goddard, Ives" <GODDARDI at si.edu>:
>>>>
>>>>> On Eastern duals.
>>>>>
>>>>> This subject was broached if incompletely treated in my 1967
>>>>> papers (NMC Bull. 214:9-10, 104-105, with a reference to the issue
>>>>> having been earlier raised by Siebert in AA 42:331-333 and to his
>>>>> having told me that he no longer thought it was an Eastern
>>>>> archaism).  An Ottawa parallel for the formation of the Eastern AI
>>>>> triplural is cited, but more information on this would be welcome.
>>>>> (I haven?t
>>>>> looked.)  In Delaware these marked plurals are commonly made as
>>>>> collectives, and many examples are to be found in O?Meara?s Munsee
>>>>> dictionary (his label is  ?emphatic?), as if built on the
>>>>> causative finals PEA *h and *r.  See entries for kchíiw and
>>>>> matáhkeew.  Western Abenaki also appears to have the longer forms
>>>>> as marked (used for an indefinite number) but not as consistent
>>>>> triplurals.  I recall that the duals are used in Micmac for the
>>>>> people in a boat (always a countable number).  The comparative
>>>>> evidence shows this dual-triplural contrast gradually emerging and
>>>>> firming up within the Algonquian languages, becaming fully
>>>>> grammaticalized as such in the languages furthest from the Iroquoians.
>>>>>
>>>>> Independently, Unami Delaware has a dual-triplural contrast in
>>>>> imperatives, at least for some speakers: mi:tsí:t:am ?let?s eat (I
>>>>> and you sg.)? vs. mi:tsí:t:amo:kw ?let?s eat (I and you pl.).
>>>>>
>>>>> The nasalized vowel.
>>>>>
>>>>> On the other hand, it seems likely that the nasalized reflex of
>>>>> PEA
>>>>> *a: in Mahican, SNEA, and Abenaki reflects the influence of
>>>>> Mohawk, which has a nasalized vowel of exactly the same odd
>>>>> quality as what these languages seem usually to have (PAC 39:282 and n. 74).
>>>>> Penobscot Eastern Abenaki has (mostly) denasalized this vowel but
>>>>> retained this caret-vowel-like quality.  There will be a little
>>>>> more on this in my eventual ?Loup? paper in PAC 44.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ives
>>>>>
>>>>> From: Algonquiana
>>>>> [mailto:algonquiana-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf
>>>>> Of Conor Quinn
>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 4:59 PM
>>>>> To: John Steckley
>>>>> Cc: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
>>>>>
>>>>> If I'm not mistaken, the notional dual contrast is found in most
>>>>> (all?) of Eastern Algonquian, and definitely at least as far south
>>>>> as Western and Eastern Abenaki.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's a tricky pattern, because the "duals" are actually just the
>>>>> familiar verbal plurals of the rest of Algonquian.  E.g. they
>>>>> reflect the various plural person markings (among them reflex of
>>>>> PA *-aki (with Idp) or the EAlg version of PA *-wa·-t, i.e.
>>>>> *-h?ti?-t).  While the more-than-dual plurals are limited to AI
>>>>> stems, with an added stem-extensional element---most but not all
>>>>> arising historically from transitivization (= TA), then
>>>>> reciprocalization (= AI again)---which then takes the same pluralization morphology as the "dual".
>>>>>
>>>>> So the contrast looks like it emerges from a notion of a minimal
>>>>> plural (= just the general Algonquian plural morphology) vs. an
>>>>> extended/non-minimal plural (= this new stem-extensional element
>>>>> added in).
>>>>>
>>>>> What's particularly striking about these systems is that they're
>>>>> not in fact strictly dual vs. strictly (more-than-two) plural.
>>>>> The familiar-Algonquian-type simple plurals generally do get a
>>>>> dual reading...but if the stems inherently imply more-than-two
>>>>> -type participants---e.g. if they incorporate a number 'three' or
>>>>> above, or refer to collective/mass action---they very often do not
>>>>> use the stem-extensional element, and so superficially have a "dual"
>>>>> pluralization pattern.
>>>>>
>>>>> As far as I know, the only place where there's a completely strict
>>>>> dual vs. plural distinction is in the Mi'gmaq motion verbs, where
>>>>> -ie/-a' and -a'si (roughly, 'go..., change...') are systematically
>>>>> replaced with -a'ti for dual, and -(i)ta' for plural.
>>>>>
>>>>> Apropos of the original question, I think Ives might have
>>>>> suggested a possible Iroquoian contact influence in one of his two
>>>>> papers on the "intrusive nasal" reflex of PEA *a?.  But I might be
>>>>> thinking of some other source; and it's always struck me as a
>>>>> little tenuous given that the N. Iroquoian languages I'm aware of
>>>>> systematically have contrastive nasalization only in vowels other
>>>>> than /a/.  So the contact effect would be oddly indirect/abstracted.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Pentland and I have both independently noted some possible
>>>>> cases of lexical borrowing. Off the top of my head, 'eel' and
>>>>> 'great horned owl' in the northeastern-area Algonquian languages (i.e.
>>>>> Mi'gmaq gat(ew)-, PsmMl ka?t(e); Penobscot tiht?k?li, PsmMl
>>>>> tihtiko?l) may have Iroquoian links. I don't have the relevant
>>>>> Iroquian material at hand, though, and David likely has a more
>>>>> extensive list.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hope that helps!
>>>>>
>>>>> Till later, keep safe and sane.
>>>>>
>>>>> Slán,
>>>>> bhur gcara
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> P.S.  Is the Denny article the one that suggests PA *?entiy- 'conifer'
>>>>> as a possible loan from/with Siouan?  And points out the
>>>>> calque-cognacy (functional equivalence) of *wiki-wa·-hm- with t?i-pi?
>>>>> If not, who wrote that?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
> Monica Macaulay
> University of Wisconsin
> Department of Linguistics
> 1164 Van Hise; 1220 Linden Dr.
> Madison, WI  53706
>
>

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