[Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?

[Danielle E. Cyr]

Again thanks to All for the various, very helping explanations. Most of
what has been referred to is susceptible to have happen, at least partly,
to old Mi'gmaq. However, my feeling is that none per se can be responsible
for the lexical divergence of Mi'gmaq compared to other Eastern and Central
Algonquian languages. And, I dare say, not even the combination of all of
them.
Like Peter Bakker, I've thought of an internal shift in vocabulary for some
reason (taboo, renaming of legend characters, including animal ones, etc).
For instance in Old French the common noun for fox was goupil. In many fox
tales, the fox's name was Renard. This is how renard is now the common noun
for fox. So, from mashku to mui'n ?
As for the taboo effect, it can be, but such taboos last for a generation
or two at most, then the name will come back by being given to a newborn.
Plus taboo would not be practiced with such a magnitude on the overall
vocabulary.

As for dual, yes, Mi'gmaq has it. It is used for things and people always
appearing as a pair. It is also used for people or things coming as a
bunch, i.e family members, and I would guess musicians in a band, etc. Now
is Mi'gmaq dual a grammatical borrowing, or is it that other EA and CA had
it and lost it ? Latin, for instance, lost it compared to other IE
languages. Reminiscences of it exist in the word ambi  'both'.
Trade languages may certainly leave traces in the speech of bilinguals, but
enough to have such an effect on the whole vocabulary of a language ?
I think David and others who hypothesize a long lasting bilingualism,
whether with an Iroquoian language (which I doubt could have last that
long) or with a now disappeared older language is the best hypothesis. Both
at the phonetic level - adult speakers of L1 learning L2 would bring some
of their phonetic features into L2, and at the lexical level. Two cultures
in contact will necessarily exchange about everything from food, tools,
medicine, folktales, religion, etc. through simple friendship or
intermarriage - and lexical items all along.
David's caveat is good : "see how much of it could be explained by normal
Mi’gmaq-internal derivational processes. That is, some of the anomalous
words could simply be neologisms, and not necessarily ancient
pre-Algonquian loans." I have started to contrast each item of John
Hewson's dictionary of PA with the Metallic, Cyr & Sévigny. Especially on
the animal, tool, kinship, calendar and numbers. Whenever I have a decent
list, I will be too happy to share it. If any of you have grad students
looking for a thesis topic. please feel free to orient them towards the
topic.
Till later,
Danielle

Dr. Danielle E. Cyr, Senior Scholar at York University
339, boul. Perron ouest
New Richmond, QC,  G0C 2BO
dcyr at yorku.ca - 418.392.7271
---- Original Message ----
From: David Costa 
To: "Danielle E. Cyr" 
Cc: "John Steckley" , "ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" 
Sent: Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Algonquiana] Prehistoric Language contact ?
Thanks to all who have replied so far. I'm totally amazed by the
sophistication of your suggestions and explanations. The reason of my
question is that I'm presently working on Mi'gmaq place names related to
early PEA migrations into the Gaspe Peninsula and Atlantic Canada. The more
I read in archaeology, the more I wonder about the cultural contacts that
might have taken place when the PEA arrived in these territories.   Except
for Peter Denny, no archaeological writings seem to advocate for such
contacts. All they say is that the Planos arrived ca 9,000 BP and the PEA
ca 3,000-4,000 BP. Nobody (to my candid knowledge) talks about possible
encounters between the two groups. And none talks about the disappearance -
or not- of the Planos. 
Well that’s the whole point — perhaps the Planos didn’t go anywhere,
but simply switched to speaking Algonquian. If so that would help explain
why Mi'gmaq looks so weird from an Algonquian perspective.
>From this, a new question arising in my mind: did someone ever tried to
compare John Hewson's Dictionary of Proto-Algonquian with a Mi'gmaq
dictionary to try and list the Mi'gmaq words that do not belong to PA; and
then to analyze these words and try to draw a kind of phonetic/phonological
sketch of a possible (dead) loaning language of some kind ?
I’m not aware of any such study, but someone should attempt it. Also,
someone who knows way more Mi'gmaq than I do would also have to examine the
anomalous vocab to see how much of it could be explained by normal
Mi’gmaq-internal derivational processes. That is, some of the anomalous
words could simply be neologisms, and not necessarily ancient
pre-Algonquian loans.
There’s a parallel for this in California — if you examine
Harrington’s notes on Island Chumash (the indigenous language of Santa
Cruz Island, in the Channel Islands), in addition to the normal Chumashan
vocab there’s a large residue of very basic vocab that can’t be found
in any other Chumashan language, or indeed in any other language anywhere.
Not only do these words not match Chumashan, they're phonotactically weird
for a Chumashan language. The odds are good that they're retained archaic
vocab from the language that was spoken on the Channel Islands before
Chumash, preserved from when they switched to speaking Chumash.

If Peter Denny's hypothesis is correct, and if Fiedel 1987 is correct that
Mi'gmaq shares only 50 percent of its lexicon with other Central and even
Eastern Algonquian languages, this should be feasible. In comparison, if
French had disappeared from the records, one should be able to deduce its
phonological patterns by analyzing all the words that English doesn't share
with any other European languages, More or less.

Am I too far gone ?
I certainly don’t think so!
David

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