wapato (again)

[zenk at USWESTMAIL.NET]

Alan,

Sorry to take awhile to get back on this.
>
> Perhaps only coincidence, but note m ~ w
> Tualatin (northern Kalapuyan) mámpdu ~ CJ wapto
>
> It could represent a borrowing of the whole word, though Henry Zenk
> brought to our attention the possibility that Proto-Kalapuyan *pdó' [' =
> glottal stop] was borrowed by Chinookan which attached its prefix wa-.
>
> Henry, what's the mam- that seems common in Tualatin?

The mam- is a Tualatin nominal prefix.  The Kalapuyan forms from which Howard Berman was able to reconstruct Proto-Kalapuya *-do' are:  Tualatin (Northern Kalapuya) mampdu, Yoncalla (Southern Kalapuya) gampdu' (gam- being a nominal prefix in Southern K.).  There is no corresponding Central Kalapuya form (there were 3 Kalapuyan languages:  Northern, Central, Southern), but the variation in the Northern:Southern stems fits a sound-correspondence pattern worked out by Howard, enabling him to reconstruct a form for the hypothetical proto language (actually, the Southern word comes with the translation 'potato':  but, indigenous words for "wapato" typically got extended to cover potatoes too).  (This is all in Howard's 1990 IJAL article on Kalapuya.)

There are no indications in either Kalapuyan nor Chinookan (of which I am aware) of m & w being confused.  Henry


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