Cayuse <=> "horses" in Spanish?

[Alan H. Hartley]

David Robertson wrote:

> Alan Hartley posted this back in September...Sorry to be dense, but does
> this mean our best guess is that the name "Cayuse" comes ultimately from
> the Spanish word "caballos"="horses", via some NAm aboriginal languages?

It's Lyle Campbell's best guess, anyway (or at least *was* in 1998 when
his _Historical Linguistics_ was published). Campbell (p. 78) *does*
qualify his hypothesis with "perhaps." The hypothesis doesn't explain
the collapse of the first two syllables of "caballos" into one, though
the Spanish -b- is a voiced bilabial fricative which is (to my ears,
anyway) a rather weak, [w]-like consonant. The -ll- in Amer. Sp. is
usually pronounced [y].

Alan

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