Funny *W (was Re: Archaic A1 p- in Dakotan.)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> Koontz:
> > I think b here qualifies as a Da reflex of *W a/k/a "funny *w."
> > Although I expect the b in Santee and m or even w in Teton.
>
> Most of our "funny W's" (e.g. in 'snow') come historically from a
> secondary sequence of w-w.  So in 'snow' the wa- prefix with the wa root
> gives w-wa > Wa.  John may be right that *w-? also gives W-, which would
> be Dakota b ~ m (the latter before nasal vowels).  It's surprising, given
> the 'snow' word in other languages, that Dakota 'snow' isn't [ba].  It's
> just [wa], isn't it?

I think that's right and w is the usual Teton reflex of *W.  I think I was
wrong in wondering about hibu as *thiWu.  It's *thiwu, or maybe the w is a
special "pronominal w" as opposed to *w and *W.  I've often wondered if
something like that might explain why *wa A1 => (h)a in Dhegiha, Chiwere,
Winnebago, while *wa INDEF => wa.  On the other hand, a potential problem,
we have lots of cases where we want *pr clusters to come from *wV + r.
The *wV here is presumably one of Bob's classifiers, though, rather than
*wa INDEF.