Siouan initials.

[Robert L. Rankin]

> This might be a reasonable place to point out that the simple stops are
> very rare in initial position in Siouan languages, being virtually
> nonexistent there in nouns (but, e.g., Da pa'ha, but Dh ppahe' 'hill' -
> not a regular correspondence).

Kansa bahe' is regular.  I'd guess Omaha ppahe' is a reflex of the
absolutive form *wa-pahe.

I think the reason simple stops are rare with Mississippi Valley Siouan
nouns is because Proto-Siouan nouns (often? always?) had prefixes that
have been lost.  Reflexes of these prefixes are preserved in other
subgroups.  Animate unpossessed nouns had *wi-, inanimates had *wa-, and
kin terms and most body parts had possessive prefixes.  The Dakotan words
that begin with ps-, psh, pt-, bl- mn- (md- etc.) clusters show reflexes
of *wi-/wa- prefixes (the p-, b-, m- in each of the above clusters) after
the usual initial syllable syncope (found in agent pronominals also).

This pretty consistently left the initial C of nouns as the initial C of a
SECOND syllable, where it automatically got aspiration according to Dick
Carter's observation.  Results of the aspiration rule have been
lexicalized in all Mississ. Val. languages, but Ofo retained
aspirated/unaspirated alternations (see Wim DeReuse's "Grassmann's Law in
Ofo" paper).  It's the unaspirated initial stops in these languages that
need to be explained in nouns.  Aspiration is expected.

> They are also fairly rare in verbs,...

Verbs would almost all have prefixes also, but the syllabification problem
there is much harder to decipher because there were so many different
possible prefixes.  Lexicalization of aspiration, once it was generated in
any allomorph, seems to be quite general though.

Instrumentals are an interesting set of exceptions that need to be
accounted for systematically.  None has aspiration.  Siebert (1945) showed
that the instrumentals are cognate with Catawba verb roots, so at some
point we're dealing with compound or serial verbs.

> and *R and *W rule the roost in the outer instrumentals.

Absolutely right.  Thanks for reminding me.  THAT's where I had a "funny"
*W from earlier *w+? (glottal stop) like we were discussing yesterday.  I
am hazarding a guess that *Wo 'by shooting' is earlier *wa-?o, i.e., {?o},
the verb 'shoot and hit' with an absolutive prefix (plus the usual
initial-syllable syncope rule, i.e., *wa-?o > *w-?o > *Wo).

> Simple stops do occur in numerals, and are common in medial/final
> position.

Right.  The initial consonants there weren't at the beginning of second
syllables so didn't get aspiration.

> It's also possible that the simple stops in initial position [were] in
> alternation with the preaspirate stops there, under accentual
> conditioning.  Preaspirates are about as rare in medial position as
> simple stops in initial position.  This approach has been considered
> by Dick Carter and Bob Rankin, I think.

I think that pretty well summarizes my belief.  Dick made a good case for
aspiration having been allophonic in accented syllables at one time. This
would have created massive numbers of allomorphs.  Since such allomorphs
no longer are present in Mississippi Val. Siouan, massive lexicalization
(i.e., analogic leveling) has to have occurred, and this leaves us with
some interesting and peculiar cases (the 'hill' word, above for instance).
Then of course we also always have to contend with dialect borrowing
(i.e., what Labov used to call "sound change" until he returned to
essentially the Neogrammarian model in his '94, or was it '95, book).

Much explanatory work is yet to be done.

Bob