Status of PS Glottal Stop

[Robert L. Rankin]

> The main environments in which *? might be audible, are, of course,
> initial position (not really audible in Omaha-Ponca) or
> intervocalically (also not really audible, at least in eaN 'how',
> which I have heard)....

Not often audible in Dhegiha at all.  We know about *? from essentially
two sets of facts:  (1) verb-initially it yields an irregular conjugation,
taking a special set of pronominals, and, (2) more to the point, in those
few languages where something different about those verbs is retained
phonetically (Winnebago, Dakotan, maybe Chiwere, poss. some Dhegiha) it
takes the form of [?].

> Unfortunately, I haven't heard Omaha-Ponca aNaN 'we do', so I don't
> know if it's aNaN (with, say, rearticulation) or aN?aN.  Any of the
> other Dhegiha languages would, perhaps, clarify this.  I seem to
> recall that none have aNk?aN, but can[not?] be positive.

These are forms that are very important for someone to elicit in Dhegiha,
(and in all Siouan languages) but I find few to no references.  There's
also the verb *?o: 'wound, shoot and hit' for which full conjugations are
needed.  I guess one of the things the LIST could do is provide a list of
interesting diagnostic forms and irregularities that future field workers
could use so that they'd get all the information they'd need.

> In fact, I think that only Dakotan and maybe Winnebago have C? with
> any *?-stop stem forms.  Dakotan has k? with the inclusive....

Right, and even that may vary with only the widely used verbs retaining
the [?].  'Shoot, wound', with its oral vowel is needed to confirm what
happens under such (very rare) phonological circumstances even in the 1st
and 2nd person.  Dakotan has leveled the conjugation in the 1st and 2nd.
I don't know about the inclusive.  The only other case I can think of is
?u in Dakotan which has that peculiar 1sg /-bu/, 2sg /-lu/ conjugation in
compounds.

> When you realize that only Dakotan and Winnebago make much of a big
> deal about initial ? at all, wonder if the C?-forms don't say
> something about these particular languages, rather than Siouan at
> large.

No, I think the irregular conjugation pattern is present much more widely
(found occasionally in Biloxi for example:  z^oN '2sg of do').  And Sapir
recorded 'do' or 'make' as /?oN/ in Tutelo.

> Back when I was looking at *?-stems, I also noticed that a number of
> the languages seemed to have substituted *r-stem personal inflections
> for some or all *?-stems stems, especially in the second person.
> Dakotan has nV, for example, which doesn't correspond regularly with
> either Dhegiha *z^V or Winnebago s^?V.  I believe this is because the
> forms in question sometimes have an epenthetic *r in the third person,
> due to prefixes, making them appear to be *r-stems.

I think this inserted, intervocalic [r] (n before nasal V's) also often
turns up in languages like Quapaw where *?uN has been grammaticalized as
some sort of past tense marker, often recorded as- noN or -naN.

> Since all the inflectional forms with *C? are restricted to one
> language or another, and the various other inflectional forms, *mV
> first person, *z^V second person (perhaps *nV second persons, if they
> don't come from the *r-stems), don't suggest *? at all, I suggested
> that these stems might actually be *V-initial.

But it seems to me, then, that what you're really saying in a very
round-about way is that the "organic" glottal stops we've been talking
about are epenthetic in a grammatical or lexical environment, namely just
(V-initial) verb roots (since the locative prefixes don't get them in most
of the languages).  But that's not epenthesis.  Why not all initial
vowels?  Why not vowel-initial nouns, particles, etc.

> This is a summary, without the paradigmatic evidence tables, of my
> position on *?-stems.  Notice that it's somewhat wobbly.  I think it
> looks like the *?-stems were actually *V-stems that frequently
> acquired regular epenthetic ?-initials in the third person, which
> sometimes resulted in secondary ?-introduction in other persons
> (second or inclusive), but I wouldn't want it to be forgotten that *?
> is also a possibility, and that Winnebago provides the best evidence
> of this, albeit not incontrovertable evidence.

And it's also found with a few select nouns.

Bob