MANDAN (again)

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> John and Mauricio think Mandan maNta 'Missouri River' a possible etymon
> for the English name MANDAN, and I'd like to suggest an elaboration
> about which I'd welcome suggestions.

Frankly, it's been just long enough that I've forgotten exactly where we
were between forms like modern Dakotan mawatadaN or Omaha mawadani,
various Mandan and Hidatsa forms, and the historical Assiniboine form.

Knowing the form passed through French, however, does make it easy to see
the first n as a mark of nasalization, i.e., maNta(N)n(V).  This puts
Manda maNta 'Missouri River' in reach.  Given that, the final syllable
could be some sort of locative postposition, as Alan suggests, if a
specific candidate can be identified.  There's no suitable suffix in
Omaha-Ponca, but if the source is Dakotan, then -niN might be a
vocalization of -n or -l, cf. MaNmaNdha 'Mormon' (the vowel's wrong).

Unfortunately, I think the various mawa-... forms are also reasonably
consistent with a perceived maN, as the w is easily reduced in this
context.  I think this is a fair assessment for both Dakotan and Dhegiha.

> MANDAN < Fr. Mantanne (1738; and cf. late 18th-cent. Sp. Mandana), or
> directly from its etymon Assiniboine MaNtan < Mandan MaNta 'Missouri
> River' + Assiniboine locative postposition -en. The English forms in -l
> (e.g., Mandal, Mandelle) show the influence of Lakota, in which the same
> postposition is realized as -el.
>
> Riggs gives Dakota tin (< ti + en) and Lakota til (< ti + el) 'in the
> house'.

In fact, the postposition is -n/-l.  As it cannot occur as a free form,
there is a tendency to cite it with some neutral demonstrative base like e
'that (aforesaid)'.  Add to this that V + e might develop as V and even
linguists tend to lean on this crutch.  Still, I'm pretty sure the e is
spurious in forms like til.  I've always associated this truncated
postposition -l with the full form -tu, though it probably also
reflects at least -ka ~ -c^a, too, the latter alternant after e, since the
latter would also reduce to -l.  The -tu source corresponds reasonably
well with Omaha-Ponca -di < *-tu, though other Dhegiha languages like
Kansa, where unrounding of fronted *-du" shouldn't occur, but, with this
form evidently does.  (So that one wonders if it isn't non-cognate *-ti in
Dhegiha, after all.)

> Might this postposition be cognate with the Mandan directional
> suffix -t (Kennard)? And is it related to the Dakotan & Mandan locative
> -ta ? (There is no Eng. form of the type *Mandat.)

It might be, but unfortunately there's another suffix to work with, cf.
Dakota -(k)ta, Omaha -tta (where the -t-t- matches the -k-t-).  As I
recall Dakotan has -ta, but develops an intrusive -k- in forms like
e-k-ta.  In Dakotan truncations -ta might also alternate with -l.  In
Omaha-Ponca terms -tta is 'to(ward)' and -di is 'in, to'.

> I don't know how the (apparently diminutive) modern Dakotan forms (e.g.,
> Mawa'tadaN) would fit in, if at all.

Presumably mawa'ta, lacks the locative and is diminutive instead.  It's
not instantly clear to me why diminutive, though Algonquian diminutives
are also pejoratives.  I'm not familiar with such a usage in Siouan.

> Is there any way Dakotan Mawata can
> be construed as cognate with Mandan MaNta ? (I realize I'm starting to
> go over old ground here, for which I apologize.)

What occurred to me is that wa- INDEFINITE is used with statives in the
sense 'something characterized by' and with nouns in contexts that look
like unpossessed forms.  One might suppose that wa + maNta might be 'those
of the MaNta'.

Also, in some forma like maNta the natural location for pronominal
prefixes is between maN and ta, at least in Mississippi Valley languages,
since normally syllables like maN in a stem would arise as more outward
prefixes (proclitics, incorporations) than, say, pronominals, creating a
set of placement models that can be reinterpreted as meaning that a prefix
should follow the maN sequence in all cases.

See Boas & Deloria pp. 78-98 for discussion on tendencies of this sort in
the placement of pronominals.  I think there are some analogous
discussions of infixing in Lipkind's Winnebago grammar.

Unfortunately, Boas & Deloria, p. 52, etc., it's not clear that any of
these apply to wa-.  And, in fact, Buechel has various examples of wa-maN-
that show that wa- should precede maN, e.g., wa-maNkha-s^kaN 'creatures,
beasts', wa-maN-ki-naN 'to steal from one', , wa-maNya-l 'toward a bank',
etc.

So, so much for that, unless anyone knows of any counter examples.

Might mawa- arise by some sort of back formation to account for a long
initial vowel?  Is the forst vowel long in Mandan?