Siouan, Caddoan, Iroquoian

[Jess Tauber]

Thanks. If I'm at all right about structures in languages such as these
originating in serialization, there may be very little in common, at least as
far as verb roots/stems, much sooner than in other language types. Two
"dialects" of Yahgan, for instance, are quite dissimilar lexically. If we go
further and assume a prior period of overall dependent marking structure and
the jig is up. One full cycle of such shifts, with concomitant mass
replacement of lexical items (skewed by form class within each type), and
there will be precious little left upon which to grow a putative family tree,
except for borrowings, phonosemantic "agnates", and accidental resemblances.

Years ago, someone wrote (I don't remember who, but I believe it came out in
the 1975 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences- they had an entire issue
given over to origins of language) that a full typological "cycle" took such
and such a figure- I think it was on the order of 14000 years or so (I don't
remember the exact figure). I also don't know whether or not this was based
on some evidence or was pure speculation. In any case it would be interesting
to know whether there was any relationship between such a number, typological
inversion re verb and noun roots as preferred base forms for higher
derivation (plus attrition and replacement), and the usual baseline figure
given for the deepest levels of reconstructability (which is either half or a
quarter of this figure, if it was more like 25000 years- again I don't
remember).

I saw for sale, by the way, "Hokan-Siouan" projectile points on a trip
through Illinois a couple of years ago. Almost enough to make one "Algic" to
the entire concept (ouch!). :-)

By the way, what is the state of current work on Yuchi? Will there be a
relatively comprehensive dictionary available at any time in the near future
(or already?).

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com
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