Nebraska

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Lance Foster wrote:

> Ok.. I am trying to get a better handle of the s/th/hk trasnformation/shift
> (in linguistics which term is used to describe the change in a phoneme over
> time rather then in a particular linguistic setting) in IOM.

Usually they're called shifts or changes or developments.  Incidentally,
the importance of stating that the IO in the word Nebraska is conservative
is that if one works on a basis of modern IO pronunciation one has to
eliminate IO as a source, since Nebraska doesn't show --t^ke or -hke or,
less significantly, nyi.  Knowing that earlier speakers could have used
-ske or even ni makes it possible to see IO as a source here.

> You say "this would have to be in a very conservative form, e.g., with
> -s- where most recent speakers would have <theta> or <h> (preaspiration
> of k)"
>
> To make sure I understand this right, the oldest descriptions in historic
> word lists imply a "s" rather than a "th" and now you also see it as "x" (I
> am assuming in this case it is not a true "x" but as you say a preaspiration
> of "k").

In this case the "conservative" or oldest state is primarily indicated by
the situation in IO's closest relatives, e.g., Winnebago, the Dhegiha
dialects, and the Dakotan dialects.  Mandan might be the next closest
after that and it is unique in somehow having managed to reverse s and s^.

However, even though IO is particularly poorly - infrequently and not very
thoroughly - recorded, it is clear that in early times it did have s/s^/x
(etc.) more or less in synchrony with the other languages.

As the s/s^/x set of sounds participate in a pattern of sound symbolic
alternations, sometimes one language has s or s^ or x instead of another
of these sounds anyway.  I think the usual characterization of the
alternations (from Dakotan) is s = diminutive, s^ = regular, x =
augmentative.  However, as all of the sounds seems to occur as the basic
sound in some word or another perhaps it's safer to say that shifting the
sound in a word one direction or another could make the sense of the word
relatively more augmented or diminuated.

In any event, s is regular in a set like *ska 'white' or *sap(e) 'black,
or s^ in *s^uNk(e) 'dog', x in *xaNt(e) 'grass' and so on, and IO must
have inherited such an arrangement originally, and also attests something
like it, especially in earlier recordings.  However, in some fairly early
recordings and especially in modern recordings we find s shifted to
<theta>, and s shifted to s^ (<esh>).  Also, we find sk shifted to hk, not
really xk.  Linguists can distinguish several different s and s^
pronunciations in various languages of the world, e.g., Californian
languages often distinguish two s's, but I don't think even modern
Siouanists tend to comment on which are in use in particular Siouan
languages, and the historical materials don't permit us to determine
things like this either.

> Why do you think this change occurred and when?

The usual explanations for sound changes of this sort revolve around
unconscious individual human efforts to express group solidarity by
adopting (progressively exagerating) certain perceived markers of group
identity, in this case pronunciation norms.  A fairly common popular
explanation of this is "immitation of the speech of some prestigious
individual," though this is probably actually seldom the case.  In fact,
members of a group are all immitating each other in ways that set them
apart from outsiders.  In some cases there might be a pattern of trying to
avoid a pronunciation characteristic of an out group.

The shift in IO fricatives seems to have been ongoing since at least the
1700s.

I should add, of course, that there is nothing deficient or corrupt about
the more modern pronunciations.  One might argue that from an IO point of
view they would be probably "better" or more characteristically and
satisfyingly IO, at least in more recent time.

> And what is the standard practice in word lists when wanting to show
> such changes and recognizing the variations in the various family
> dialects.

Depending on the situation people may suppress the differences in favor of
some "standard" or "prestige" norm (not necessarily the conservative
variant), or go into great detail listing the variants, ideally (in
dictionary contexts) listing the sources for the variants (ideally a
person, place and time).

> My Grandma spoke only a little IO from her parents, and my Uncle John
> learned some from them as well and so I have been able to collect a
> short list of words and expressions from that source as well. For
> example they were given "Hinuu" as meaning "I'm afraid." One strange
> variation in pronunciation was that "baxoje" was pronounced
> "paxoji"/"paxoci"/"pakoci" in our family dialect from my Grandmother's
> Mother's side.

The unaspirated series of stops is often voiced in IO (as in some other
Siouan languages) and there's tendency among linguists recently to write
bdj^g for the unaspirated stops to reflect this.  Still, for some speakers
(probnably originally certain localities) lack of aspiration would not be
supplemented by voicing, so the sound would be ptc^k.  This would still be
distinct from the aspirates ph/th/c^k/kh. To English ears the difference
between, say, p and ph is a hard one to hear, but it's real enough in most
Siouan languages.  Far more real than b vs. p.

Linguists (mainly Bob Rankin, though I follow his lead)  recently have
been trying to encourage writing the aspirates in IO as ph, etc., in IO
citations in spite of having gone over to writing the inaspirates as b,
etc.  There used to be a tendency to write either p vs. ph or b vs. p,
allowing p in the second case to indicate the aspirate.  Just writing p
seems simpler, but it is fraught with pitfalls.  Mainly it is potentially
confusing both to non-Siouanists and to speakers of the language
interested in writing it.  The problem is that since both b and p occur as
pronunciations of "unaspirated p," both b and p occur indifferently in the
sources as ways of writing this sound, while p and ph occur indifferently
as ways of writing ph.  This leads to a constant state of uncertainty as
to whether a given word in IO has an aspirated stop or not.  In fact, it
leads to uncertainty as to whether IO even has aspiration, which it does.

JEK