h- vs. x-aspiration in LDN

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Kathleen Shea wrote:

> As you know, aspirated stops are somewhat rare in Omaha-Ponca, occurring
> mostly in the definite articles (of which, of course, tHaN is one).  The
> definite article akHa' doesn't have strong, velar aspiration, but I seem
> to recall that the word for 'elk' does:  aNpHaN.

> Actually, I should have written a nasal vowel for the first vowel in the
> word for Arapaho since that's what I heard:  maNxpi' atHaN.  I'll try to
> be on the lookout for other examples.

The only one that occurs to me at the moment would be thaN as an article
in other contexts.

I notice also something here that I hadn't noticed before, which is that
the original "thematic" -a suffix of Da maNxpiya, superflous in OP maNxpi,
has been reinterpreted as the locative a- 'on'.

JEK