bow (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:41:44 -0700
From: David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>
To: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>, John Koontz <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>,
     Mike McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: bow

...

> But M-I also has mitaekopa 'bow' in the literature; is that a replacement
> term, second name or what?

What Miami has is /mihte(h)koopa/~/mihtek(h)waapa/, which are basically
regular from PA */me?tekwa:pyi/.

>>What I find strange about this is that it seems to imply that the bow
>>was something known to speakers of Proto-Algonquian.
>
> I guess I wouldn't say so since, (a) there is no single, unitary term
> reconstructible to PA and (b) at least one of the terms you do get, "wood
> string", is a compound.

True, tho I think PA */ahta:pya/ is left unexplained (the */aht-/ there has
no etymology that I can see). That one is the 'bow' word in Eastern
Algonquian, tho outside Eastern it's usually 'bowstring', when found.
Phonologically a lot of languages screw it up in small ways (like Miami
/neehtiaapa/ 'bow'). The poor phonological matchup across the daughter
languages strongly supports the idea that it entered Algonquian after the
languages were already somewhat differentiated.

...

Another possible wrinkle on this is that a couple very well supported PA
'arrow' words can be reconstructed. Tho I spose one could say those meant
'spear' or whatever and that those terms got transferred to 'arrow'.

We'd have to see what other families in North America have to say about
this. For instance, Iroquoian? Muskogean?

Dave