Fetch

[BARudes at aol.com]

The problem with an assumption that duk# lost du- through absorption into
pronominals is the fact that duk# always precedes pronominals.

As for ra:# by foot and ra:- go by foot, I assume they come from the same
source historically.  However, in the modern language they are separate
morphemes with distinct inflections.  (I believe it was Siebert 1945 who
first pointed this out.)

The Catawba situation is very different from the Eastern Algonquian
situation.  In the New England Eastern Algonquian languages, Proto-Eastern
Algonquian *e: became /a:/ and *a: became /aN/ (except in Penobscot, where it
became a tense /a/ (versus lax /a/ from *e:) which Siebert wrote with an
alpha.

In Catawba, the alternation of long vowels with nasal vowels is dialectal,
with Esaw, Saraw and Woccon showing different distributions.  It is hard to
say how old the phenomenon is.  Since there are differences between
Proto-Siouan and Catawban on the distribution of nasal and oral vowels, it is
going to take some time and careful reconstruction to determine what the
original vowels in Proto-Siouan-Catawban forms were.

Blair