Omaha-Ponca Long Vowls

[Kathleen Shea]

As Bob has pointed out to me, we need to listen for length and record it and
then go back to look at the stress.  It is hard, though.  I haven't been
very systematic about it so far.  When I first started doing fieldwork,
almost every vowel sounded long to me, so I stopped writing long vowels as
much.  I need to go back and look at my notes again.  Anyway, the few times
that I've become aware of minimal pairs for length have been when I've been
corrected by native speakers.  This was true of the now worn examples I've
given of vowel length not spanning a morpheme boundary (repeated here in the
accepted Ponca practical writing system with the adopted convention of
writing the accent mark over the first mora of a double, or long, vowel):
naN'aNde "heart" vs. naN'de "inside perimeter of a tipi (tent)" and niN'iNde
"ripe, cooked, done" vs. niN'de "person's backside, buttocks."  In order to
pronounce these two examples with long vowels to the satisfaction of native
speakers, I usually try to include a rising-falling pitch or a "catch" in my
throat (slight glottal stop or creaky voice), or both when saying the
vowels.  If I ask Ponca speakers if the vowel sounds long or drawn out, they
usually say that, no, it's cut off (due to the glottal stop)!  You all know
that Bob has written an article on this phenomenon of Ponca vowel length
associated with rising-falling pitch/glottal stop/creaky voice.  Another
word where I hear this type of "length" is in my name, TesaN'aNwiN, where
saN'aN means "pale, milky or dirty white."  Of course all these examples
have long nasal vowels.  Several months ago in one of our Ponca language
workshops, again in a case where the fluent Ponca speaker--Henry Lieb, the
Ponca language teacher at Frontier High School in Red Rock--wasn't happy
with my initial pronunciation, we came up with an example of a minimal
triplet.  As I recall (off the top of my head) it involved she'e thaN "the
(round) apple" vs. she' thaN "that (round object)" vs. shethaN' (?).  (I'm
sorry, I've forgotten the meaning for the last word.  I think it means
something like "while" or "then.")  Anyway, Ardis, you might want to try
eliciting those words.  I wish I could offer more enlightening observations,
but that's all I have for now.

Kathy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: Omaha-Ponca Long Vowls


> On Sun, 18 Mar 2001, ardis eschenberg wrote:
> > I've been trying to think of non-verb long vowels, which would thus not
> > necesarily be polymorphemic.
>
> I suspect one could find verbal examples that didn't involve vowel
> sequences.
>
> > The other day in class we got moNhi khe paai.  'The knife is sharp.'
>
> This is perhaps helpful because it is a widespread cognate set, involving
> loss of intervocalic h in OP.
>
> Da phe
> OP ppai (not marking length) (perhaps also in MaNzEppe 'axe')
> IO pha'hiN
> Wi paahi'
>
> There are various ways to approach the length in Winnebago.  One approach
> might be to see it as a relict of historical initial stress, but one also
> has to wonder why the form was originally initially stressed, and the
> usual answer on that is to wonder if historically this stem might not have
> had a long vowel in the initial syllable.  For some reason length is
> slightly more perceivable in Winnebago than it has proved elsewhere.  One
> obvious suggestion - it has certainly occurred to me - has been that Ken
> Miner (working on Winnebago) is a somewhat better phonetician than, e.g.,
> John Koontz.  I've been given to understand that length is not always that
> easy to perceive in Winnebago, but I nevertheless feel a certain
> embarasment on the whole subject.
>
> The real questions are, of course, (a) is the length really there in
> Omaha-Ponca, which seems to be the case, and (b) is it contrastive in
> accented syllables and in non-accented syllables, omitting any possibility
> of polymorphemic sequences.  It would suffice to be contrastive in one or
> the other of accented and unaccented syllables, of course.  It wouldn't
> have to be both, and it would be typical Siouan phonological perversity if
> it weren't.  We might even want to be prepared for something like a length
> contrast in accented initial syllables, but not in non-initial syllables,
> accented or otherwise.
>
> I think Kathy Shea has a few clear examples of a length contast in
> accented syllables, but I haven't heard of any in unaccented syllables.
>
> In passing, note the waffling on the nasality of the final vowel between
> IO and Wi, an interesting issue.
>
> > where the word for sharp was long and not just stressed.  Note that it
was
> > translated as singular and not plural so I don't think it's some kind of
> > reduplication.
>
> I think you can rule that out, but I'll be interested to see what the test
> produces.
>
> > I have an idea of how to get this in contrast...I'll try it
> > this week.
>
> Where do you pereceive stress, pitch, or whatever?
>
>