Siouan Long Vowls

[Rankin, Robert L]

> > I think we are ignoring some basic tenets of phonology.

Koontz writes:
> But if all long vowels were also accented, whether or not we
> could discern that they came about from morphological sequences, > we
would have to omit length from the picture, which is the
> Dakotan situation.  So unless length is in some degree
> independent of accent, we are overdifferentiating to write it,
> however nicely we can predict the location of accent by assuming
> it.

I disagree. It is only if *ALL* accented vowels were long, and length
occurred *nowhere* else, that we would be entitled to equate the two.
Moreover, it would have to be shown that it was accent that was generating
length and not length that was *attracting* accent! This is not a minor
point: most of the accented long vowels in Mississippi Valley Siouan
languages occur precisely in syllables that are exceptions to the 2nd
syllable accent rule. It seems to me that this is unlikely to be an
accident.

We already have Ponca and Chiwere data in recent postings that show both
long and short accented vowels.

> > These languages have length in both accented and unaccented
> syllables.
>
> I guess we need a set of standard examples of these, for the
> individual languages and diachronically, too, to help us out
> here.

I agree that would certainly be nice, but the first requirement is that we
have to have field workers willing actively to investigate the problem. I
sense a genuine reluctance among Siouanists to bother with this annoying
problem. If we were Algonquianists we'd all be fired. We need to stop
looking for "minimal pairs" and start training ourselves to hear length,
accented and unaccented. Siouan languages aren't minimal pair languages;
it's hard enough to find them even for simple consonant distinctions.

The other attitudinal problem that I worry about is the idea that geminate
vowels are not long vowels. Unless they are invariably rearticulated, that's
just nonsense. Bimorphemic length is just one *source* of long vowels.

And I reiterate -- I started out just as guilty of these attitudes as anyone
else. But the state of many Siouan languages today won't permit us to wait
for a generation of better trained field workers.

Bob