Virtues-wolves-coyotes

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> What are you referring to as "simple stops" here?  My understanding
> has been that there are three series in Omaha: voiced unaspirated;
> voiceless unaspirated, or tense; and voiceless aspirated.  Am I
> missing a set?

Only the ejectives, but I always overlook them in this context, too, so
essentially, no, you have them all.  Some might prefer to call the tense
series voiceless geminate or voiceless preaspirated (not really true in
OP, but mostly so in Osage).  They are, strictly speaking voiceless
unaspirated, too, and that is often the most perceptible quality they have
in OP.  However, they are not historically the voiceless unaspirated
series.  What is now the voiced series was formerly the voicless
unaspirated series *p > b, etc.  The corresponding series in Dakotan and
Osage are still voiceless aspirated.  I forget with Quapaw, but it's
complex there.

The tense series correspond to Dakotan clusters (OP tte vs. Da pte) or
aspirates (OP tta vs. Da tha).  Since I look at things historically a lot,
I tend to avoid calling the OP tense series the voiceless unaspirated
series.  It only confuses things in that context.  It's a perfectly valid
assessment, though, as far as things go synchronically in OP.

I also wouldn't call the voiced series voiced unaspirated, because, while
it's quite true, there aren't any voiced aspirated series in languages of
the region.  You might also call the voiced series lax (in opposition to
the tense series).

Simple, the term you asked about, is another term for voiced.  The
terminology arises from the fact that the other series behave like
clusters in syllable canons.  So, some people might treat the other series
as clusters or complex.  Or maybe only one of them, depending on what
school they followed.  I think most people don't treat them as clusters
today, or at least not Dakotan aspirates, but I decided sometime around
1980 that I didn't care one way or another - that it was primarily a
matter of intellectual fashion.  Still, fashion or not, I think in the 60s
you could lose your job and degree ex post facto for thinking incorrectly
on this.

There's also the old conundrum about neutralization, too, of course.  Are
the stops that combine with fricatives or resonants in clusters like sp or
bdh the same as the b that occurs alone as a syllable onset?  Or are they
neutralizations of the opposition b vs. ph vs. pp vs. p?.  Might they be
really positional variants of the tense series?  After all they are
unvoiced in sp, s^p, xp, etc.!  I also now refuse to get overly excited
about this.  I treat the p in sp and the b in bdh as variants of the b
that occurs alone, and don't worry too much about spelling one of the
variants with a p and the others with b.

I do notice that Ken Miner writes sg in Winnebago.  Maybe he got sick of
the argument, too.  Maybe he just wanted to be consistent.  You can get in
trouble that way, too.  At one point I wrote p for b, t for d, and k for g
in OP, arguing that voicing was predictable.  It also saved me having the
explain why it's ppethaN and.s^pethaN but bethaN.  Or so I thought, On the
other hand, I've spent the rest of my life saying, "No, p is pronounced
b!" to non-Omahas and "Sorry, it really is a b." to Omahas.

You can't win with this sort of thing ...