MANDAN redux (was Re: Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre)

[Rankin, Robert L]

Re: Dakotan iyoxloke.  I take it this is realted to Kaw xloge 'empty,
hollow' and the root related to xloje 'shed, as the skin of a locust or bark
of a tree'  If it's related to 'throat' the implication is that xlo- is
bimorphemic, something that is entirely possible, although I can't think of
any other examples of [fricative]+lV- that are, at least off the top of my
head.  Probably all the [fric]lV sequences should be explored by someone at
some point.  Many are phonesthemes, but I don't suppose that prevents some
of them being historically bimorphemic.

Bob


-----Original Message-----
From: Koontz John E
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Sent: 2/10/02 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: MANDAN redux (was Re: Dakota Band Names and Pomme de Terre)

On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> Item no. 9. on the list of eastern Sioux village names of Le Sueur
> (1699-1702) is Mantanton. The -ton is Sioux -thuN 'village', and the
> balance appears identical to MANDAN. Le Sueur apparently glosses the
> name (or describes the group) twice, as 'N[ation] de la Grosse Roche'
> and as 'village d'un grand lac qui se decharge dans un petit'.
DeMallie,
> the author of the HNAI article, doesn't give a retranscription of the
> name.

I have a citation in my comments on the names recommending Hodge
1907-10:
I, 819, which is The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.

I think this is intended to render MdonthuN = Mdo't(e) + thuNwaN.  The
word mdo'te appears in Riggs glossed 'the mouth or junction of one river
with another (a name commonly applied to the country about Fort
Snelling,
or the mouth of the Saint Peters; also the name appropriated to the
establisment of the Fur Company at the junction of the river, written
Mendota); the outlet of a lake.  T. iyoh.loke."  I can't find the
expected
Teton cognate *blote in Buechel, but iyoxloke, cited by Riggs, does
appear.  Williamson has under 'mouth', 'the mouth of the river,
iyoxdoke,
mdote', so it looks like Santee also has iyoxdoke cf. iyoxloke.

If you consider Mendota in contracted form as Mendon, you can easily see
the basis for Mantanton.  Pursuing the obvious question, I don't see
that
this helps us understand the term Mandan, which is rather different in
form in the original, cf., OP mawadaN.  The similarity of Mendon ~
Mantan
and Mandan is mainly in English.

It's morphologically interesting that mdo'te is initially stressed,
though this is consistent with the contracted form mdon.  Usually
C-final
roots that end in e are finally stressed (on the -e), if bisyllabic.
They
do commonly refer to body parts or other inalienable possessions.  In
this
case we have a part of a river network.

Historically, this term is also interesting.  As we know from the *pr or
*wr correspondences, we should be looking for OP *nude, Os *toce, Wi
*dooc^ as correspondences.  And we do find these terms, with the
meanings
'throat'.  But these are compared to Te lote' 'throat'.  These terms
appear perhaps to mean throat in the sense of the windpipe in at least
some cases.  This is an entirely appropriate gloss for 'mouth of a
stream', cf.  English gullet, French goulet 'narrow entrance to a port'.
So maybe here we actually have a Dakota doublet with *wr ~ *R?  (Bob
Rankin, take note!)  Do we have any others, I wonder?