Rees

[Rankin, Robert L]

 These are all issues that relate to American English dialects of the 18th
and 19th centuries, plus several idiosyncracies in naming habits.

In addition to R-loss syllable finally, and rhotacization of schwa
word-finally in some speech, there were also speakers who raised final schwa
to [I] or [i].  The local pronunciations of Missoura/Missoury,
Indiana/Indiany, Tulsa/Tulsy, Arizona/Arizony attest to this.  There were
many more.  It is possible that the Arikara/Arikaree doublet is the frozen
result of this change.  This particular sound change did not become part of
standard American English (whatever that is), but it is discussed in Edgar
Sturtevant's little book "Linguistic Change".  He discusses what he calls
"primary" phonetic change (=neogrammarian Lautgesetz) and "secondary"
phonetic change (=Labovian dialect borrowing) and the dialect phenomena are
among the latter as I recall.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Knutson
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Sent: 2/11/02 2:41 PM
Subject: RE: Ponca

And just to muddy the waters a little (sorry, :)  ) there is also the
alternate form of the Caddoan Arikara---
Arikari.


Alan K