PS *Wa:'te 'boat' (Re: additions to Woccon article)

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 2 Feb 2002 BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> 2. Proto-Siouan *'wati 'boat, canoe' (Carter 1980:77) [John K. reports that
> the reconstruction in the Comparative Siouan Dictionary is *Wa:'te (?) 'boat']

Something we might want to keep in mind:

Catherine Callaghan.  More evidence for Yok-Utian:  a reanalysis of the
Dixon and Kroeber sets.  IJAL 67.3:313-345, p. 322, says Miss [Southern
Sierra Miwok] wo:te- 'boat' is a loanword from Spanish bote 'boat'.
However, the So. Sierra Miwok term is isolated, and the Siouan term is
widely distributed (Crow-Hidatsa, Mississippi Valley, Bioloxi-Ofo and
Woccon), albeit somewhat irregular.

I scanned all the sets out of curiosity, and came away with an impression
that if ever a language family looked distinctively non-Siouan, this was
it.  Not only were the forms reconstructed not resemblant, their canons of
form were entirely different.  I only noticed Proto-Miwok *mu:s,
Proto-Costanoan *mu(:)s. Proto-Utian (both the foregoing) *mu:s 'breast,
milk', cf. PS *a:si (Proto-Mississippi Valley *(Wa-)aze), and Proto-Sierra
Miwok *c^uku-, Proto-Wintun *suku 'dog', cf. PS *w[i (?)]s^uNke.  One
wonders about onomatopoeia in 'breast' terms with this form, and Callaghan
suggests that 'dog' terms are so widely borrowed in California as to be
difficult to assess in comparative contexts.

JEK