Winnebago Vowel Length (Re: Helmbrecht Paper: Terminology 'modal prefix')

[David Costa]

> "I suppose working with Winnebago speakers, it must be clear that
> their perception is that the h is organic."

What exactly do you mean by 'organic' here, John?

Dave Costa


----------
>From: "DANKER, KATHLEEN" <KATHLEEN_DANKER at sdstate.edu>
>To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>Subject: Re: Winnebago Vowel Length (Re: Helmbrecht Paper:  Terminology 'modal
prefix')
>Date: Tue, Jul 9, 2002, 10:42 am
>

> On Mon, 8, Jul 2002, John Kuntz wrote:
> "I suppose working with Winnebago speakers, it must be clear that
> their perception is that the h is organic."
>
> This was certainly true of the late Felix White, Sr., with whom I
> worked for several years.  When I would ask him to spell out taped Ho
> Chunk phrases, he would regularly reinsert h sounds that had not been
> pronounced.  He wrote the h sound in the syllabary with a star symbol
> which he said stood for "the breath."  This had religious
> significance for him because it was connected with the breath of the
> creator and the sacredness of the Ho Chunk language.
>
> K.D. Danker
>
>
>>On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, R. Rankin wrote:
>>  > The verb 'eat' ordinarily implies 'eat SOMEthing', so I'd expect
>>  > waruuc (or waaruc or whatever it is) ...
>>
>>One of the little appreciated aspects of Winnebago vowel length is that it
>>is somewhat variable.
>>
>>My understanding is that Winnebago lengthens monosyllables, so, whatever
>>the implicit length of ruc^, it would be ruu'c^ (or ru'uc^, as Miner would
>>position the accent).  I don't know if adding enclitics affects this, so I
>>don't actually know if it's ru'c^-s^aNnaN or ruu'c^-s^aNnaN, for example,
>>when you add the declarative.  I do know that the declarative is s^a(N)naN
>>after consonants, naN after vowels, which seems like a good candidate for
>>an unusual phonological rule, if anyone is collecting them.
>>
>>This verb doesn't inflect regularly, so it's not possible to see if the
>>first person, say, is *haruu'c^ or *haru'c^, revealing whether the stem is
>>inherently long or not.  In fact, the first person is haa' c^, the second
>>person raa'c^, which will no doubt strike the Dakotanists as familiar
>>looking.  But, the inclusive is given by Miner as hiNnu'c^, and the
>>wa-form (or activity form, perhaps) is waru'c^ in the same source, so I
>>think we can take this as an underlying short-stem |[ru'c^]|, to the
>>extent that it has a stem ...  And, looking around, this is a common
>>pattern:  CVV'C : haCV'C.  I haven't yet noticed any CVV'C : haCVV'C.
>>
>>Now, the next step is to look at the inflection of the wa-form, and in the
>>first and second persons Miner gives waha'c^ and wara'c^, not, for
>>example, *wahaa'c^ and *waraa'c^.  So it seems that the length of haa'c^
>>and raa'c^ is also due to monosyllabicity, rather than inherent length,
>>though these are certainly candidates for contracted forms.
>>
>>A further step, is to look at wa+ha+ruc^, which, as expected by analogy
>>with Dhegiha is 'table' ('something to eat on').  This is waaru'c^, which
>>is what you expect if you start with Pre-Winnebago (a lot like Chiwere or
>>even Dhegiha, though the root is different there) *wa-a'-ruc^e and apply
>>first deletion of final e after simple stops, then Dorsey's Law (no
>>effect), and then Winnebago Accent Shift.
>>
>>A point to make here is that everyone who works directly with Winnebago -
>>and Helmbrecht is no exception - takes the approach that morphemes like
>>the locatives ha, hi, ho, or the pronominals ha A1, hiN P1, hiN A12, etc.,
>>are h-initial, but lose these h's when something precedes them.  So wa-ha
>>is waa-, for example.  From a comparativist point of view, however, a more
>>likely scenario is that Winnebago just adds an epenthetic haitch to the
>>start of words that begin underlyingly with a vowel.  Notable exceptions
>>are verbs that we think of for comparative reasons as *?-initial, like
>>*?uN 'to do', which is uNuN in Winnebago.  (First person, incidentally, is
>>ha?uN' - glottal stop, short stem vowel.)  Another kind of exception seems
>>to be initial long vowels, like aagi' 'be ready', or at least monosyllables
>>like aa' 'arm'.
>>
>>I suppose working with Winnebago speakers it must be clear that their
>>perception is that the h is organic.
>>
>>There are some interesting wrinkles to that situation, however.  First,
>>the first person does lose its h in contractions usually, e.g., per
>>Lipkind ha < ha + ha.  But notice that now we would expect to have haa
>>with an epenthetic h before long a.  In fact, checking the inflection of
>>ha-verbs in Miner, I do find mostly haaCV'... first persons, e.g., hac^i'
>>'to live on' vs. haac^i' 'I live on', but you have to be careful, because
>>an underlying n-stem, for example, will behave differently, e.g.,
>>hanaNxguN' 'to listen' vs. hanaNaN'xguN 'I listen'.  There is normally a
>>shift of accent in an n-stem first person, e.g., naNaNs^e' 'to take away
>>from' vs. naNaN's^e 'I take away form'.  There is also haniN' 'to live'
>>and 'I live', but Miner gives 'I live' as haaniN' in his first IJAL
>>article on Winnebago accent, so the dictionary entry is probably a typo.
>>
>>Then consider the verb 'to eat' mentioned above.  The wa-form had the
>>first person waha'c^, not waa'c^.  No loss of h here.  Perhaps of interest
>>here is that though Dhegiha simply lacks any initial in all the first
>>person pronouns, e.g., OP a A1, aN P1, aN A12, Ioway-Otoe, a close
>>relation of Winnebago, has ha A1, hiN P1, hiN A12.  Neither the Dhegiha
>>languages nor Ioway-Otoe have epenthetic haitch.  (In fact, the closest
>>case I can think of is in Shawnee.)  So perhaps h-initials in first person
>>pronominals have a sort of half-way status between organic and epenthetic.
>>
>>Another interesting h-context is the causative, which is a suffixed ha
>>A1, ra A2, hi A3.  The inflection of 'to kill', for example, is t?ee'hi
>>'to kill' vs. t?ee'ha 'I killed'.  Note also t?ee'wahi < t?ee'-wa-ha-hi 'I
>>killed them'.  But both h's are lost after a consonant, e.g., ceebi' 'to
>>consume' vs. ceeba' 'I consume', but ceebwa'hi 'to consume something'.
>>I'm not sure why the two different accentual patterns for monosyllabic
>>root causatives.
>>
>>JEK