Research on Biloxi

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Pamela Munro wrote:
>      My name is Tony Lopez and I'm about to start some personal
> research on Biloxi.  Not wanting me to reproduce research that someone
> else has done or is already working on, Dr. Munro has suggested that I
> ask the members of this list if they or someone else they know is
> doing such work.

Dorsey & Swanton, and Haas's comments thereon are basic, and the original
materials in the NAA need to be considered because of editorial issues.
Never take Swanton's analysis and classification by roots seriously.
The best you can say about it is that it was rather premature.  I'd be
tempted to say it was even ill-advised.

The main publication since these has been Paul Ferris Einaudi's Biloxi
Grammar (a Ph.D. diss. at the U of Colo).  This was published by Garland,
but is now out of print.  The dissertation would be available from UMI,
and the published version would be in libraries here and there.  There has
been a good deal of mainly unpublished quibbling over Einaudi's analysis
of the inflectional paradigms, articles, etc., in light of more recent
understanding of such things in Siouan generally, and it is probably the
case that her approach to normalizing the orthography by omitting
diacritics has several undesirable affects, but this is essential, right
after Dorsey & Swanton.  It is an important tool for bringing out the
Siouan structure of the data, somewhat obscured by Swanton's massaging.
Unfortunately, I have the impression that Einaudi, like Kennard, having
finished a dissertation on a Siouan language, has been resolute in
distancing herself from further work on the language, the family, and even
linguistics.

Probably the main individuals working on Biloxi in recent years have been
Robert Rankin (U of Ks) - especially phonology and morphology - and Dale
Nicklas (independent scholar) - especially morphology and syntax.  For a
list of Bob's papers, see John Boyle's bibliogaphical web site.  I don't
know how much of Dale's work is listed there.  Bob and Dale have have both
considered Muskogean influences in very useful ways, e.g., I think it was
Dale who first showed that Biloxi uses switch reference, though I think
Bob has also looked at this, and so has Randy Graczyk.  Bob has summarized
Muskoean influence on lexicon, phonology and morphology.  Bob has also
been able to use his knowledge of comparative Siouan to good effect, e.g.,
in recognizing the existence of such things as aspirated stops.

I know that Dick Carter has looked some at morphological issues, e.g.,
theme final morphophonemics, (-di as *...r-e), but I don't think he's
published any of this.  I think it is anticipated that a lot of it will
figure in the Comparative Siouan Dictionary's introduction.

I've looked some at morphology but not in any depth.  I wrote a working
paper on the causative, and I've tried to sort out the paradigms based on
a consideration of the usual inflectional classes.  I think Einaudi tended
to overemphasize the simplying effects of the restructuring and to try to
explain with phonological rules what is essentially the result of
extensive analogical change in the already irregular pardigms of (late)
Proto-Siouan.  I think my only publication on this was working paper on
*r-stems.

Except that I don't really know what Dale Nicklas is up to, I don't think
anyone is working on Biloxi in a concentated way at the moment.

I think that except for Dick Carter's and Dale Nicklas's work, pretty much
everything is listed at Boyle's site.  However, most of it is probably
going to be very difficult to lay hands on.