ASB puza

[ROOD DAVID S]

On Sat, 9 Aug 2003, Heike [iso-8859-1] Bödeker wrote:

> At 08:19 09.08.03 -0500, mmccaffe at indiana.edu wrote:
> >As this list's non-resident (homeless) yet lurking Algonquianist, I'd have
> >to question whether in fact Ojibwa donated the term to Dakota. Certainly a
> >possibility but not necessarily a foregone conclusion.
>
> The problem I'm having with it is that then z^ would have been shifted to z
> without recognizable reason as the target language has both z^ snd z. The
> next best A lg. with a s/š merger would be Plains Cree, if it was about
> that... Anyone any ideas?

Don't forget about the highly productive sound-symbolism patterns with
Siouan fricatives.  Alveolars designate relatively small examples,
alveo-palatals normal-sized, and velars are the augmentative grade, for
both the voiced and voiceless series. Lakhota speakers today still play
games with this, and we have major trouble reconstructing fricatives in
medial position, especially in stative verbs and nouns, because the
languages often disagree on which grade they've decided to make standard.
Converting from z^ to z for a diminutive would be perfectly normal.

However, I'm still advocating English as the lending language here, since
the domestic cat is a European import, the word is widespread as a loan
word, and the sound matches are a lot closer than those with the
Algonquian candidate.

David S. Rood
Linguistics
295 UCB
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
303-492-2747