ASB puza

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> Well, since you have mentioned Iroquoian, I guess I will jump in here.
> The words for 'cat', 'panther', 'wild cat' are much more diverse than
> you lead one to believe. ...

I'm sorry - I didn't mean to suggest that Iroquoian was short of 'cat'
terms.  I was avoiding citing a fuller set for this particular term, which
resembles the Siouan form in a general way at least.

> Then there is the word you cite, which is a Mohawk word, atí:ru, which
> has cognate in Oneida (atí:lu).  The form you cite as Iroquoian is
> actually the Mohawk word for a 'skunk', for which there is a cognate
> in Oneida vt'i:lu 'racoon', Wyandot ati:roN 'skunk', Huron tiron
> 'skunk', Tuscarora n'e?reN? 'skunk' and Cherokee dili 'skunk'.

I had the set from Marianne Mithun's summary in the Extending the Rafters
collection.  I knew that it referred to non-felines, though I wasn't sure
which.  I omitted to mention in justification that English 'cat' has been
extended to cover such non-feline predators - e.g., civet cats, black
cats, polecats (whether skunks or ferrets), Ginsterkatze (genets), etc.,
and one would have to assume something like this process was at work here,
too.  As far as raccoons are concerned, the French term in my Peterson
Field Guide for British and European mammals gives raton laveur.  So, in
French a raccoon is a rat, not a cat.  My Omaha consultant appeared to
lump ground squirrels and weasels, for that matter, and the standard
Dhegiha terms lump mice and weasels.  I have been noticing that folk
taxonomies operate along quite different lines from Linnaeus and
subsequent scientific taxonomists.  This is one of the difficulties with
using terms for Linnaean species to try to identify homelands.

> I would urge great caution in lumping words for 'cat' from diverse
> North American languages together just because they start with a /p/
> (or /k/ in Iroquoian) and contain a sibilant. Sources for borrowing
> include, but are not limited to English pussy, Dutch (de) poes,
> Alongquian *pin$iwa, French pichou (as a reborrowing). There is also
> the possibility that, given that such a range of language have words
> of a similar form, one is dealing at least in part with some form of
> independent innovation of an imitative word.

The point that multiple European sources might be involves is a good one,
though I'm not sure that the Siouan data requires it.  As far as I can see
forms attributed to English puss(y) have all been of the form pu(u)s(i) -
except for the As buza form - all much better matches that the Siouan set
and MI wiikwee-.  Actually, they are better matches than the Siouan set is
within itself.  Siouanists are perhaps guilty of tunnel vision in
comparing all of their 'cat' forms to each other.  Maybe they are
unrelated loans from different directions.