Different /e/ phonemes in Siouan?

[Rankin, Robert L]

> ...our speakers, that they are actually making a distinction between the
tenser,
full /e/ sound, as approximately in "late", and the lower or more
central /e/ sound as in "let".

I'm not surprised, but finding the source of the distinction may require
some work.  Like John, my first instinct is to attribute it to the
long-neglected length distinction.  We know there are clear minimal pairs
for several different vowels and we know that V length is reconstructible.
That may not clear up the problem however.

Problem 1:  Ken Miner found that ALL monosyllables in Winnebago (at least
for major categories like noun, verb, etc.) had long vowels in isolation.  I
think that was a rule: no exceptions.  If that's true throughout Siouan,
then differences should be neutralized in this environment, and contexts
with affixes should be sought.

Problem 2:  While I don't wish to alienate members of the list who may be
speakers of Omaha or other Siouan languages, it is simply a fact that, as
languages become moribund and their speakers use other languages, in this
case English, the vast majority of the time, it is often the case that
phonemic distinctions in the primary language (again English) interfere with
perception of the phonological distinctions of the secondary language (here
Omaha).  /ey/ and /E/ are quite distinct in English and people may be
carrying this distinction into their Omaha where they *perceive* it occurs
even if they are pretty fluent.  So a distinction that was maybe allophonic
in Omaha starts to take on distinctiveness because it's phonemic in English.
This probably shouldn't be producing minimal pairs by itself, but combined
with a desire to differentiate homophones, it could.

While it's generally been my feeling that most of the instrumental phonetic
studies that have invaded phonology from phonetics in recent years are just
"bean counting" and a general a waste of time from the point of view of
"langue" (as opposed to "parole"), I think some studies of this sort with
Siouan vowels might be revealing -- in ALL the languages we work with.  We
keep hearing these distinctions and keep getting our pronunciation corrected
by speakers: it's high time we figured out just exactly what's what and then
followed up in our phonological and grammatical studies.  Dorsey did
overdifferentiate on occasion, sometimes providing different spellings for
apparent homophones, but until we understand the full picture, we can't say
for sure where he did and where he didn't.

Bob