ASB puza

[Heike Bödeker]

At 13:29 14.08.03 -0500, Rory M Larson wrote:
>Now I'm wondering what other Algonquian languages would have been
>represented 500 years ago along the northeast coast, especially from New
>England to the Gulf of St. Lawrence area.

The New England lgs. of older classifications (Micmac,
Malecite-Passamoquoddy, "Etchemin", Eastern Abenaki incl. Penobscot,
Western Abenaki, Loup A incl. Nipmuck, Loup B, Massachusett,
Narraganset-Natick, Mohegan-Peqout-Montauk, Quiripi-Unquachog). To the
current classification as Eastern Alg., btw, also the lgs. spoken South of
Long Island via Virginia to Carolina are added (Eastern Long Island,
Mahican, Munsee-Delaware, Unami-Delaware, Nanticoke, Powhatan, Carolina).

>Do we have, or can we predict, the form of the *pe$iwa etymon in these
>languages?

The only item I could check at home was Malecite p at so "bobcat" (Szabó,
Indianisches Wörterbuch: Malecite-Deutsch-Englisch, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
1981, p. 176), which is like the Penobscot reflex.

Btw, in the same dictionary (p. 188) I find psowis, pl. psowiis at k "cat" — I
assume pso- = p at so-, but what is the remainder?

>Also, what about their terms for hares and rabbits? Are any of these at
>all "puss"-like?

Ah... there's 3 etyma PCA *me?0aaposwa "rabbit" (Hewson #1845, incl.
*-aaposw "quadruped", Hewson p. 241), PCA *me$weew- "rabbit" (Hewson
#1887), PCA *waaposwa "rabbit" (Hewson #3474 incl. *-osw "quadruped",
Hewson p. 248; same with *waaposw "white animal" Hewson #3473 with reflexes
given Menomini waaposoohsEh "little rabbit" and Ojibwa waapooson?
"rabbit"!!), two of which contain a, well, "puss"-like sequence, but
actually these basically are formed from the "quadruped" medial, either
with w- which is a merely formal initial (though like accretive nasals of
pronominal origin, and functioning like the formal bases in Southern
Wakashan, so nothing exotic about this), or with *me?0- "big" (as can be
easily parsed from *me?0-aapeew-a "giant = big person", *me?0-eki0-wa "be
big (animatum intransitivum) = big size"; Hewson, #1844, #1848).

All the best,

Heike