Different /e/ phonemes in Siouan?

[Rory M Larson]

> My first instinct would be to wonder if this was a correlate of length.
> What sort of intonation is there?  What happens if you add an article or
> in compounds with the two different forms?

Length may be a factor (see below).  I think I've been hearing /E/
in various intonational positions.  The "louse" term was originally
volunteered with an article:

  HE' ama' oNnoN'shkoNshkoN

which she translated as:

  The bugs [which she later corrected to "head lice"]
  are making my head itch.

This seems to be something one says when one goes to scratch
an itch on one's noNshki.


> What other forms might exhibit one or the other of the two e's?

Well, the positionals /tHE/ and /kHE/, as you note below.  I've
also got one of my techno-terms with a definite /E/ sound on the
first syllable.  This one does not follow an aspiration.

  nE'xEtti

This is a type of frying pan or skillet.  The word seems to be
a compound of "pot" and "house".  When the word for "pot", now
"bucket", is used by itself, however, the sound and intonation
seem to change.  In /nE'xEtti/, the first vowel is a clear,
stressed, brief /E/, as in the closed syllable "neck".  The second
vowel is unstressed, perhaps a bit schwa; I'm not sure what it's
supposed to be, but it seems to inherit the preceding /E/ sound.
Without the following /tti/, the first syllable seems to be
lengthened, turned into an open syllable, intonated more
complexly, and possibly made more tense, at least for part
of its sequence.  It might be something like about halfway
between /nEE'x@/ and /nee'x@/, or perhaps fully /nee'x@/,
where @ is schwa, and where the elongated first syllable is
rising in both pitch and stress.  I don't know if this makes
sense, but that seems to be what I'm hearing.


> I've noticed that the e after aspirates is more lax, e.g., in tti=the
> [ti<high>tHE<low>].  Dorsey regularly writes this as t<e-breve>, perhaps
> indicating the same thing.

> Otherwise, note that hE 'louse' corresponds to Dakotan he'ya, while
> presumably he 'horn' might be inalienable from *ihe.  I'm not sure if
this
> is any help.  If 'louse' were a contraction or reduction of *heya, I'd
> expect it to be the tense one.

Is it possible that the Dakotan form is a compound of
*hE + *a, where *a is some classifier like the /ama'/
used by our speaker?  If so, the /y/ would be epenthetic,
but could still cause the preceding /E/ to shift to /e/.


Anyway, thanks for the astute advice.  I'll try to collect
more examples and play with environments.

Rory