ASB puza

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> MI      wiikwee-
>
> PSI      *-truN  (one might have plumped for *-kwuN, too)
> PreDa    *ikwuN  (i.e., m = w/__VN)
> Te        igmu'
> Sa        inmu'
> PreIO  *wiitwaN ???
> IO        udwaN' (+ yiNGe 'little')  (u- ???)
> Wi      wiic^aN'wa(siNiNc^serec^) 'cougar' (long-tailed cat)
> PreWi *wii'twaN
> PreDh *i(N)kruN-ka  (*-ka is a noun former)
> OP       iNgdhaN'(ga)
> Ks        iluN      (l < *kr)
> Os        iluN'ka   (l < *kr)
> Bi        *tmoc^-ka (tmo suggests *twuN)
> Tu        *talus-ka yiNki (attested form regularized as "taluskik")
>
> Yuchi     atyuNne 'wildcat'
> Mohawk    atiiru
>
> A. I assume you are suggesting that the Miami form is a loan from the
> PreDakotan reconstruction, since it is the only form in your set that
> bears any resemblance to the Miami form.  However, as you point out,
> the Miami and the PreDakotan forms share only the consonant cluster.

No, from a subsequent Siouan form something like the Dakotan igmuN
(*ikwuN) or PreWiCh *wiitwaN, which could as well have been *(w)itwuN and
*wiikwaN, given the difficulties the cluster presents, and given the not
fully understood tendencies of Siouan languages to add reflexes of *wa-
or *wV- to various forms.  I don't insist that the source be one of the
attested Siouan languages.  There is some reason to believe that the
linguistic situation of the historical period is not fully representative
of the situation before contact.  If a set shows the kind of variability
across languages that this one shows, we may or may not want to consider
that additional variation within the attested range might have occurred in
the past.  Even without allowing for additional linguistic forms, we have
to consider that we have a situation in which we do not know at what point
PreDa *itwuN became *ikwun, or, alternatively, PreWiCh *wiikwaN became
*wiitwaN.

> B. You are proposing to explain the initial w- in the Miami form from
> a PreDakotan initial *w- from one or another of several sources, but
> the *w- is not even reconstructable for the PreDakotan form.

As far as initial w, we don't know whether PreWiCh added *w(V)- (and why),
or wether the other dialects lost it.  Actually, given Rankins evidence
for *wi- as a prefix on animal names, we might suspect the latter.

As far as whether the medial cluster exhibits m or w, the question is
essentially moot in a Siouan context, as there is often no contrast,
though the details vary with the language.  Dakotan does do a better job
of contrasting w and m than most Siouan languages.  Though there is not
much variability in recording pral or nasal variants of the resonants in
Mississippi Valley languages, there has been in the past with Crow and
Hidatsa, and plainly something like this in the past in Dakotan explains
why the Santee, Yankton-Yanktonais, and Teton dalects have b and d or l
where the Assiniboine and Stoney dialects have m and n.  These are the
"oral context" pronunciations.  All of the dialects mentioned have m and n
in nasal contexts.  Of course, Santee was recorded in the 1800s with md
where I gather more recently speakers have bd.  In short, I'm prepared to
believe that however it is written now, a labial resonant in gm might be
heard as w or perceived as equivalent to that by a bilingual speaker.

The cluster in the Siouan forms remains a very interesting question.
Santee inmuN actually suggests tw, if we recognize that nm is analogous to
mn, where mn is the well-attested nasal equivalent of oral md ~ bd (to use
the Santee forms), also very well attested.  This is because nm looks like
it might be the nasal form of *dw, though I don't know of any examples of
*dw.  Siouanists take it as an article of faith that stop + resonant
clusters do not begin with dentals, though 'cat' and 'squash' put the
cluster *tw on the table for embarassed consideration.

For that matter, clusters ending in labial resonants are unusual, though
they do occur in Dakotan and in Winnebago and Iowau-Otoe.  They do not
occur in Dheigha.  Dhegiha's *kr in 'cat' is most likely an attempt to
convert something awkward like *tr or *tw or *kw into something manageable
like *kr.  The reverse possiblity, that Dakotan and Winnebago-Chiwere have
elected independently to change *kr into vanishingly rare *kw and *tw
respectively seems unlikely.

Whether Santee nasalized *dw argues for *t in Proto-Dakotan is unclear.
It happens that *t and *k are interchangeable in the reflexes of the *tp
and *kp clusters.  Teton has kp for both, while Santee has tp for both.
So *kp remains kp in Teton, but becomes tp in Santee, cf. Te kpaza, Santee
tpaza 'dark', OP ppaze 'evening', Wi (ho)kawas 'be dark, darkness'.  On
the other hand *tp becomes kp in Teton, but remains tp in Santee, cf. Te
nakpa', Santee natpa', OP nitta' (Ks naNtta'), Wi naNaNc^'awa '(external)
ear'.  Given this situation PreDa *dw and *gw (*tw and *kw) might well
also have neutralized, if there are/were enough examples to speak in these
terms!

The remaining issue here is the comparison of uN or aN with ee.  As I
think I asked, isn't there something funny about the distribution of *ee
in Algonquian - like first syllables only?  If ee is unusual in this
context, that is in itself an interesting matter.  However, it would be
more useful if there were an example agreed to be a loan that showed what
happened to aN or uN.  I don't actually have one in mind.  We don't know
much about loans into or out of SIouan.  The best parallel I can think of
is the Siouan 'bow' term, where forms like OP maN'de and Wi maNaNc^gu' are
considered to derive from an Algonquian form like *me?tekw-.

> C. You are proposing that Proto-Siouan *-truN ' panther, mountain
> lion' is cognate with or in some other way related to Proto-Iroquoian
> *ti:l-i/oN 'skunk' (see cognates in previous email), despite the
> difference in meanings and the problem of where the vowel separating
> the consonants came from in Iroquoian or went to in Siouan.

I've discussed the way in which terms for 'cat' (and this is more like the
'bobcat' term than the 'mountain lion' term, without modification) get
used more widely than with strict reference to the Linnaean concept of the
Felidae.  Obviously this would not be a recent loan, and there is room for
various specializations to have occurred at either end.  Whether the vowel
of the first syllable comes in Iroquoian or goes in Siouan I couldn't say.
I was struck by the resemblance, but I'm not prepared to argue any
specific scenario.

> D. You are proposing that Proto-Siouan *-truN 'panther, mountain lion'
> is cognate with a purposed Yuchi form atyuNne 'wildcat'. No such form
> exists! ...  Bill Ballard's English-Yuchi lexicon shows that the Yuchi
> word for 'wildcat' is $athy at N ($ = s hachek, @N = nasal open o). He
> also cites a form from Gunther Wagner, cat' an' e ($at?ane) which is
> not the same word. $athy at N also means 'raccoon'.

You're right.  I mistranscribed what looks to me in the Comparative Siouan
Archive file (seen as extended-ASCII, since it's very difficult for me to
display the alternative DOS screen font we used anymore) like
<radicalsign>atyv<notsign>ne 'wildcat'.  I'm not even marginally familiar
with Yuchi.

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For the rest, I don't mind speculation on this list, though I hope to try
to distinguish speculation from more rigorous analysis more explcitly.
This is not a refereed journal.

JEK