epenthetic glide (from ire to ne)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> John wrote:
> > This is certainly an interesting hypothesis, though ideally we'd have to
> > understand the introduction of i into -ire (cf. IO -ne - pronounced with
> > enye before i).
>
> Do you see a problem with reconstructing MVS *=ire?
> I think you were coming up with *=krE for PS.
> Would *=kirE work?  Or do you mean that we can't
> get from MVS /*=ire/ to IO /=ne/?

To specifically address this, you can't get there by regular development.
Let us assume that the PS form is *kre, with Mandan surface kere, kara
arising from superficial (but universal) epenthesis in clusters as Hollow
suggets.  In addition, we assume that Tutelo hele, etc., also as
frequently or more so hle, etc., reflect a phonetic schwa epenethesis in
clusters comparable to that in Dakota or Omaha-Ponca.

In that case:

Mandan underlying kre is conservative and regular.

Tutelo hle suggests *kr > hl (~ hn), not too unreasonable given forms like
ki:hniNte 'hungry' or hiNhne 'push, thrust', which look like they might
involve *ki-k-r....  However, I have not investigated this correspondence.

Winnebago ire might be irregularly reformulated from *kire < *kere, with
loss of k.  That loss seems reasonable, but I haven't a particular process
in mind.

IO ne might be from earlier *hre.  IO does have hd < *kt, but regular here
would be gre.