iron/ metal [and other loans and calques]

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Alan Hartley wrote:
> > It might be interesting to track down the distributions of forms
> > like this, 'fire water' (< eau ardent?), and so on.

Thanks!

> Ojibway
> --
> waab-aabik 'tin' (lit. 'white metal')
> biiw-aabik 'iron'
> miskw-aabik 'copper' (lit. 'red metal')
> biiw-aanag 'flint'
>
> z^ooniyaa 'silver' (< Sp. or Fr.?)
>
> is^kode-waaboo 'liquor' (lit. 'fire-water')

OP ppe(e)de-niN 'fire' + 'water'

> z^aaganaas^ 'English' (prob. < Fr. [le]sanglais)

OP sagdhas^(iN?), sakkenas^(iN) (the transcription in the Long Expedition
notes is a bit hard to decypher) and the term seems to be gone today.

I believe Tony Grant looked at this set.

> Incidentally, are you all aware of Frank Siebert's (1967) suggestion
> that Proto-Algonquian *ooteeweni 'town, village' was borrowed from
> Siouan (cf. Da oti)?

I think a more likely comparison would be Da o-thuNwa-he 'town' (from
memory, not sure I have this right), Da thuN(waN) 'tribe, people', OP
ttaNwaN(gdhaN) 'town, clan' (gdhaN probably 'sit down; place round object
against').  I think there's a possibility this term may pattern with the
'man's friend' set.  I think the similar-looking Algonquian forms mean
'fellow clansman'.

The semantic developments in each family tend to distort the relationships
of the terms, but my guess is that the original idea was something like
'coresident kinship' and '(male) member of coresident kinship'.  I'm not
sure which direction the borrowings went and I've noticed similar forms in
other families as well, so it might be wrong to assume that the source is
either Siouan or Algonquian. However, these strike me as the kind of loan
words that might go hand in hand with the sort of Cahokia Mississippian
outlier settlements that occur in various Oneota and other contexts around
the Midwest (Aztlan, etc.), but I'll freely admit that this is at best a
wildly speculative explanation of terms that not everybody agrees are even
loan words.

> He also suggests that Da s^kec^a 'fisher (Martes pennanti) is from PA
> *wec^yeekwa and Da teteni^a, Catawba tinde 'blue jay' from PA *tiintiiwa
> (but onomatopoeia?) and notes several other suggestive similarities
> (Natl. Mus. Canada Bull. 214 pp. 48-59).

Yes, I've consulted that list.  I think he mentions some other forms as
well.  Isn't there a term for 'larch' in there?  And he also mentions
'soldier, policeman'.

I'm not sure the 'fisher' comparison is particularly convincing.

The 'jay' forms certainly look like the general range of onomatopoeic
'jay' forms (taking note of Blair's warning about tinde).