Dorsey's Law

[rankin at ku.edu]

Nancy, et al.

These are indeed interesting forms.  Actually, there should be NO
underlying sequences of /k?r/ in any Siouan language.  Glottalized stops
do not participate in such clusters at the phonological level (nor do
aspirates, although a few secondary aspirate clusters occur in some
languages, notably Ofo and Dakotan).

The only historical explanation I can think of for these relates to the
fact that 'hollow, empty' does have a glottalized k?, but not as part of
the cluster. E.g. in Kansa it is /xlok?a/.  I suppose that the root
could have been reanalyzed in Winnebago as the ordinarily-forbidden
/k?ro/.  If that is the case, then I guess you would have to consider
/k?orok?oros/ to be a genuine DL output in that language.

/haik?iNniN/ is a little different, but the same constraint OUGHT to
apply.  The problem is that the root here is from proto-Mississippi
Valley Siouan */kriN/ 'stay, sit, continue', and the /k/ is not
glottalized in any other dialect as far as I know.  In Dhegiha it comes
out /kriN/ with dialect variants Omaha-Ponca /gthiN/, Quapaw /kniN/,
Kansa, Osage /liN/.  Here there is no obvious source for glottalization
at all in Winnebago, and I'd first check for a transcription error.
Nobody's perfect. But it may be that Winnebago simply lacks the
constraint against such complex underlying clusters in these (very) few
forms.

Bob

> Miner's Hocank Lexicon contains the word [k'orok'oros] 'be hollow'.
This looks like a Dorsey's Law root in that it contains identical vowels
flanking a sonorant, and it behaves like a DL root in that it
reduplicates in its entirety. But while Miner 1979 lists [kr] among the
clusters that trigger DL, [k'r] is not mentioned. Similarly, the Lexicon
contains [haik'InI] 'stay to protect' ([I] = nasalized [i]). This is
like a DL root in that the vowel before the nasal is nasalized, but
again it involves [k'].

> Can anyone tell me if these are indeed cases of DL, and if so, is
there any other information on DL after [k']?