MVS 'eight'

[David Costa]

I have some serious misgivings with the idea that M-I 'eight' is borrowed
from Iowa-Otoe and not Tutelo. My objections fall into two categories,
linguistic and geographic.

In terms of the linguistics, I think it's risky and unnecessary to link the
Miami-Illinois forms to a hypothetical, unattested, archaic Iowa-Otoe form,
*/hpaRaaniN/~*/hpeRaaniN/, especially when the only *attested* I-O form is
so different (/greeraa'briN/).

Moreover, hypothetical Old Iowa-Otoe */hpaRaaniN/~*/hpeRaaniN/ is actually
NOT as good a match for the Miami-Illinois forms; the relevant M-I forms for
'eight' are /paraare/ and /palaani/. These perfectly reflect the two
attested Tutelo variants <palali> and <palani>. With Tutelo we have a
language that actually ATTESTS both the variants found in Miami-Illinois.
Thus, we get the Miami-Illinois r/n variation for free by saying it's a
Tutelo loan. I don't think a loan from I-O */hpaRaaniN/~*/hpeRaaniN/ would
do that. By assuming the M-I forms are borrowed from Tutelo, we don't have
to hypothesize anything at all. We have to hypothesize quite a lot if we say
M-I borrowed the word from Iowa-Otoe.

My geographic objection is more hypothetical, but the gist of it is that
when you start to trace where the M-I speakers were in the earliest
historical times, or where they would have been pre-1492, the evidence
strongly hints that they were a good deal further EAST than they were at
first contact. From all evidence, the Illinois were very recent arrivals
into what is now Illinois, possibly not entering that area at all until the
Iroquois Wars. When you go further back in time, it starts looking like the
M-I speakers were in Indiana before they were in Illinois, and in Ohio
before they were in Indiana. That puts them in a place where it's more
likely they would have interacted with Tutelo speakers than with I-O
speakers, and WAY more likely than them interacting with Michigamea
speakers. The M-I speakers' presence in the Michigamea area was probably
very recent.

Of course, this whole argument could be settled if other clear Tutelo loans
into Miami-Illinois could be found, other than just 'eight'. After a fair
deal of looking, I've never been able to find any. It seems to be the only
word the M-I's borrowed from Tutelo, unless you say that the oddly deformed
M-I word for 'six', /kaakaathswi/, is perhaps *influenced* by Tutelo
/aka'aspee/. But I'm not really committed to that idea.

David


>> Michael McCafferty asks:
>> As many of you know, the Miami-Illinois term for "eight" /paraani/ is, as
>> Bob Rankin pointed out in an article in IJAL several years ago, a
>> borrowing from a Siouan language. Tutelo typically gets the nod.
>>
>> Can anyone suggest why this happened? No, not that Bob wrote it up, but
>> that such a borrowing occurred. It's one of the strangest things. I
>> imagine, since we're talking numbers, that it was borrowed probably in the
>> process of trading. But does the number 8 have any mythological meaning?
>
> An alternative analysis that I have offered in the past is that
> Miami-Illinois paraare (later palaani) 'eight' might come from a source in
> Mississippi Valley something like Ioway-Otoe.
>
> The Tutelo form (per Oliverio) is pala'ani, in the system:
>            Tu
> 'two'      noN'oNpaa
> 'three'    la'ani(N)
> 'six'      aka'aspee ~ akaaspe'e
> 'seven'    saako'omiNiN
> 'eight'    pala'ani(N)
>
> Disregarding variation in vowel marking for length and accent, the
> variants are essentially palali and palani.  This reflects l > n / __ VN -
> the final vowel of 'three' is iN - an allophonic change not always
> indicated in Hale's transcriptions.
>
> Biloxi and Ofo have
>            Bi           Of
> 'two'      noN'pa       nuN'pha
> 'three'    da'n(N)      ta'ni(N)
> 'six'      akaxpe'      akape'
> 'seven'    noN'pahudi   fa'kumi(N)
> 'eight'    dan'hudi'    pa'tani(N)
>
> In Mississippi Valley we find:
>            Te            OP            IO            Wi
> 'two'      nuN'pa        naNba'        nuN(uN)'we    nuNuN'p
> 'three'    ya'mni(N)     dha'bdhiN     da(a)'<ny>i   daani'
> 'six'      s^a'kpe       s^a'ppe       sa(a)'gwe     ha(a)kewe'
> 'seven'    s^ako'wiN     ppe'naNba     sa(a)'hmaN    s^aagoo'wiN
> 'eight'    s^aglo'gha    ppe'dhabdhiN  greeraa'briN  harumaN'k
>
> The reconstructions supported by these forms are:
>
> 'two'      *nuNuN'pa
> 'three'    *raa'priN
> 'six'      *s^aa'kpe ~ *(a)kaa's^pe (with metathesis)
> 'seven'    *s^aakoowiN ~ *s^aakwaN  (Winnebago looks like a Dakota loan)
> 'eight'    ???
>
> For 'eight' we find Dakota s^aglo'gha, which follows in the *s^aak-
> series, but is otherwise unattested, Winnebago harumaN'k, which seems to
> be something like 'lying on it (by hand)', and a collection of forms that
> seem to be derived from 'three', i.e., presumably forms that indicate
> something like 'five' (or a hand of fingers) + 'three'.  In Dhegiha and
> Biloxi there are parallel forms for 'seven' based on 'two'.  (Note that
> other Dhegiha doesn't always agree with Omaha-Ponca; Osage, for example,
> has hki'etopa, apparently referring to a pair of fours.)
>
> The formations for 'eight' forms based on 'three' differ, but Tutelo and
> Ofo seem to have *pa or perhaps *hpa followed by their respective reflexes
> of 'three', while Dhegiha has *hpe followed by its reflex of three.
> Dhegiha also uses the *hpe-construction with 'seven'.  The meaning of
> *(h)pa or *hpe is unknown, but it might perhaps be *hpa 'nose, head'
> (pan-Siouan) or *hpe 'forehead' (MV only).  Speculatively finger gestures
> unward or near the head might have been opposed to ones elsewhere to
> indicate the upper five of the decade.
>
> IO has an indiosyncratic formation with *kre + 'three'.  What is
> interesting here is that the form of 'three' exemplified is not the form
> of 'three' found in the simple form.  IO and Winnebago agree in having
> reflexes of *RaaniN for 'three'.  The simplification of the medial cluster
> *pr to *R is exhibited elsewhere in these languages in initials of noun
> (cf. IO nyiN(iN), Wi niNiN for 'water') and medially in 'bean' (IO
> uNnyiN<ng>e, Wi huNuNniN'k) vs. Da mniN 'water' or omni(N)c^a 'bean'. So
> -raabriN in greeraa'briN seems a poor match with IO historical phonology.
> It stands out from daa'<ny>i like tertiary or ternary or trinary stand out
> from three in English.
>
> I would suggest then that IO 'eight' is probably a loan from a loan from a
> MV language where raabriN or something like it was the usual form for
> 'three'.  The big problem with this is that no other Siouan language has
> the *kre- construction for 'eight' (or even 'seven').  This is either an
> insurmountable problem or an interesting suggestion that we don't have a
> full range of Siouan languages to work with, depending on your point of
> view.
>
> Whenever I'm out on this limb, I always ask myself, if greeraa'briN is a
> loan, what might it have replaced?  Presumably something within the range
> of 'eight' forms we know from other Siouan languages, and one of those
> possibilities there is a form based on *hpa or *hpe + 'three', which, if
> IO 'three' is any basis on which to judge, would have been something like
> *hpaRaaniN or *hpeRaaniN.  Either of these forms seems to me to be as
> likely a source of Miami-Illinois paraare ~ palaani 'eight' as the Tutelo
> (or Ofo) forms, though, of course, there is little to chose between with
> any of them as far as form, once you start mapping "r" sounds.
>
> As to how such a form could have gotten into Miami-Illinois, the usual
> scenario with Tutelo (or Ofo or a hypothetical early form of Biloxi or
> some form of Proto-Southeastern) is trade interactions leading to MI
> borrowing of the source numeral system, or, at least of some of its
> numeral terms, with 'eight' ending up a fossilized relict of this
> situation.  But if the source is MV Siouan we have a new scenario to
> consider.  We know that the Michigamea at least among the Illinois tribes
> spoke a rather different language, and we have some evidence that it may
> have been a Siouan language.  In that case, perhaps, a Siouan form for
> 'eight' might be a relict of the fusion of Siouan-speaking groups into MI.
> In which case, perhaps paraare or palaani may represent the Michigamea
> form of 'eight', which, as I've shown, is rather like what a hypothetical
> *hpa-based "regular" form of 'eight' might have looked like in early IO.
>