MVS 'eight'

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, David Costa wrote:
> 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/).

I think this is more of a methodological objection than a linguistic one,
though I certainly concede the reasonableness of methodological
objections.  Clearly you wouldn't object to a linguistic argument that
English tert-iary isn't native in English because it doesn't exhibit the
same pattern of Indo-European sound correspondences exhibited in third,
but part of what might make you happier with that objection is the weight
of data on English, the English lexicon, and Indo-European sound
correspondences.  We have more detailed information on English than we
have on Ioway-Otoe.  Even if I more or less corectly hypothesized
?third(iary) on a basis of other *t sets, you suspect I was treading on
shifting sands one way or another.  So it seems to me that you reject the
number of hypotheses necessary, rather than the linguistic basis of the
argument.

Note:  To be perfectly fair I have noticed some glitches with my "must be
a loan" argument which I will elaborate upon separately.

> 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.

The Tutelo variants are alternate perceptions of one thing, not a
perceived alternation between two things.  We can be reasonably certain
that these two Tutelo variants are simply two different non-native
perceptions of invariant /palaaniN/ (or we could write /palaaliN/,
depending on our orthographical preferences).  The same sort of
perceptual variation occurs repeatedly when outsiders are faced with
Siouan resonants.  They would arise just as nicely with IO *hpaRaaniN as
with Tutelo palaaniN.

Of course, I should have written IO *phadaaniN, since PSi *hp becomes /ph/
and *R is /d ~ j^ ~ n/ in IO, depending on the next vowel's low-backness,
high-frontness or nasality.  So, putting myself in the place of a
Nathaniel Hale or a speaker of Miami-Illinois trying to deal with an IO
form like *phadaaniN, and assuming I heard all apical resonants as r or n,
I might well write or perceive padaari ~ padaani.  As far as d vs. r,
while no one reports any difference between *R and *t in IO at present,
it's likely the *R reflexes were more r-like than d in the past.
Nevertheless, the d vs. r problem is potentially more serious than the r
vs. n vs. l one.  As I recall, Bob Rankin opted for Tutelo over Ofo partly
because he though Tutelo l more like MI r or n than Ofo t (which might
have been rather d-like).

> 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.

But why do we need to assume that the Siouan 'eight' forms go as far back
in MI as we can push them?  We don't have any evidence of them, perforce,
before contact.  Could they have been borrowed after MI moved westward to
the vicinity of the Mississippi?

> 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.

Tutelo /aka'aspee/ is definitely a clear Southeastern form.  How does the
MI 'six' form differ from other Algonquian forms?  I wonder bacause I'd be
tempted to call the Southeastern 'six' forms '"oddly deformed," too!