'eight' some more

[David Costa]

>> 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,

Linguistics and its methodology are one and the same thing.

> 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.

I basically feel it's a severe violation of Occam's razor to claim that the
M-I forms were borrowed from a hypothetical reconstructed form in one
language when actual attested forms that match the M-I words better are
known to exist in another language.

>> 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.

I know. But that doesn't really matter for our purposes. It was presumably
just allophonic variation in Tutelo, but M-I speakers, who did NOT have
allophonic variation in their own language between liquids and /n/, would
not have perceived it that way. M-I speakers weren't borrowing the
underlying Siouan form, they were borrowing the phonetic Siouan forms.

> 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 thought Tutelo l more like MI r or n than Ofo t (which might have been
> rather d-like).

Right, if an older Chiwere or Ofo form would have been pronounced more like
*[pataare] or *[pataani], that probably would have come out in M-I as
/pataali/~/pataani/. That would be another fact tilting the argument towards
a Tutelo borrowing.

>> 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?

Well, that would leave open the question of why the Siouan loan is attested
through *all* known M-I dialects, including Miami. That is, if the word for
'eight' was borrowed by the Illinois from Chiwere speakers around the
Mississippi River, why do Indiana Miami and Wea dialects have the word as
well? The evidence, both linguistic and historical, seems to indicate that
the Illinois/Miami political split probably happened quite soon after the
movement of M-I speakers westward into Indiana (early 1600's, I guess), and
that the two groups never reconciled, even after the Iroquois wars. So to
me, it's more awkward to explain why a word borrowed by the Illinois along
the Mississippi River would drift back east to the Miamis in northern
Indiana, when the latter had no political affiliation with the Illinois. I
think it's easier to assume the borrowing happened a century before that,
before the modern dialect/tribal divisions even existed. Tho there must have
been some M-I subdialects even then, since two different pronunciations of
the Siouan form were preserved.

>> 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 so? Is /aka'aspee/ itself a loan from somewhere? A quick look at my
Chickasaw and Creek dictionaries didn't reveal anything similar.

> 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!

The Miami-Illinois form for 'six', /kaakaat(i)hswi/, isn't the form the word
would be expected to have at all, given sister-language cognates like Ojibwe
/ningodwaaswi/,  Potawatomi /ngodwatso/, Shawnee /nekotwah0wi/, and Fox
/(ne)kotwaa$ika/ (from a probable PA form */nekwetwa:$i(ka)/). Given the
sister language forms, the M-I form might be expected to be something like
**/ninkotaat(i)hswi/. 'Influence' from Tutelo /aka'aspee/ isn't a terribly
satisfying explanation, but I'm open to any other influences I might have
missed.

Dave