Quapaw designation (fwd)

Alan Hartley ahartley at d.umn.edu
Tue Feb 3 16:33:32 UTC 2004


R. Rankin wrote:

> The initial A- in the
> Algonquian borrowings of it is a reflex of Algonquian short */o/ that becomes
> /a/ in Illinois.  It's used with a number of ethnonyms including the O- of
> Ojibwe.

The O- in Ojibway may actually be part of Proto-Algonquian *wet- 'pull',
as in Cree oci-pw- 'shrink' (per Ives Goddard), with reference to
puckered mocassins, rather than of the ethnonymic prefix we(t)-. Ives
says the latter is used only with (originally) locative (or similar)
expressions, and not always then.

Alan



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