Quapaw designation (fwd)

[Michael Mccafferty]

Well, explaining Algonquian was not Hockett's forte. That said, Algonquian
is not an easy road. Joe Campbell, the Nahuatl scholar and dictionary
maker, once told me that Nahuatl looked as if it were designed by
engineers at Mercedes-Benz (or whatever they call it these
days..Mercedes-Viacom??). Algonquian is as if Coyote were the engineer.

Michael

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> I'm happy with whatever people come up with on this.  I remember reading
> Charles Hockett's paper entitled approximately "What Algonkian is really
> like" about 3 decades ago and deciding that I'd never been so confused
> in my life.  In any event, I think my analysis holds at least for
> Akansa.  :-)
>
> Bob
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Hartley [mailto:ahartley at d.umn.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 1:50 PM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: Quapaw designation (fwd)
>
>
> Rankin, Robert L wrote:
>
> > That's funny.  My recollection was that it was Ives who told me what I
>
> > passed on here.  Maybe at different points in his thought processes,
> > or maybe it was Dave Costa or someone else, but it came from an
> > Algonquianist.
>
> Dave Pentland said (4 years ago):
>
> > the name ocipwe:(w)- ...
> > it's an group name with prefixed o(t)- and final -V:w (as in
> kiristino:, and
> > (o)maske:ko:w 'Swampy Cree'), but -(c)ipw- is not a phonologically
> possible root
> > in Algonquian and must therefore be a foreign word.
>
> and later--
>
> > Proto-Algonquian did not allow short *i in the first syllable of a
> > word...
> > The non-Alg part could be either /ipw/ (with prefix *wet-,
> automatically
> > palatalizing to phonetic [c^] before *i), or /tipw/ (with prefix
> *we-).
>
> I guess all we can safely say at this point is that Ojibway is of
> unknown origin (how I hate to say that!)
>
> The o- prefix *does* occur in, e.g., early forms of Maskegon, Menominee,
>
> Miami, Mississagi, Monsoni, Otagamie, Sauk, all of which are
> etymologically transparent (swamp, wild rice, downstream, big-river
> mouth, moose, opposite shore, river-mouth, respectively).
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>