birch (was Missouri)

[Michael McCafferty]

>From: Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
>Reply-To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>To: Siouan List <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Re: birch (was Missouri)
>Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 15:10:46 -0700 (MST)
>
>On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Alan Hartley wrote:
> > I think it means 'birchbark' in the Algonquian languages. Gravier gives
> > 8ic8essi 'canot d'ecorce, item ecorce de boul[e]au' ('bark-canoe, also
> > birchbark'), and 8ic8essimingi is thus best translated as 'birchbark
> > tree' rather than 'birch-tree tree'. The fact that Gravier glosses it as
> > 'bouleau arbre' ('birch-tree') doesn't mean that 8ic8essi means "plain
> > birch" in Illinois.
> >
> > An analogous term is the Proto-Algonquian name *wi:kopiminSya
> > 'basswood', lit. 'house-bark tree' from wi:k- 'house, dwell' + -ekop-
> > 'bark' + -eminSy-a- 'tree'. If Illinois 8ic8essi really meant
> > 'birch-tree', then -imingi would be redundant.
>
>In English trees that have some significant product have that product
>named, and then the tree is the "(product) tree," as in apple : apple
>tree, though, of course, you can also refer to the tree as an "apple" with
>"tree" omitted, just to complicate matters.  The same thing seems to occur
>in Omaha-Ponca, where s^e 's 'apple', and the tree is s^ehi 'apple tree.'
>Similarly, corn vs. corn plant vs. corn (collective).
>JEK

I agree with John that that is what is happening in Illinois, that the term
for "birch bark" is being extended to mean the name for the tree, and that
there is an additional term for paper birch tree in Illinois (noted above).
What draws me to this conclusion is that the tree's name is reconstructible
in Proto-Algonquian: */wi:kwe:hsa:htekwa/, and that is composed of the
reconstructed term for birch bark, *wi:kwe:hs-/ and /-a:htekwa/ 'tree'.

I might add that as a curiosity, there are some names of trees in
Miami-Illinois that contain two morphemes for "tree," such as
/ahsenami$aahkwi/, one of three terms in the language for "maple tree,"
which is literally "stone-tree-tree".


Michael

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