(O)maha

[Michael McCafferty]

Quoting Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>:

> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:
> > Only in the sense that initial short vowels come and go unpredictably with
> > tribe names in M-I (and elsewhere in central Algonquian). It can't be
> normal
> > phonological processes, since word-initial short vowels are *not* deleted
> by
> > sound law in old Illinois. In the modern (19th century) language, yes.
> >
> > Incidentally, this word never would have been */oma(:)ha/ in
> Miami-Illinois,
> > since word-initial short /o/ is not allowed in the language. If it ever
> had
> > an initial V, it only could have been /a/. But no name for the Omaha is
> > attested in any Miami-Illinois source, other than Marquette's map.
> >
> > There *is* an attested name for the Omaha in Shawnee, though: /maha/,
> plural
> > /mahaaki/.
>
> So perhaps the form Maha may owe more to sporadic deletion of short
> initial vowels in Miami-Illinois

Unlikely, in light of what Dave said. It's in the most recent records of the
language that we see this loss

 than to any hearing problem on the part
> of Lewis & Clark (as I first thought, some years ago) or to French
> truncated names (as I've wondered more recently) or to reanalysis of o- as
> French aux (as I wondered over the weekend)?
>
> I take it we can assume that Shawnee is not a particularly likely source
> for Marquette's Maha listing - more likely Ojibwe or Miami-Illinois?

Yes. In fact, it was most likely given to Marquette at the Peoria villages on
the Des Moines in the last week of June 1673. Marquette did collect as much
geographical and demographical info as he could while stationed on Lake
Superior, but it seems doubtful that the Ottawa had a name for the Omaha.
Anything's possible. But it was probably at the Peoria villages that Marquette
recorded < Maha  > and in fact all the rest of the names for peoples living at
that time in the Missouri watershed.

Michael

  I'm
> not aware of any of the relevant or even irrelevant Siouan languages
> having any problems with initial vowels, short or long.
>
> JEK
>
>
>