Siouan and Sprachbunds (Re: Balkan tongues)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Mike Morgan wrote:
> I have a perhaps naive Native American Sprachbund question. Put simply,
> what work has been done trying to argue for Sprachbund effects for
> Siouan languages (as a group and/or individually).

Well, Mary Haas, Dale Nicklas, and Robert Rankin have all argued in
various places, mostly unpublished in the latter two cases, I think, that
Biloxi - inserted in the middle of Muskogean territory - has a
considerable degree of assimilation to Muskogean.  Noticeable loans, some
tendency to CV- ~ VC- forms for pronominals, switch reference (with
similar morphemes marking it - not sure if I remember that right?), and so
on.

I would argue, though I've never developed the arguments formally, that
the many similarities of Crow-Hidatsa and Mandan are in many cases
secondary and seem to reflect strong influence by Crow-Hidatsa on Mandan,
which was originally more like typical Mississippi Valley languages.

Bob Rankin has a paper - not published I think - that develops a case for
a variety of Central Algonquian influences in Dhegiha.  He and others have
also pointed out a regional tendency to use of positionals in the
southeast that extends into Dhegiha.  Of course, all Siouan languages make
more or less strong use of positionals, though Dhegiha and Biloxi are
certainly among the champions.  However, Winnebago and Mandan also scatter
them about fairly freely.

The main prehistoric "entity" that might have served to integrate a
Sprachbund include Siouan and other languages would seem to be
"Mississippian" culture or perhaps more narrowly, Cahokian culture.
Unfortunately this waned before the earliest visits, apart from Spanish
raiding across the Southeast in Catawban and Muskogean territory, which
was well organized militarily, but singularly unobservant.  De Soto and
company make Lewis & Clark look the California Linguistic Survey.  The
details in the memoirs mostly have to do with lengths of marches,
foraging, armaments, numbers living and killed, and absence of gold.
Sometimes they remembered the placenames, mostly with most of the
syllables present and in the right order, surprisingly often even
recognizable, considering the length of the chain of kidnapped
translators.

> Presumably the languages that would go into such a grouping are out East
> somewhere. And since East is a relative term, I DON'T mean out East like
> where I live, but the original homeland of the Siouans, or some
> intermediate homeland for individual languages of subgroups, assuming
> they stayed there long enough for the effects to take hold. Again
> presumably - and supported by what LITTLE I know of the structure of
> languages that they have been in contact with in recent history - the
> Lakota (and Nakota) Sioux have not been where they currently dwell long
> enough for any such effects (or am I wrong ... again?).

The most easterly and southerly Siouan languages seem to be fairly recent
arrivals where they are, though the jury is still out on "Tutelo - when
and whence?"  The characterization of Siouan as "Eastern" derives from (a)
its known connection with Catawban, (b) its less secure connection with
Iroquoian and Caddoan and Yuchi, and (c) an early and incorrect perception
that the Plains were uninabited/uninhabitable before the horse.  The
center of gravity of the Siouan family seems to be something like Missouri
or Iowa.

If Biloxi is recent on Biloxi Bay, either it assimilated to Muskogean at
break-neck speed, or it started out somewhere where Muskogean languages
were also to be found, e.g., perhaps along the southern edge of the Ohio
Valley?

Archaeologists generally assign the Dakota-Lakota with various
"manifestations" in Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas, now grouped under
the name Psinomani i.e. psiN omani 'rice gathering', though the more
westerly sites involve earth lodge villages and maize growing.  They are
still assembling this from bits and pieces they hadn't previously
associated and I'm not really current on progress.  One of the
characteristic "wares" is called Sandy Lake, which is a sort of minimalist
approach to Oneota pottery.

I'm not sure if Psinomani is deduced from the linguistics, which would be
somewhat risky, or if it is something more.  The Northern Plains seem
somewhat negelected generally, and the easterly Dakota area (ranging into
the Great Lakes woodlands) is on the edge of several well-studied areas,
resulting in a tendency not to see connections.  (American archaeology
seems to follow the Balkan political model.)  I personally wonder if
Psinomani isn't really a case of Siouan languages (Proto-Dakota) spreading
to a bunch of somewhat disparate adjacent groups. Anyway, the consensus is
that the Dakota have been in the more easterly part of the Dakota-speaking
area for a fairly long time, a least 1000 years.

Most of the uncertainty as to original location and subsequent movement
surrounds Dhegiha.