Iroqoian and Siouan

[Marianne Mithun]

Yes, that pretty much sums up my position. I think that a link between
Iroquoian and Caddoan is quite promising but by no means established. A
link between those two and Siouan is very tantalizing, but even further
from being established.

On the principle that we don't want to declare relationships until we have
enough evidence to be certain, because there can never be a definitive kind
of evidence that disproves a relationship, I'd agree that on the basis of
our present state of knowledge, we can't consider any of them established
relatives. It could be, however, that even on the basis of the data that
now exist, a relationship might be shown.


Marianne


--On Tuesday, October 19, 2004 2:55 PM -0600 ROOD DAVID S
<rood at spot.colorado.edu> wrote:

>
> There is an article by Wally Chafe in the 1964 American Anthropologist
> (vol 66 no. 4 pt. 1, pp. 852-862)  entitled "Another Look at Siouan and
> Iroquoian" that is just about the whole body of evidence for that
> suggested connection.  Judging from conversations over the years, I have
> the impression that Wally and Marianne are pretty convinced of a
> Caddoan/Iroquoian connection, but I'm not sure where they stand on Siouan
> right now.  It's also worth looking at Lyle Campbell's chapter on Macro
> Siouan in his "American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of
> Native America", pp. 262-269.  He provides a thorough and critical review
> of all the long-distance proposals for Siouan.  Not surprisingly, he
> doesn't think we can consider them related with our present state of
> knowledge.
>
> David
>
>
>
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu
>
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
>
>> -- Biloxi - inserted in the middle of Muskogean territory - has a
>> considerable degree of assimilation to Muskogean. -- So, does this mean
>> I should be looking at the Muskogean family too in order to better
>> understand Biloxi?  (Which I intend to do when I get my dictionary and
>> subsequent materials.)
>>
>> -- 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 -- So there is possibly a connection
>> between Iroquoian and Siouan?  What evidence would there be of this?
>> (I'm also interested in Cherokee, as I mentioned before.)
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>>
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