Siouan and Sprachbunds

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
> JEK:  Biloxi - inserted in the middle of Muskogean territory - has a
> considerable degree of assimilation to Muskogean.

> DK: So, does this mean I should be looking at the Muskogean family too
> in order to better understand Biloxi?

Yes.  Or so it seems to me.  You can never go wrong knowing about
neighboring languages, anyway.  If you don't you won't notice any mutual
influences.  The results may be not unlike my field methods classnotes on
Berber, compiled in complete ignorance of Arabic.  However, Americanists
do have a tendency to concentrate on one family, and I don't think
concentrating on one family to the exclusion of others would be a career
damaging move.  (This is a serious statement, but somewhat tongue in
cheek.)

Americanists aren't actually ingorant of other families, but they are
often specialized in a rather chance collocation of them, and they do tend
to specialize.  Different groups of people show up at the different family
conferences.

Apart from the Biloxi connection, it ought to be fairly useful for a
Siouanist to know something about Muskogean.  Muskogean and Siouan have
some general similarities.  Going from one Siouan language to another you
have the impression somebody's been copying someone else's homework.  On
the other hand, going from Siouan to Muskogean you think maybe somebody
heard the solution from an upper classman but didn't see a copy of it, and
had to reverse engineer it.  (Going from MVS to CH you have the impression
that somebody copied the solution while watching television and playing
computer games.  Gee, this is fun!  None of this analogizing is to be
taken seriously!)