Siouan and Sprachbunds

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> I've always thought that the extensive changes that Cheyenne and Arapaho
> underwent along with the changes that Hidatsa and more especially Crow
> underwent might have been part of what is called "Middle Missouri"  in
> archaeology.  (Is that the right term?).  This includes the sound change
> s --> t /__a in both Algonquian and Crow.  These things are hard to
> prove though.

I almost mentioned the "simple" phonologies of various Plains languages as
suspicious, but I didn't think to wonder if it might be connected with
Middle Missouri.  I'd wonder about Northern Caddoan in connection with
this, too, though Coalescent - uniting Middle Missouri and Central Plains
is later (c. 1400 AD?).

The MM idea, at least, sounds plausible to me, though it might be rather
hard to establish, just as Siouan-Muskogean influence would be hard to
link to Cahokian Mississippian.  At least in the Middle Missouri case the
attachments of the languages to particular Middle Missouri manifestations
seem well agreed upon (modulo Arapaho and, oddly enough, Crow), and you
could think about drawing isoglosses.

> John Koontz's research tends to support strong Algonquian contact toward
> the north -- in the Illinois country and points north.  He found loans
> for 'squash', 'bow' and maybe others.  I discussed common consonant
> cluster treatment (filter, constraint) in an unpublished paper.

It's a very small set, I'm afraid, and somewhat controversial.

I'd add that I think Bob has noticed a number of Muskogean loans in
Siouan, e.g., 'haw' and 'skull'.  Some sets of "wandering words" seem to
connect all three families.  We've discussed most of these in the past two
years.  Probably a bit more often than the silent majority is happy with,
so I'll leave this to list searching.