Iroquoian and Siouan

[Wallace Chafe]

My 1964 article should hardly be the last word on this. There was so much I
didn't know at the time. One should note also that Lyle Campbell stands
about as far to the right on these matters as Joe Greenberg stood to the
left. An awful lot of work has been done on both Siouan and Iroquoian
languages and language families during the last 40 years, and it might be
time to take a new look.

It's true that Iroquoian and Caddoan have stronger morphological
resemblances, but there are certainly some intriguing things between
Iroquoian and Siouan. Take, as just one set of examples, Iroquoian *oneNh
'now', *oneNhtsih 'long ago', and *-keNtsih 'old (of humans)', the last
only in Seneca. I'm not competent to cite things Siouan, but how about
Lakota wanaN 'now', *-xti(N) 'intensifier', and possibly *kaN 'old' (we had
some discussion about this one a while ago).

Anyway, we shouldn't consider the matter closed. The information, if not
the personnel, is now available to do a better job.

Wally

--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