Status of "u" in Omaha-Ponca

[ROOD DAVID S]

I am intrigued by this information, even though I probably knew it once,
because the major difference between Wichita and Pawnee vowels is that
Wichita merged [u] and [i] to /i/.  There are traces of the old *u in the
morphophonemics.  Some rules that apply before /i/ don't apply before
certain /i/s, namely, those that go back to *u.  Wichita then had a three
vowel system with no front/back distinction: i/e/a.  More recently they
have evolved an /o:/ from VwV sequences, but I know of only one word with
a short "o" in the whole language, and it's suspect, too, because it's
/ho'os/, i.e. has a medial glottal stop and the two instances harmonize.
I have no etymology for it, so it stands as a unique instance of that
phoneme.
	I wonder about some sort of areal phenomenon now.  That sound
change strikes me as kind of unusual. (I know about conditioned umlaut and
unrounding, e.g. foot/feet, of course, but that's not an unconditioned
merger.)
	Best,
	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> Hi Ted,
>
> Yes, proto-Siouan *u merged with "i" just as you say.  But THEN, afterward, "o" began being pronounced as "u".  So nowadays there are still only 4 oral vowels, i, e, a, u.  (As recently as the 1970's I was still hearing many of the modern "u" sounds still pronounced as "o".
>
> Bob
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Ogalala2 at aol.com
> Sent: Sat 8/13/2005 12:18 PM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: Status of "u" in Omaha-Ponca
>
>
>     I need the Dheghan scholars to clarify the status of "u" in Omaha-Ponca.  I was surprised to hear that Om-Po "u" was lost leaving only four oral vowels in this language. This loss occurred when u>ue>i.  The oral "u" (not fronted) occurs in the works of Fletcher &
> La Flesche, Dorsey, Boaz, and all others that I am familiar with. How is this to be explained?  Is the loss of "u" a recent occurrence?  Is there another explanation?  Please clarify this issue for me.
>
> Thanks, Ted Grimm
>
>