m's and w's and Mitasse: Caddoan phonology question

[ROOD DAVID S]

I hope that the Siouanists will tolerate a little Caddoan on this list,
just as they do at the annual meetings, since there is not ever likely to
be a Caddoan discussion list.  I have a very speculative idea about some
phonological possibilities, and maybe some of you can relate to my
musings.

When Mary C. Kelley first contacted Victor Golla about the possible
etymology of the name Mittase, and Victor passed the query on to Wally and
me before publishing it in the SSILA newsletter, Mary and I had some
correspondence in which she copied this intriguing paragraph from a book
for me:

>>From the book, Pioneering in the Southwest by A. J. Holt (father of
Mittase Holt) pub. 1923, p 135:
"The most promising tribe in receiving the gospel was the Wacoes (sic).
The chief of this tribe was Buffalo Good.  This really great man was
noble and spirited and an Indian of giant mould.  He was born in Waco
Village, before Texas became a republic.  The city of Waco, Texas, was so
named because of the Indian name that attached to it and that was called
from the tribe of Indians who lived there.  The manner of the
pronunciation of this name sounded more like 'Maidaco" than Waco, but in
adapting the name to the English tongue it became simply Waco."

So at least one English speaking witness thought that a word that seems to
have an initial /w/ in most of its instances was pronounced with something
that sounded more like [m] by one Waco speaker.  Now, add to this the fact
that Wichita has no /m/ phoneme, except in two verb roots, both of which
have medial geminate [mm]. (One means 'grind corn' and the other means
'hoe').

Next bit of information: In modern Wichita, [n] and [r] are in
complementary distribution, with [n] occurring initially, geminate, and
before alveolars, while [r] occurs before vowels or laryngeals.  (Neither
one occurs before /k/ or /kw/.)

What if, in Waco or even older Wichita, [w] and [m] had a distribution
parallel to modern Wichita [r] and [n]?  Do any other phonologists out
there think this is at all plausible?  If it is, then the name "Mittase"
might have an initial phonemic /w/.  Unfortunately, I can't go any further
than that, because /witasi/, or /wirasi/ (many English speakers write the
tapped [r] as _tt_), or other variations I can dream up still don't match
with any morphemes I know that might lead to the meaning 'white baby' or
'white child'.

What does anyone else think of the [m] = [w] speculation?

Thanks.
	DAvid



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