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

[Wallace Chafe]

Of course, m and w alternate across various Caddo dialects. See names like 
Midish or whatever, corresponding to modern Caddo widish "salt".

Wally

> 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
>