Just plain Prairie People

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, David Costa wrote:
> > I don't see why we have to compare the Illinois */asko(o)eenta/ form per se
> > with the Illinois */masko(o)tia/ form, Sauk /ma$kooteewa/, etc., forms.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. Isn't this comparison what you
> were asking me to do?
>
> > It appears that we have widely attested 'prairie person' for Illinois (or some
> > subgroup thereof) and 'little prairie person' (or once '(unanalyzable) prairie
> > person') for Mascouten, which is exactly what I was getting at.
>
> But my point merely was that there is no linguistic evidence whatever for
> any of these Illinois forms containing anything that means 'little'. So I
> hesitate to say that the Illinois name for the Mascoutens means 'little
> prairie person' when it lacks any kind of recognizable diminutive. (And we
> have a very good idea what the diminutive endings look like in
> Miami-Illinois.)

OK, I see the point of confusion.  I'm not asking a specific question
about MI morphology, I'm just asking if there were in general regional
circulation opposed 'prairie person' and 'little prairie person' terms
with different ethnic references.  I simply happened to find the unmarked
term first in Illinois and quoted the marked term for Mascouten, too.

> > So, is there any grammatical objection to the diminutive applying to
> > the whole 'prairie person' as opposed to just the 'prairie'?
>
> What diminutive?

The one in, say, the Ojibwa version of Mascouten(s).

> > If not, the analogy with pairs like Yankton/Yanktonais or Nadowe/Nadowesiw
> > (forgive my spellings), or even Shahi(a)/Cheyenne seems clear enough.  There's
> > an areal pattern of using X/little X as a scheme for distinguishing two
> > peoples with similar names, however they may have come by the similar names.
>
> The Illinois names are obviously related, but I can't sign off on a 'prairie
> person/little prairie person' analysis for that language.

My apologies.  I didn't mean to seem to be asking you to.

I will, however, make a daring assertion, which is that */masko(o)teenta/
is probably traceable in some historical fashion to a diminutive form in
some Algonquian langauge, even if not in MI.