'town'

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, David Costa wrote:

> These Algonquian 'town' forms are all nominalizations of */o:te:-/.
> Moreover, as Ives has pointed out, there is a corresponding medial
> */-o:te:-/ which can be seen in constructions like Miami /minooteeni/
> 'town', Menominee /meno:tE:w/ 'he goes partners with someone' and Fox
> /meno:tani/ 'the enemy side'. (PA */men-/ = 'grouped apart')
...
> In defense of the idea of it being a Siouan -> Algonquian loan, word-initial
> */o:/ is rather uncommon in Proto-Algonquian.

One quick observation before I go off to ponder this:  the competing form
for *htuNwa(N) 'group of associated people' (waxing a little abstract
here) - or at least for derivatives of that - as a 'town' word in Siouan
is *o-hti 'dwell in a place' (= IN-dwell).  What if Algonquian borrowed
*ohti and massaged it into o:te:-weni et al., whereupon Siouan borrowed it
back as *ohtuNwaN, cut it down to htuNwa(N) by analogy and put it back to
work in various derivations from that?