Loans Back and Forth: 'bow'

[Michael McCafferty]

I may have missed something here. Is "bow" reconstructible for Proto-Siouan? 
Proto-Northern-Iroquoian? (I doubt that it's reconstructible for Proto-
Iroquoian, which has a time depth of, what?, 5000 years? What is the time 
depth hypothesized for Proto-Siouan? Proto-Northern-Iroquoian?


Michael


Quoting David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>:

> I can't speak to the Siouan forms, but I can say that since the 'bow' etymon
> is semantically transparent in Algonquian, I doubt if it was ever borrowed
> back into Algonquian.
> 
> Dave
> 
> > Thinking about loans back and forth, it occurred to me that I've explained
> > the -ku in some Siouan 'bow' terms as a reflex of the ...(e)kw- part of
> > the Algonquian form, but several Siouan languages form third person
> > inalienable possessives with a suffix -ku (Dakotan) or a prefix ko-
> > (Mandan).  I wonder if a hypothetical Proto-Siouan *maN(aN)t-e-ku (or
> > *-ko) 'his bow', if borrowed into Algonquian, wouldn't, if rendered
> > animate, come out me:ntekw-a.  Then I'd have to wonder if the IO forms
> > maN(aN)hdu and the Wi one maNaNc^gu might not result from borrowing a form
> > like that back, while cases like Omaha-Ponca maNaNde might occur, not by
> > truncating the Algonquian loan, but lacking the -ku Px3 marker in an
> > original Siouan form.
> >
> > Or maybe the IO and Wi forms reflect a variant morphology *maN(aN)t-ku
> > instead of the *maN(aN)t-e-ku suggested in the Algonquian forms and the
> > loans were all one way, Siouan to Algonquian?  In that case Dhegiha would
> > simply have a third variant *maN(aN)t-e.
> >
> > On the other hand, the variation between aN and iN in Siouan forms, cf.
> > Da ita(-zipa) or Ks (?) miN(iN)j^e, has been explained as the result of
> > handling -e- in the Algonquian forms.
> >
> > Which came first, the Siouan or the Algonquian?  How much passing back and
> > forth might be reasonable?
> > 
>