POTENTIAL SPAM: Re: PA, PNI, PI, MSV, etc. "bow"

[David Costa]

When people talk about 'Proto-Algonquian', they mean the ancestor language
of every Algonquian language, all the way from Blackfoot to Micmac, but not
the California languages.

The internal divisions of Algonquian are still controversial. It's now
agreed on that there is a genetic grouping called 'Eastern Algonquian',
which includes all the languages of the Eastern seaboard, from Nova Scotia
to North Carolina. It shares a significant amount of phonological,
morphological, and lexical developments. The morphological innovations are
probably the most compelling.

It's also agreed on that Blackfoot is by a big margin the most divergent
member of the family, to the point where it's not used much in comparative
or reconstructive work. Often it's hard to make sense of its innovations and
to relate them to what's happening in the rest of the family.

Beyond that, the internal divisions get very controversial. It's clear that
Bloomfield's 'Central Algonquian' (Cree, Ojibwe, Fox, Menominee) is not a
linguistic/genetic grouping, but just an areal grouping.

Similarly, there is no linguistic/genetic grouping 'Plains Algonquian' --
Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Blackfoot are no closer to each other than they are
to any other languages. However, there is some evidence for early borrowing
back and forth between Arapaho and Cheyenne.

However, some of us Algonquianists recognize a probably-genetic grouping
that is variously called 'Eastern Great Lakes' or 'Core Central'. This
consists of Ojibwe-Potawatomi, Shawnee, Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo, and
Miami-Illinois. These languages share some intriguing phonological
developments, but it hasn't been investigated too deeply.

Eleven years ago Ives Goddard published a nice little piece that said that
the divergences among the Algonquian languages suggest strongly that the
family originated in the west, like in the northern Rockies or the Plateau,
and then moved east, sort of shedding languages as it went along. The first
language it split off was Blackfoot, followed by Arapaho, Cree-Montagnais,
Menominee, Cheyenne, the 'Core Central' languages, and last, Eastern
Algonquian. The reference is the following:

Goddard, Ives. 1994. The West-to-East Cline in Algonquian Dialectology. In
William Cowan, ed., Papers of the 25th Algonquian Conference 187-211.
Ottawa: Carleton University.

As for the California languages Wiyot and Yurok, they're very distantly
related to Algonquian (and to each other). They're not called Algonquian
languages -- rather, the two of them plus Algonquian proper are said to be
in a larger grouping called 'Algic'. It's an ongoing controversy as to
whether Wiyot and Yurok are themselves a subgroup. My opinion is that they
are ('Ritwan' is what this group is called), but others don't agree.

Hope this clarifies things.

Dave



> I wonder if I could get a quick clarification from the Algonquianists on what
> all "Algonquian" and "Proto-Algonquian" covers.

> My understanding, picked up in bits and pieces over the years, is that
> Algonquian is divided into four major branches: Blackfoot; Cheyenne; Arapaho;
> and eastern or Great Lakes Algonquian, which includes all the rest.  Blackfoot
> is supposed to be especially divergent.  The big eastern group is supposed to
> be divided between a northeastern seaboard group and a more central Great
> Lakes/subarctic/prairie/eastern woodlands group.  I've also heard that there
> are supposed to be a couple of small Algonquian-related languages in
> California.

> So when we talk about Proto-Algonquian, are we talking about the protolanguage
> of all the Algonquians, or just of the big eastern group?  Or is my
> information/classification as given above notably incorrect?

> Thanks for any quick tutorials on this!

> Rory

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