Siouan-Catawban reduplication - a bunch of questions...

[Heike Bödeker]

Dear Corey,

> One language that does not seem to have any type of reduplication
> is Blackfoot.  This is probably due to the fact that Blackfoot has
> a small phoneme inventory and fairly long morphemes.  Reduplication
> would just create confusion.

I'm not so sure about some 3, 4, 5 phonemes less than in some 
"vanillish" Algonquian lg. really making such a big difference, and, 
of course, one always might consider the option of only partial 
reduplication. But maybe that's the general linguistic dilemma of 
attempting at a posteriori explanations.

I'm also not really sure about BF morphemes as a rule being so 
terribly long. We also in other Algonquian lgs. at times have 
seemingly long morphemes, which probably consist several we simply 
can't analyze. Alas, concering the state of BF lexicography, I must 
say that reading text with the dictionaries by Uhlenbeck/Van Gulik 
and Frantz/Russell isn't exactly fun.

> siksi   +  ka
> 'black' +  'foot'

Actually "black, dark" is sik- only, with connective -i- and an 
inserted euphonic -s-.

All the best,

Heike