Monday's recordings

[Rory M Larson]

Mark wrote:
> Sorry. I was hoping to examine Alberta's he/hE utterances to "see" if
there was a distinction that I could not hear.

> Auntie called later last night to say she recalled "nits" as hEsoN'. When
I asked her about "pale antlers" she confirmed hesoN' but I still could not
hear a clear distinction between the two.

Well, inadvertant to the list or not, I had been thinking about posting on
this anyway.  I had suggested a couple of years ago that Omaha might
recognize a distinction between /e/ and /E/, based largely on the minimal
pair: he, 'horn', vs. hE, 'louse', where to my ear the latter sounded more
like the /E/ in "pet".  The speakers are apparently able to distinguish
these two terms, at least some of the time.  The difference of "cot" vs.
"caught" in English might be an analogy of how subtle and sporadic it is.

Last night, we had our elder speaker pronounce these terms for us again.
Most of the time there seemed to be little or no difference.  When she
pronounced them very carefully, though, it seemed to me that there was a
difference, but not necessarily exactly what I had thought before.  For he,
'horn', the vowel came out sharp, clear, and short, rather like the vowel
in si, 'foot'.  For hE, 'louse', the vowel seemed to linger and change a
bit, as a diphthong.  It could be construed as starting with /he/ and
gliding toward the center, as he[A], with the final part of that glide very
brief and optional.

So now I'm starting to think that there is probably no phonemic difference
between /e/ and /E/, but that there is a difference between these two
words, such that 'louse' could be spelled he'a, with the final vowel
de-emphasized almost to nothing, and only rarely even perceptible.  When it
can be heard, the shift from /e/ to /A/ passes through the range of /E/,
which is why my English ear could parse it that way.

If this interpretation is correct, it would appear that the Omaha word for
'louse' is a straight match for the Dakotan term, he'ya.  If so, I wonder
if we can get this straight from MVS, with *he'a remaining in both language
groups, but with epenthetic /y/ being recognized in the spelling for
Dakotan, and the final syllable being almost but not quite dropped in
Omaha?  Or would one language have borrowed it from another in more recent
times?  Would there be any constraints with what we should expect for the
development of epenthetic /y/ in MVS?  How would this compare with the
'speech' term, i'e / i'ye ?  Do other MVS languages tell us anything?

Rory
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