Palu'e - Siouan Parallel

[Koontz John E]

The following struck me as an interesting parallel to the hypothetical
development of syncopating first persons in Mississippi Valley Siouan.
It's a description from Dr. Mark Donohue of the historical phonology of
the first person in Palu'e, an Austronesian language from Flores, in
southern Indonesia.  My parallel Siouan forms are inserted interlinearly.
I have used *tuNp-e 'to see', with theme-formant *-e.

This grows out of a post on Language List.  I'm indebted to Mark Donohoe
for all details of Palu'e and for revising my first attempt at the
comparison into something like clarity.

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Mark Donohue wrote:
> The language I'm looking at, Palu'e, has something similar going on.
>
> Historically: ku- '1SG' prefixes to a root like tusu 'milk' to yield
> ku-tusu 'I suckle'

*wa- Agt1 prefixes to a root like *tuNpe 'see' to yield *wa-tuNpe 'I see'.

> then
>
> *k- > ?

Proto-Siouan *w- > Proto-Mississippi Valley *h-

> yields
>
> ?u-tusu

PMV *ha-tuNpe     *(h)a- is the Mississippi Valley reflex of *wa- Agt1
                  outside of Dakotan.

> and pre-stressed reduction
>
> ?tusu

*h-tuNpe          This is what we actually find, outside of Dakotan and
                  the regular verbs.

> this is attested in nearby languages such as Sika.

Alas, in the Siouan family we only have the reduced form, if we don't
count regularized Dakotan watuNwe.

> But Palu'e doesn't like ? onsets, so it turned this into
>
> thusu

Winnebago and Ioway-Otoe change *ht to *th and so on with all
preaspirates.  Their verb 'to see', *a-ta, first person *a-h-ta 'I see',
cf. Wi haac^a', IO a(a)'tha 'I see' vs. Wi haj^a', IO ada' 'he sees'.
The most common examples involve forms with *pa- 'by pushing', which come
out as Wi paa-, IO paa- Agt1 vs. WI wa, IO wa- Agt3 (bare stem *pa- >
*wa-, regularly).

> which later generalised over the entire paradigm for most verbs; some
> generalised the 3sg n- (<*na-), as in *na-alap > **n-ala > nala
> (unanalyzable, synchronically). For some roots the aspiration is now
> synchronically best thought of as being a verbalising morpheme (as in
> tusu 'milk' ~ thusu 'suckle').

The aspiration doesn't generalize in this case in Siouan, but there are
other places where paradigms do level on one irregular stem
alternant.

Comparable to the Palu'e n-inital stems perhaps are the points in Siouan
morphology where an initial *r- (or its reflex) may reflect third person
*i-, e.g., the *(r)aka 'by striking' instrumental and the similar *(r)iki
dative forms, and maybe the third person inalienable nouns with initial *y
in Dakotan (cf. c^haNte 'heart') and *r in Dhegiha (cf. OP naNde 'heart'),
perhaps from *y-aNt-e ~ *i-(r)aNt-e.

In Palu'e the reduction of the *CV-C... first person is from *ku-C... >
*?u-C... > *?-C... and developments of that (Ch).  In Siouan the reduction
is from *wa-C... > *ha-C... (?) > *h-C... and developments of that (CC,
Ch).  The intermediate *ha-C... stage in Siouan is not usually adduced,
though, in fact, in regular verbs *wa- does become ha- or a- in most
languages, and it maybe perfectly reasonable to assume the *ha-C... stage.