Omaha fricative set

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, Rory M Larson wrote:
> I'm confused by what you mean by "apical" here.  Do you mean the tip of the
> palate ahead of the alveolar ridge?

Apical refers to the tongue tip.

> > I'm pretty sure that something like an extreme laminality or apicality
> > explains the LaFlesche use of c-cedilla for s, ...

> Wasn't a mother or grandmother of that family an Otoe?

Yes, however, I think the evidence suggests it was not just the LaFlesche
family using theta-like pronunciation.

> Yes.  The "turned s" is a little harder to see than the "turned c".

Much like telling a turned P from a d!

> I'd be glad to get a list of *su/*zu words.  I'm not sure it's restricted
> to those-- we seemed to be getting quite a bunch of them the other week.
> But it would certainly be something to test.  I'll try to watch out for
> lip-rounding too.

OK.  I'll see what I can find.

> I'm also not sure that the only difference between 'foot' and 'seed' is the
> muting, but it seemed to be one of them.  We worked on these words for a
> while with one speaker, in the presence of the other two.  The speaker
> insisted that the two were distinct.  ...

Bob's explained the usual procedure for trying to resolve issues like
this.

> Her initial explanation was that the si of 'foot' was shorter, though
> perhaps not in the sense that the vowel in the 'seed' word was long.

I suppose one way to test this would be to look at the accentual pattern,
perhaps in compounds, if they occur, or with certain enclitics like
=di(thaN) and =tta(thaN), if they can co-occur.  I'm not sure this would
work, however.  As far as compounds for 'foot', sippa occurs to me, and
sigdhe.  I don't remember anything with 'seed' off hand.

It might be possible to come up with a verb (phrase) that took both as an
unmodified object, perhaps 'always stepping on' or something like that.

(Aside:  I've wondered about tests like this with the tta- and tte-
compounds, which seem to accent somewhat unexpectedly in print.)

Another approach is to look at the length of the forms within a standard
frame using sonograms.

It could be that there is some sort of different final treatment for the
two words, though that would assume that ...CV words are actually two
different types ...CVx and ...CVy and nobody has ever noticed it.  That
would seem like grasping at straws except that we no that -h is lost
pretty widely, but did once exist.  One might get different treatments for
*CV# (CV?) and *CVh(e) (CV(h)).

Or there might be two different accentual patterns for monosyllables, also
not previously noted, but perhaps associated with underlying length (or
perhaps even surface length).  Again this only seems worth suggesting
because we have problems with accentuation in these languages.

I'm more inclined to suspect *su vs. *si, but who knows.

> like the "p" in "Hup!".

Essentially hu?.

> The end of si, 'foot', was almost, but not quite, this sudden.  It was
> more like a rapidly fading vowel being put out of its misery.)  When she
> pronounced s.i, 'seed', the breath was not slammed through it like that;
> the s seemed to be of the muted type, and the vowel trailed off in a
> more relaxed way.

On this argument, words with -kka would tend to follow whatever pattern
was associated with *Vh-, since -kka is explained as *-h-ka.  In other
words, one reflex of -h is that adding *-ka as a suffix produces -kka in
Dhegiha, -kha in Dakotan, and in Winnebago you have -ke without loss of
final -e.

> Also, there seemed to be a qualitative difference in the vowel to me.
> In si, 'foot', the vowel was closer to the /i/ sound in "deed".  In s.i,
> 'seed', it seemed to approach the /I/ sound in "did".  I didn't notice
> any lip rounding in either case.

Maybe one might expect I for */ih/.  I've noticed that ChV sequences have
V more like "lax" vowels in English.

> > What about x before dh?  I don't think Dorsey pointed to any peculiar
> > quality here, but logically x should be muted before gh.
>
> You mean before dh, right?

Yes the second time I typed dh and gh came out some how.

> I've been wondering about that, too.  I seem to recall Bryan pointing
> out to me a few months ago that it was in fact the muted form before dh,
> at least for certain words.  I'll have to dig up his posting again.

I ask because the muted sn and s^n clusters are from *sr and *s^r.  In
those contexts *r > *R, which appears as n in OP.  But *xr remains *xr and
appears as xdh.  The same thing happens in Osage, but *R is t or c (before
e and i), and so the effect is a bit more subtle.  This shift of *Sr to
*SR also occurs in Dakotan, but there it also affects *xr, which is *xR.
In Ioway-Otoe and Winnebago, there's no shift of r to R or perhaps it
would be better to say that *r and *R are indistinguishable.

> That's what I've been assuming up until now too, supposing that the muted
> s. and s^. forms occur only before n, or in certain other nasal contexts
> where their manifestation is phonologically constrained.  But if they are
> popping up arbitrarily, then they do need to be distinguished.

Maybe - but I'm not fully convinced of the s(mute)V examples.   They're
very limited in distribution, and before n we only find s(mute).  It's a
bit like the cases in Teton of phV vs. pxV.  I think that's usually
explained as individual wavering between two minor dialect treatments.

> Hmm.  I posed this question to the list a few months ago, and the general
> opinion on orthography seemed to be indifferent.

Well, I remember being too busy to say anything at the time.  The less
fiddling with the existing "popular" schemes the better, I think.  It
should only be done where it is absolutely necessary.

> This is fine for the Siouanist list, though I am inclined to favor marking
> the x as x^, simply to make sure we really intend it to mean the sharp and
> forceful form.  The x has been used for either or both velar fricatives so
> much in Omaha that I really don't trust anything written with x as
> necessarily being distinctive.

There's some point to that, but by the same logic you should carefully
write tt vs. tH (or th), and not t vs. tH (or th), and so on.  But again
that tramples on a carefully arranged compromised that appeals strongly to
Omahas and Poncas.  I'm inclined not to mess with it.

> For Macy, the issue is touchy.  They have some investment in the old La
> Flesche system, and there could be fallout from trying to revise it.  With
> a push, they might accept using gh for the mute form, though that would be
> painful for the very common 'make'/'do' verb, which would then have to be
> written gaghe instead of gaxe.

But the same logic applies to writing xitha as x^itha.

> What are these Ponca and Omaha spelling projects?  Who all has been
> included?

I defer to Kathy and Ardis, my primary sources on them.  I don't claim
that they were produced by majorities or official committees.  But both
seemed to have some tentative agreeableness and recognition.

I will have to say that if the results of those projects aren't more or
less sacrosanct, and are subject to what are arbuably arbitrary
adjustments to taste as well as necessary linguistic adjustment, then, to
avoid getting into the situation of Dakota, where each author is a rule
unto themself, and to escape the impossible situation of trying to meet
with conflicting popular systems, I will probably revert to "Siouanist
usage."  There's no point in trying to use a standard popular orthography
if there isn't one.  The main virtue of popular systems is popularity.
If they are simple personal variations, then "Standard Siouanist" usage
has at least the virtue of being predictable to linguists given the
understanding of the phonology.

Of course, if "everybody" (whoever that is) does now or ultimately agrees
on one system or at most two very similar ones (one each for Omaha and
Ponca), I can see getting in line with that.

> > Have you looked at the famous initial gh/medial x words, e.g.,
> >
> > ghage' 'to cry'
> >
> > or gaghe vs. gaxe?
> > bighoN vs. bixoN?
> >
> > Do you hear waxe 'whiteman' as waxe or waghe?  How about 'ice'?  Nughe or
> > nuxe?
>
> ghage' has been our favorite example of a leading gh- word.  wax^e is a
> standard x^ word.  The 'make'/'do' verb is understood to have gh.  I think
> Mark has elicited 'ice', but I don't recall what he found it to be.
>
> When you ask about "gaghe vs. gaxe?", "bighoN vs. bixoN?", are these
> separate words, or are you just asking which way we hear them?  If they are
> separate words, could you remind me of their respective meanings?

As I recollect it, gaghe is 'to make' and gaxe is 'branch', perhaps only
in the context of a riverine system.  There's a form for 'comb' that is
somewhat similar that's not coming to me.

As for bighoN and bixoN, one was something like 'make a farting noise',
but I'll have to look this pair up.  What, you want meanings, too?