Pronouncing ManiN'-ithaN'

[Rankin, Robert L]

> The "dephoneticized" way to write it would be "Moneton" or "Moniton".  Accent should be on the second syllable of both words in the native language.  In English it should be wherever you want it.  Personally, I put it on the 1st syllable.<<
 
I should have added Monyton, with a Y, to the list, since I believe that's the original spelling.
 
> More specifically, what I'm wondering is, does Virginia Siouan have compound words. That is, does "Moneton" represent MaNniN'ithaN' or MaNniN' IthaN'. And, if it does represent a compound, does the stress change, such as how "counterattack" has a different stress than "counter" or "attack". Also, in Virginia Siouan, if it were a compound, would there be any blending/contraction between the phonemes of the two words (e.g. between the /iN/ of /maNniN'/ and /i/ of /ithaN'/), such as MaNniNtaN or MaNnithaN?
 
You ask questions that are tougher than you think.  Accent in compounds is a vexed question in these extinct Siouan languages.  The problem is that in some Siouan languages (maybe all) there are two different kinds of compounds and they differ by their accentual patterns.  Willem DeReuse discusses these in a treatment of Dakotan compounding whose title I don't have at hand.  It's a very thorough job though.
 
It's safe to say that ALL Siouan languages use compounding as a common derivational device, so it's safe to say that this is true of the OVS languages too.  And it is common throughout Siouan for vowels at the end of one word to coalesce with vowels that begin the next word if they are identical.  In fact that is found worldwide.  And even if it weren't a characteristic of a language, it's a characteristic of naive folks who try to write foreign words and even linguists trained in transcription.  
 
So I guess that only leaves the compound stress question unanswered and unanswerable.
 
Bob