Autonym of Mosopeleas-Ouesperies-Ofos

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Rory M Larson wrote:
> If this associationa is valid, and /moso/ => /ofo/, doesn't that seem to
> confirm that the shift from Siouan /s/ to Ofo /f/ took place fairly
> recently, i.e. roughly 17th to 19th century?

That was what I was wondering, too.

> Do we have any definite Ofo vocabulary recorded prior to Swanton?

Not that I'm aware of.

As far as nasal variations ouspi- ~ onspi-, while this might reflect the
nasalization implicit in moso- (/woNso/), it is also true that u tends to
vary with n in early printing.

There are several Siouan possibilities for "pere" ~ "pele."  The final -a
would be an Algonquian morpheme.  I think Siouan possibilities would be
PMV *pre 'lake' (La ble, OP ne, etc., where Dhegiha and Chiwere-winnebago
have *Re < *pre) and something like PMV *preh- 'thin, flat'.  I seem to
recall OP bdhekka < PMV *preh-ka.

It's not quite kosher to think in terms of general Siouan sets when
dealing with a particular known language, because not all Siouan langauges
attest all Siouan stems.  Quite the contrary, of course.  But, especially
when we are dealing with old forms of a language, or any forms of a poorly
known language, we can probably adduce reconstructions and then carry them
forward to a hypothetical later form.  In essence we have a double-starred
hypothesis concerning Ofo vocabulary.

I'm not sure at the moment what the expected Ofo forms of such stems would
be.  Since the name is attested only in non-Ofo, non-Siouan contexts -
only "Ofo," of course, is actually attested in Ofo mouths, I think? - I
guess we can't necessarily assume the morphemes are of Ofo origin, even if
they are of Siouan origin.  However, we are assuming the name is subject
to Ofo sound laws and keeps getting borrowed out of Ofo into other
languages as a term for what we take to be them, so we have to assume it
was at least current in Ofo usage.