Autonym of Mosopeleas-Ouesperies-Ofos

[Rory M Larson]

Pardon me; I think I was confused on a point of orthography.  I had been
thinking the Algonquianist use of 8 was for schwa; I seem to recall now
that it is either for /wa/ or some kind of long /oo/.  I believe the @ sign
is what we've been using for schwa, isn't it?

> We could reasonably reconstruct this as something like *woNs8pee ~
*wuNs8pii.

Make that *woNs at pee ~ *wuNs at pii

> [...] we are essentially there: *moNs8pe(l)e ~ *woNs8pee.

Make that *moNswape(l)e ~ *woNs at pee.

Sorry for the error!

Rory


> Under the circumstances, I think the Uspe are the better choice.  Swanton
gives the vowels in the Tunica version as long, with the first being
circumflex: Uus^pii.  The various French versions given are Ouispe
(/wispe/), Oussipe's (/usipee/), Ounspie (/uNspii/), and Onspe'e (oNspee).
We could reasonably reconstruct this as something like *woNs8pee ~
*wuNs8pii.  In an earlier posting (May 4, 2004), Michael McCafferty has
stated that the first record of the Mosopelea name was on Marquette's map
of the Mississippi of 1673, in which it was written MONS8PELEA, with the
initial vowel nasalized and the second (I think) schwa.  So if we drop the
final (ethnonymic?) -a, consider the initial m to be a tight w before a
nasal vowel, and guess that the l was a light rhotic or y to separate the
two e syllables, we are essentially there: *moNs8pe(l)e ~ *woNs8pee.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/siouan/attachments/20070304/70ff575d/attachment.htm>