Iroquoian 'corn'

[Marianne Mithun]

Dear All,

The Cherokee word is not cognate with the Northern words. The Northern 
words are variations on 'seed' for the most part. This all suggests that 
corn arrived after the separation of Northern and Southern Iroquoian.

Marianne Mithun


--On Sunday, January 31, 2010 7:26 PM -0800 David Kaufman 
<dvklinguist2003 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> As the title suggests, this is really not a Siouan question but an
> Iroquoian one, since I know we have a few Iroquoianists here on the List.
> My question is this: the Cherokee word for corn is 'selu'; are the words
> for corn in Northern Iroquoian similar or different?  Also, it seems that
> the Cherokee word 'selu' may somehow be borrowed from Uto-Aztecan 'xilo'.
> Does anyone have any thoughts on how Cherokee could have borrowed this
> term from Uto-Aztecan? Esp. since no Uto-Aztecan borrowing for corn seems
> to occur in any other Southeastern language that I know of.  (Correct me
> if I'm wrong, of course.)  Thanks.
>
> Dave
>
>