Ablaut et al

[shokooh Ingham]

Dear Paul,
Nice to hear from you.  I don't think I've seen you since 1999 in Saskatchewan.  The Winnebago examples are rather what I was wondering about i.e. does it point to an earlier monosyllabic, possibly final consonantal, stage for Siouan?  I realize that this, if it were the case, would only be one earlier stage and wouldn't exclude an even earlier stage which was not necessarily monosyllabic.  I know one can go on for ever like this, but I am retired and have a lot of time to think and often find myself speculating about linguistic prehistory.

For the Semitic case Greenberg gives various groups of verbs with relatable meanings.  I'm not sure whether the idea originates with him or whether it had been remarked on earlier.  The early Arab grammarians also remarked on it and referred to it (I think) as 'The Great Derivation', but they exaggerate the case somewhat and it obviously isn't 'derivation' in the usual sense.  He also suggests that although verbs were originally monosyllabic, the addition of the third consonant made the majority disyllabic and then the remaining monosyllabic ones were reanalyzed as having a geminate final consonant as in qaTT, GaSS, qadd below, or as having a medial semi-vowel realised as a long vowel as in qaal 'to say', zaal 'to cease' etc.

examples are (capital letters indicate 'emphatic' or pharyngealized consonants) 
qaTT 'carve, cut, trim', qaTa' 'cut off', qaSS 'cut, shear, cut off', qaTaf 'pick (flowers), pluck off, cut off', qaTam 'cut off, trim', qadd 'cut lengthwise into strips', qaSur 'be short', qasam 'divide, split'.  Another group is nabagh 'emerge, appear', naba3 'spring forth, gush out', nabaT 'well out, gush out', nabat 'grow (as of plants)"
I'm not sure that anyone has suggested what the final consonants mean and they aren't I think ever regarded as suffixes, but of course they may have originally been that. Generally they can't be attributed specific meanings now.

In some ways the above cases are not unlike the Lakota sound symbolism phenomenon where s> š> ȟ etc, giving different meanings, which can in some but not all cases be seen to increase intensity, but where the relationship cannot be stated in a consistent way such as sóta ’clear’, šóta ’smoky’, ȟóta ’grey’; sápa ’black’, šápa ’dirty’; zi ’yellow’,ži ’tawny’, ǧi ’brown’.  

I suppose the flick, flutter etc group is similar to the slip, slither, slimy, sloshy, slurp, sluttish? group, which I would see as a development out of onomatopeic words.
Yours
Bruce


--- On Thu, 1/9/11, voorhis at WESTMAN.WAVE.CA <voorhis at WESTMAN.WAVE.CA> wrote:

> From: voorhis at WESTMAN.WAVE.CA <voorhis at WESTMAN.WAVE.CA>
> Subject: Re: Ablaut et al
> To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
> Date: Thursday, 1 September, 2011, 4:37
> Bob & Bruce,
> 
> Just going by memory here: I don't have the books at hand
> for reference,
> but don't a lot of the words where accent would predict a
> final
> consonant in Dakota according to Shaw actually appear with
> the final
> consonant in Winnebago: sep 'black', shunk 'dog', phec
> 'fire', etc.
> Does this correlate with the Dakota words, or does
> Winnebago just drop
> some or all final vowels?  Someone with the reference
> works handy will
> have to check it.
> 
> As for the Semitic stem extensions, you can't just randomly
> add extra
> consonants to get new roots, of course.  Has anyone
> ever explained what
> the assorted suffixes like -f, -m, -r added to qat- might
> mean?  Can
> they be identified with other monosyllabic roots yielding
> even vaguely
> consistent changes in the semantics of the extended roots?
> Exactly the
> same problem arises with Indo-European root
> extensions.  It looks to me
> like the same thing as seeing an original root fl- in
> flicker, flit,
> flash, flip, and flutter.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> On 8/30/2011 12:42 PM, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> > Bruce,
> >
> > This is indeed an interesting topic.  There is a
> close correlation
> > between Shaw's (and Carter's, etc.) Dakotan
> "consonant-final stems"
> > and stems where the other Siouan languages have long
> vowels.  The
> > rule seems to have been:  If the 1st syllable is
> long, it is
> > accented; if it is short, accent the 2nd
> syllable.  Or, it could be
> > phrased in terms of morae.  This begs the
> question whether or not
> > Dakota had final vowels in the initial accent
> words.  I'm off this
> > afternoon on a short trip up to Omaha and Council
> Bluffs and will
> > return to this issue when I get back.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Bob
> >
> > ________________________________________ From: Siouan
> Linguistics
> > [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu]
> on behalf of shokooh Ingham
> > [shokoohbanou at YAHOO.CO.UK]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:23 AM
> > To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
> Subject: Ablaut et al
> >
> > --- On Mon, 29/8/11, rankin at KU.EDU<rankin at KU.EDU> 
> wrote:
> >
> > Bob, This is in reply to your earlier message , where
> you sent your
> > article on Mississipi Valley Siouan "Ablaut". 
> Thanks very much for
> > that.   I found it very interesting and
> noticed that you mentioned
> > Shaw's work on Dakota phonology, which I read many
> years ago, there
> > being a copy of it in the SOAS library.  One
> thing which interested
> > me in Shaw was her explanation of the exceptional
> initial stress in
> > certain disyllabic stems, káǧa  'to make' being
> one I think. She
> > posits an earlier monosyllabic, final consonantal form
> for these
> > stems such as kaǧ- . I have never seen this discussed
> much and
> > wondered what other Siouanists thought about it. 
> It seems like a
> > very neat analysis and parallels the argument of
> Greenberg about
> > Semitic lexical stems which are now disyllabic in the
> majority such
> > as katab 'to write'.  He suggests that Semitic
> stems were originally
> > monosyllabic (in fact bisonsonantal) and that the
> second syllable
> > (or the third consonant depending on how you look at
> it) is a later
> > addition allowing for lexical expansion, an initial
> qat- 'cut'
> > giving later qata', qataf, qatam, qasar and others all
> realtable to
> > the idea of 'cutting'.  The other advantage is
> that it makes Semitic
> > stems look more like Indo-European ones, which is
> attractive.
> > Without wishing to appear to be talking Nostratic, I
> do like the idea
> > of original monosyllabic stems, but of course it does
> get into
> > difficult ground as to how far back you think you can
> go.  I wonder
> > whether it holds up in other Siouan languages. Bruce
> >
>