Ablaut et al

[Rankin, Robert L]

> It is there at least in the orthographic renditions that linguists have built for these languages, and quite possibly in the heads of their speakers as well.  But the dichotomy does not hold if we assume that proto-Siouan words could end in phonemic consonants characterized by an unmarked vocal release.  If such a release were reinterpreted as a phonemic vowel by later speakers or their linguists, the vowel chosen would most likely be -e, and next most likely -i or -a.  It would probably not be o, u, iN, aN or uN, because those sounds are marked, either by rounding or by nasalization.  The pattern we see in your table is mostly -e, some -i, and possibly one case of -a, which squares well with that expectation.

What I'm saying is that this is precisely tantamount to reconstructing *-e, which is exactly what I do.  Trying to push -e back to a "consonant characterized by an unmarked vocal release" merely adds an unnecessary, and unjustified, step.  Why not use Occam's razor and reconstruct what is actually there?  

> This model does not imply that "all 7 other vowels (i a o u iN, aN, uN) can occur unaccented word-finally", but that "the most common one, (e)" cannot.  

Sure it does.  ALL verbs in what I reconstruct as CVCe and you reconstruct as CVC behave the same phonologically.  It is not the case that some of them "ablaut" while others don't.  So there's no reason to say that you can have both CVCe and CVC.  I think you're building an elaborate "pre-final E" phonology where there's no need.  

> Rather, it would allow 9 possible CVC- patterns, where the accent is on the V: CVCa, CVCe, CVCi, CVCo, CVCu, CVCiN, CVCaN and CVCuN as well as CVC.  In this case, CVC and CVCe might have collapsed together at an early time, either before Siouan split, or separately in the various branches.  From that point on, there would be no contradiction between this model and yours.

> I think this model has three advantages:

> 1. Ablaut in the non-Dakotan languages is explained naturally by your model of suffixes with initial a-.  If the final -e in Siouan verb roots is phonemic, then we have to do some rationalizing about relative "weakness" of vowels to tell why -e goes away before the a- in CVCe roots, while the other 7 vowels are preserved.  But if most CVCe roots are underlyingly CVC, then the -e is not there in the first place phonemically and the speakers would therefore never put it there if another vowel was suffixed to the final C.

It's way more complicated than that.  It isn't just unaccented -e.  Vowel sequences generally simply aren't usually permitted.  Post-accentually, the most common outcome is V1+V2 > V2[+long], but there are also glide epenthesis rules where V1+V2 > V1 r V2 (where r has various reflexes in different langs.)  Normally this is dh in Omaha.  If V1 or V2 is long, it's even more complex.  

> 2. It explains why -e is, I believe, not only the most common, but overwhelmingly the most common, ending we find, at least on active verb roots.  To the CVCe roots would be added all the presumably numerous CVC roots as well.

But we don't need both CVCe and CVC roots, because there is no difference in behavior to motivate them.  I do take your point that -e is the most common -V by far.  However, SOME vowel has to predominate statistically.  John Koontz and I discussed this quite a bit.  I think he believes that -e and -a have/had morphemic status that explains their prevalence.  I have tended to resist that analysis since I don't see the semantic relationship.

> 3. We do not have to suppose that proto-Dakotan roots had to go from CVCe to CVC to CVCa, first losing a final vowel, and then gaining a new one.  The Dakotan -a ending would simply be that branch's phonemic reinterpretation of the unmarked vocal release after CVC, in contrast with the -e or -i reinterpretation possibly chosen by other Siouan languages.  There would only be one step, from CVC to CVCa, with little phonetic difference between the two.

What I'm saying, I think, is that you're just hedging on the phonemic principle by renaming -e "the unmarked vocal release".  This is merely renaming something that is actually there in all the languages something that isn't there in any of them.  It violates simplicity and creates an artificial minority syllable pattern where most Siouan languages don't have one.  Most require open syllables.  

bob


> That would go against 150 years of phonology UNLESS it's the only way to predict accent, in which case one might argue for it as Pat Shaw, Dick Carter and others have.  But since the status of phonemic vowel length has been clarified (by Bruce Hays and by yours truly and others), we can see that the highly exceptional CVC roots are no longer justified except in Dakotan.  I think that sums up my view more compactly than before.

I'm not familiar enough with the accent and vowel length discussion to argue on this.  My dispute is with the EITHER-OR dichotomy you propound above, which I feel invalidly excludes a very reasonable possibility in the middle.  I grant that your overall view of the CVC question, grounded on other considerations, may be correct.


Rory