Locatives and wa- problems.

[De Reuse, Willem]

Good question!   This reminds me of my favorite "Siouanist turned Athabascanist" pet peeve.  Sapir famously said that there is something about Athabascan languages that prevents them from borrowing from other languages.

This never convinced me, since Siouan languages borrow very little from other languages as well, and structurally they are less complex than Athabascan.  The only loanword I can think of in traditional Lakota is bebela, from French bebe.

Of course I am sure that in modern Lakota, when everyone is bilingual if not dominant in English, there is a lot of English...  But that is true of modern Navajo as well.

Willem
________________________________
From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of David Costa [pankihtamwa at EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 4:48 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Locatives and wa- problems.

Bob, are you aware of any Algonquian influences on Hochunk? Despite their being an island of Siouan in a sea of Algonquian languages, they seem to have mixed very little with the Algonquians in Wisconsin. I'm not aware of a single Hochunk loan in any Algonquian language.

Dave

It’s hard to say whether the “different” Hochunk pattern represents a retention of something lost everywhere else or an innovation, perhaps brought on by extensive contact with Algonquian,

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