Essays in Algonquian, Catawban, and Siouan Linguistics in Memory of Frank T. Siebert, Jr.

Abstract

Blair A. Rudes and David J. Costa (eds.), Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics Memoir 16, Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 2003, ix + 296 pages.Reviewer: Paul ProulxAs a specialist in Algonquian, I will limit my comments to Algonquian papers. Three are written by scholars generally found lunching together at Algonquian conferences: Ives Goddard, group's leader; Richard Rhodes, his disciple; David Costa, a student of Rhodes and Algonquianist co-editor of volume. The signs of intellectual inbreeding are everywhere, and Goddard clearly suffered from too gentle an editorial hand.Group isolation and status within it can be estimated from volume bibliography, which indexes frequency of citation. 1 count 31 separate Goddard publications cited, versus only seven for Bloomfield. Rhodes has 10 and Costa six, while Peter Denny, a psychologist (these days converted into an amateur archaeologist) who hangs out with them, and remaining linguist, Philip LeSourd, are tied at four.Goddard's contribution is of monograph length (65 pages). Its merit lies in assembling a huge amount of data on Algonquian demonstratives. However, rather than comparing all Algonquian languages, as comparative method calls for, Goddard bases his reconstruction of Proto Algonquian (PA hereafter) demonstratives only on his two fieldwork languages (and some neighbouring ones he regards as closely related to them).These he reconstructs internally, producing something like a 1960s underlying structure. This resemble an earlier stage of a language, or not. In any event, it is a synchronic representation, hypothesizes in simplified and abstract terms about daughter studied, and how to get from there to its more complex concrete (surface) structure.Goddard then reconstructs comparing two underlying systems, and argues away all rest of data in second half of paper. Once this choice of sample and method are made, nothing like a genuine reconstruction is possible. He has discarded far too much information.For example, Goddard claims demonstratives may undergo phonetic reduction beyond what can be accounted for by general sound laws of a language (p. 80). He proposes ad hoc deletion of whole demonstrative roots (VC-) in some languages. In Ojibwa, PA *4eyo(:)- (set A) was reduced to CO *4o-, and *4en- (set B) was completely (p. 63); in Cree-Montagnais, word-initially *4ey- was lost (p. 69); in Menominee, the sequences *4eyo:- and *4eni- were reduced to M *4a- (p. 76); and in Miami, initial I 4iy- is in set A, and I 4n- is in set B (p. 78).I submit this is not just wrong, it's utter nonsense. Even if one believes in ad hoc sound change, wherever Goddard claims reduction has totally deleted a root, he has no evidence root was ever there in first place. Arguably, it is simply a convenient fiction, to avoid recognizing following element is itself a root, and thus existence of additional stems. (For those who believe in regularity of sound change, where his ad hoc reduction has totally deleted a root, although regular sound change would not have done so, he has proven it was never there.)Many of his other claims also go against linguistic intuition and common sense. For example, he says Fox 4i:niya that (animate, inaccessible) and Eastern Cree 4(a)niya: that (animate, inaccessible) do not attest a stem *4eniy- as suggested by Pentland, but rather are separate parallel compoundings of his roots *4en- and *4ey- (p. 38, 71, 91).However, notice attested stems are not Fox *4i:n i:ya nor Eastern Cree *4(a)n-aya:, as a word-initial position for second syllable would have produced by his own rules. The compounding, if such it was, clearly came early, and one wonders by what criteria he refuses to reconstruct it for his Western dialect of (in which *4e > *4i). …