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Algonquian Connections to Salishan and Northeastern Archaeology

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Algonquian Connections to Salishan and Northeastern Archaeology Algonquian Connections to Salishan and Northeastern Archaeology J. PETER DENNY University of Western Ontario Beyond the written records of the last few centuries, our access to Al­ gonquian history is through historical linguistics and archaeology. In this paper1 I discuss two problems in this regard: 1) the likelihood that Al­ gonquian languages and Salishan languages are genetically related, and 2) possible relations between Algonquian speech and the archaeological tradi­ tions of the Northeast. Since I am a semanticist, not a historical linguist or an archaeologist, my perspective centers on word meanings and upon selected lexical systems, notably noun classifiers and incorporated nouns It was semantic problems that first made me wonder about the complex­ ities of Algonquian history. I encountered a number of morphemes whose meanings seemed improbable if it were true that Algonquian speakers had always lived m small hunting bands like those of the Cree-Montagnais and Ojibwa speakers in the boreal forest. Some of the puzzles are these: 1) Proto-Algonquian (PA) *elenyiwa 'person' may come from the root *elen- ordinary ; this suggests the possibility that ordinary people were contrasted with higher status people in a stratified society at some time earlier in Al­ gonquian history. 2) WTDS.? SCTh°/ SPedal V6rb n^ ^°r aCti°nS d0ne * i»taun*»t. (not in oairsnt f • "f- ^^ WdI malked morPh°logically since they come cLTmarker w £T ^T verbs-hich always has a semantic verb th d ( enn y 985 d one SSil! f* t T ? L ? )' ™ for transitive inanimate verbs belonging to sub-class 1, which, under the analysis of Pigeott (1979^ if oT l983) haV Stem endi"S in a verb d« m-ker a^ ii See and Ojibwa this very clear-cut group contains an unexpected member I iK °<*-^ my study integrative articles concerned with geo.ranhlfre^n § VK 'T^ °Ut t0 be Peri ds since it is only at this level of inference^ thataXP. °*u *"** ° ' historical linguistics. My general ttlrZ "chaeology can be connected to (1981) g Urtlng P01nts were Tu<* (1978) and M ason 86 ALGONQUIAN CONNECTIONS TO SALISHAN 87 four of the regular members of the group, in their PA reconstructions, and then the puzzler: *-esw 'by heat' 'by cutting edge' *-ahw 'by tool or medium' *-ikahw 'by blow' Ojibwa -nisahw '(by) sending'; si-nisahw-a:kan 'messenger' Cree -tisahw '(by) sending'; i-tisah-ama:towin 'message' The problem morpheme, Ojibwa -nisahw and Cree -tisahw shows a further morphological resemblance to the group: like *-ikahw 'by blow', it is based on the most general morpheme in the set, *-ahw 'by tool or medium'. These many morphological identities make it likely that it originally had an in­ strumental meaning. Its present meaning in both languages is 'send, chase someone', but a hint of its original meaning is seen in the derived nouns I have fisted for 'messenger' and 'message'. Its original instrumental meaning must have been 'to do something to someone by sending', i.e., it was an instrumental verb final of sending. It seems unlikely that a culture would develop such a specialized instrumental verb unless doing things by send­ ing others was quite common. It looks again as if some high status people had authority over others. In the egalitarian society of the boreal forest this meaning was lost and the morpheme came to mean just 'send someone'. 3) PA *aOoxkye:wa 'he works' may be related to verbs for hiring and commis­ sioning work. For example, in Ojibwa only vowel length separates anokki: 'he works' from ano:kki: 'he commissions something to be done' which is related to ano:n 'to hire someone'. Other derivations by vowel shortening are known in Ojibwa, e.g., incorporated noun -min- 'berry' from noun mi:n 'berry', and incorporated noun -a:kon- 'snow' from noun ako:n 'snow'. Again, this sort of finding suggests a ranked society in the Algonquian past, in which so much important work was done for those in authority that the ordinary word meaning 'work' was derived from those referring to authoritarian control of work. As I began to look at Algonquian history I found that two phases had been discussed, an earlier one in which Proto-Algonquian was thought to be related to other non-Algonquian languages, and a later one in which Proto- Algonquian was a separate language ending when it broke apart into the daughter languages. My semantic puzzlers are most likely solvable at the later, Proto-Algonquian stage, but to understand that, it helps to clarify the earlier stage. Algic on the Pacific One idea about the origins of Algonquian languages seems to have been quietly abandoned: that they were related to the Muskogean languages of the Southeast (Haas 1958). Campbell and Mithun (1979:38) include 88 J. PETER DENNY this theory in a list of "notable cases of splitting", i.e., language families formerly thought to be related, but now thought not to be related. In that list they cite two other papers in the same volume (Goddard 1979; Haas 1979) which a reader might presume to contain further details on the question. However, the former contains no mention of it, and the latter reviews it with no evaluative remarks whatever. Since the Algonquian- Muskogean connection is accepted in some archaeological publications, it might be a good idea for the historical linguists to drop it more loudly. The other suggestion which has been worked on to some degree is Sapir's (1929) Algonkin-Wakashan hypothesis which links Algonquian, Rit- wan, Wakashan, Salishan, Chimakuan, Kutenai, and Beothuk languages as descendants of a hypothesized ancient language (sometimes called Al- mosan). Two things are accepted about this complex: 1) the position of Beothuk has to be left in abeyance due to inadequate data on this extinct language; and 2) the relation of Proto-Algonquian to the Ritwan languages, Wiyot and Yurok, has been established (Goddard 1975). Since archaeol­ ogists believe the Wiyot and Yurok migrated fairly recently to the Pacific Coast from the Columbian Plateau, it is likely that the ancestor language of Algonquian and Ritwan (sometimes called Algic) was spoken in that region. (See maps at end of paper for place names.) Beyond this established Algonquian-Ritwan relationship, only a few studies have taken steps towards showing genetic relations to the other lan­ guage families of the hypothesized Almosan grouping. Berman (1982:419) has noted "the similarity of the Proto-Algonquian-Ritwan vowel system to the Proto-Salish vowel system". Haas set forth a preliminary group of cog­ nates and sound correspondances linking Algonquian and Kutenai, and a set of lexical resemblances between Kutenai and various Salishan languages — evidence which she describes as "too substantial to be explained away as entirely the result of borrowing or accident" (1965:88). I should say in passing that the lexical resemblances offered in support of Almosan in Greenberg's (1987) much-publicized book Language in the Americas do not strengthen the hypothesis. Much of the data is inaccurate (Goddard 1987); also Campbell (1988) has shown that the kind of resemblances Greenberg gives are no more frequent than chance resemblances to Finnish. The best way to establish a very ancient relationship between language families is that practiced by Goddard in the Algonquian-Ritwan case: show that there are idiosyncratic morphological identities. If one finds a package of these, they are unlikely to have occurred by chance or borrowing, and therefore are evidence for common descent from an ancestor language. I have noted such a set of idiosyncratic morphological identities for noun classifiers and incorporated nouns between Salishan and Algonquian: ALGONQUIAN CONNECTIONS TO SALISHAN 89 1) In both Salishan and Algonquian languages, both noun classifiers and incor­ porated nouns occur in the verb. (Salishinists call them "lexical suffixes" and Algonquianists call them "medials".) This pattern does not seem to be found in any non-Amerindian language family. 2) In both Salishan and Algonquian, noun classifiers and incorporated nouns are separate lexical items. Furthermore, all Salishan lexical suffixes on verbs are either incorporated nouns or classifiers (Saunders and Davis 1975) and the same is true of Algonquian medials (Denny 1989). This is not true, for example, of Northern Iroquoian languages where there is only one lexical set, the incorporated nouns, which sometimes have classifier usages (Denny 1989). 3) In Salishan, the classifiers and the incorporated nouns occur at the end of the verb stem, e.g., Bella Coola classifier cp-ui- 'to wipe a three-dimensional object'. This is a rare pattern in Algonquian, e.g., Ojibwa manki-to:n- 'to have a big mouth'. Usually incorporated nouns are followed by post-medial -e:-, e.g., manki-sit-e:-'to have a big foot', and classifiers are followed at least by the stative abstract finals -a:-, -at-, or -isi-, e.g., manki-minak-at- 'to be a large three-dimensional object'. For the rare stem-final pattern to be ancient it must, of course, be reconstructable in Proto-Algonquian: *tahk-ikamy-i- 'to be cold water'. In this particular case the general or unmarked verb final *-»'- has been reconstructed, but this is still not the regular Proto-Algonquian pattern in which the stative abstract finals *-ya:-, *-at- or *-esi- occur, e.g., *kenw-a:pye:k-at- 'to be a long string'; therefore this example still counts as a slight regularization away from an old pattern of stem final occurrence. Also *-ikamy- itself is likely to be an old noun classifier because it is not formed by the regular derivation with post-medial -ak from an incorporated noun, e.g., Cree classifier -a:kon-ak- 'snow' from incorporated noun -a:kon- 'snow', and classifier -min-ak- 'three-dimensional object' from incorporated noun -min- 'berry'.
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