PROTO-SIOUAN PHONOLOGY AND GRAMMAR
Robert L. Rankin, Richard T. Carter and A. Wesley Jones
Univ. of Kansas,

Univ. of Nebraska

andUniv. of MaryThe intellectual work on the Comparative Siouan Dictionary
is relatively complete we and now have a picture of Proto-Siouan
phonology and grammar. 1 The following is our Proto-Siouan phoneme inventory with a number of explanatory comments:
STOPS
Preaspirates:
Postaspirates:
Glottals:
Plain:

labialdental

hp
ph
p?
p

ht
th
t?
t

FRICATIVES
voiceless:glottal:RESONANTS
sonorant:
obstruent:w
W

VOWELS
oral vowels:

palatal velar
hk
kh
k?
k

s
s?

g
g?

r

y

x
x?

glottal

?

h

R

i
e

u
0

a
nasal vowels:

iII

ACCENT:

1'1 (high vs, non-high)

VOWEL LENGTH:

I-I&(possibly

IAI falling)(+long)

PREASPIRATED VOICELESS STOPS. We treat these as units because they incorporate a laryngeal feature that has attached itself to the stop, and because speakers today treat the reflexesof the series as single units for purposes of syllabification andsegmentability. However, in pre-Proto-Siouan it is possible that
there was no preaspirated series. The preaspirates pretty clearlyarose as regular allophonic variants of plain voiceless stops
preceding an accented vowel. This was pointed out by Dick Carter
for Ofo in 1984. Even so, we have a number of lexical sets where
it appears to be necessary to reconstruct plain voiceless stops
in this environment also. Therefore, by the Proto-Siouan period
the distinction between plain and preaspirated stops had apparently been phonemicized as shown by the following cognate sets: 2

FIRE
PSi ahpe-te
CRHI
MA -pte ( ? )
DA
pheta
WI
peec
CH
phe'jeOPppe-deKSppeje
as hpece
QU
ppetteBIpe?ti
OF apheti
TU
pe-ti

FOUR
to-pa
soopa
toopa
top
t6pa
j60p
towe
d6ba
t6ba
t6pa
t6pa
topa
topa
to'pa

GRUE
ihtosuut6?0tohoth6
c60
th6
tt6ho
tt6ho
ht6ho
tt6ho
t6hi
ith6hioto'

GRANDMA
ihktlikuus
khlj
kun4-ikhljfii
ikk9
ikk9
ihk9
ikk9
l>vl>lj
ik6ni
hiklj'

MARK
kii-xE-kaaxi-kaaxE
-kax
ka'YA
gaax
gaxe
ga''Y ega''Y eka''Y eka'Y eThe reflexes of the preaspirates are post-aspirated [ph, th,kh] today in Ofo, Chiwere, Winnebago and Dakotan but preas pirated
or secondarily geminated in Dhegiha_ Ofo and Tutelo (and probably Biloxi) on the one hand, and Chiwere, Winnebago and Dakotan
on the other however have independently motivated rules that movethe aspiration from the left to the right of a stop.
POSTASPIRATED STOPS:
It may not be necessary to reconstructpostaspirated stops for PSi., at least not for native morphemes.
There are a number of lexical sets in which they are found, andtheir reflexes unquestionably contrast in some subgroups with thepreaspirates (thus the necessity for reconstructing both series).
But the postaspirates generally originate from two distinct
sources.
(1) they arise morphophonemically when prefixes thathave undergone vowel syncope are placed before roots that begin
with Ih/.
So *w+h > ph; *r+h> th; *k+h > kh. The verb 'say' isa good example, with the *w+h > ph still productive in the first
person singular:
PSi
PSi
MA
DA
PN
KS

as

QU

3sg form*e- he·*e- he·e- he(-re)
e- ya
e
e
e
e
e
ye)
(i

1sg actor*e w he' (*w-h underlying)*e p he' (*ph surface)e'P e?se p hae p hee p hee p sei p heThe postaspirates also occur underlyingly in a small set ofwords that often also show abnormal accentuation patterns or other strange features strongly reminiscent of what one would expectfrom borrowings_ Their status as borrowings is hard to prove
however, since the loanwords would be perhaps 3000 years old andsources for them cannot be located, at least not yet. In any
event there are not very many postaspirated sets, but we haveincluded them in our inventory anyway. They are discussed insome detail in Rankin (1994:208). A few examples:

?PSi
CR
HI
MA

DA
CH
WI
OP
KS

os

QU
BI
OF
TU

grizzly*wqth6

cow elk*tlphq

m'1 t 6?
mq th6
m'1 th6
mq e 6m, th6
m1 eh6
mi ch6
m'1 th6tl p a'l p h 4
htl m qh'l-w 49 p h96 phq
6 ph'19 ph9tl thihamtl·thihma'pha-mosquito*ya'whqkea p a akaa p a akaha p arake
eha phtl ka
ra'w 4 gera'w 4 kna h9 geya ph'1 i-ge
aa ph'1 keda ph4 ke
ya m a ki
ea m a ki

GLOTTALIZED STOPS_ We presently reconstruct glottalized
stops and fricatives as distinct series, but we have some qualms.
Historically, glottalized consonants can only occur in accented
syllables. Their reflexes are phonetically ejectives in the Mississippi Valley Siouan languages: Dakotan, Chiwere, Winnebago andDhegiha.
In the North however they have interestingly different
reflexes.
In Mandan and Hidatsa the sequences that in Mississippi Valley are C?V, are instead CV?
This means that in one or the other of these groups theglottal portion, [?], of the consonants has shifted. There isevidence that Crow had glottalization corresponding with thatfound in Hidatsa at an earlier time but lost it. The southeastern group of Siouan languages (Ohio Valley Siouan) was transcribed for the most part by amateur linguists who did not usually write glottal stops, so they do not contribute much to thisissue.
In addition, the glottalized fricatives do not seem toexist independently outside of Mississippi Valley Siouan.
Rankin (1987) shows that in several Siouan languages (primarily Dhegiha) long vowels typically have falling pitch. And
this falling pitch automatically but variably generates a syllable-final glottal stop. If psi had had phonemically independent
falling pitch accent in addition to the high pitch that we now
reconstruct, the glottalized stops and fricatives could have arisen as an allophonic feature of falling pitch. If this is true,
then the modern Hidatsa and Mandan pattern with the glottal stop
appearing as a syllable coda would be the older pattern, and themigration of the glottal from the coda and its attachment to thestop or fricative onset, as in Mississippi Valley Siouan, would
be innovative. Crow vocalizes the glottal stop as vowel length.
To illustrate, consider the verb 'give':stage I*ku
PSi or pre-PSi
stage II
ku?
Hidatsa/Mandan/pre-Crow
stage III
kuk?u
*?ku
Mod. Missp. Ohio
Crow Valley Valley

In stage I the vowel of give has phonemic falling pitch. In
stage II that falling pitch generates a syllable-final glottal
stop via well-understood phonetic processes. In stage III Crow
vocalizes the glottal stop as vowel length, while Mississippi
Valley Siouan shifts the glottal, attaching it following the syllable onset. Ohio Valley Siouan seems to attach it preceding thesyllable onset, as the glottal stop apparently surfaces as a vocoid before the syllable onset in two of those languages. This
results in the following cognate set (the reflex of the glottal
element is highlighted in each language):
CV?
CR
HI

ku·
ku?

MA

ku?

C?V
LA

CH
WI
OP
KS
OS
QU

k?u
-k?q
-k?q
?i
k?u
k?u
k?i

?CV
BI
OF
TU

~ u
akhu
ng u

Obviously at the moment reconstructing !falling pitch! would
only be a notational variant on writing glottalization. So wehave stuck with what is really there and continue to reconstructglottalization as a distinctive feature for Proto-siouan syllables.
But typology and areal linguistics may ultimately support
the falling pitch argument. Languages with pitch accent systems
tend to have a phonemic falling pitch in addition to simple highpitch. Yet we reconstruct PSi with only high pitch at the moment(with the proviso that sequences of two vowels can have dynamic
pitch in Hidatsa, Crow and probably Mandan). Areally, in North
America east of the Rockies it is especially true that systems
with high pitch also have falling pitch. This includes theIroquoian, Muskogean and Tanoan families just off the top of myhead. Reconstructing both high pitch and falling pitch (the latter to account for glottalization) would bring Proto-Siouan intoline with many other language families typologically and areally,
and would also bring it more into line with its sister language,
Catawba, which lacks any trace of glottalized consonants.
FRICATIVES: In Crow fricatives tend strongly to have voiced
allophones intervocalically. In the Mississippi Valley subgroupthis distribution has been complicated, and we are faced with theclear necessity of having voiced fricative phonemes z z y. The
steps by which voiced and voiceless fricatives came to contrast
have been obscured by analogical change, dialect borrowing andthe like. P~i clearly had voiceless fricatives but probably notvoiced ones.
(The glottalized fricatives are only found in Mississippi Valley Siouan and are covered above under the discussionof glottalization.)

RESONANTS:
Wand R in the phoneme inventory are not symbols
for voiceless resonants. They instead represent sound correspondence sets in which several languages have obstruentized, as
opposed to the expected resonant, reflexes. So while *w usually
has the reflex [w] or [m] in most of the daughter languages and*r usually surfaces as [r, 1, n, 8, y] etc., *w has reflexes like[w, b, mb, p] in some languages while *R has reflexes like [r, 1,
d, nd, t].
There is compelling evidence that *w usually represents asecondary development from geminated *w+w (across a morphemeboundary) or, in a few instances, a laryngeal plus w. Most examples come from roots with initial w that had a collapsed animate
or inanimate prefix, *wi- or wa-.
The source(s) of *R is/are not so clear, although it isprobably secondary and probably represents an old cluster
too--perhaps of *r with a laryngeal. There are a number of instances in the comparative database in which *r has reflexes like
R when it enters into a consonant cluster such as wr, sr, sr anda few instances of R show an adjacent glottal stop in Mandan.
NASALS: Note that no nasal consonants are listed.
It isclearly necessary to reconstruct nasal vowels in PSi, but it appears all nasal consonants can be derived from sequences of anoral resonant foll~wed by a nasal vowel. So most frequently *wy> my and wry > ny.
Nasal resonants have been phonologized inseveral languages through loss of vowel nasality and through introduction of new w's and r's preceding nasal vowels via prefixation processes. We have had some qualms about this analysis, but
the distribution of oral/nasal resonants vis-a-vis nasal vowels
is still preserved today in languages like Mandan, and full complementarity is still present in Crow and Hidatsa also. This
leaves Proto-Siouan typologically strange, but universals weremade to be broken.
VOWELS: Most Siouan languages have both long and short vowels, although most field workers steadfastly ignored length forover a century. It seems probable that, like preaspiration, vowel length and accent were semi predictable in PSi. It appears
that the second syllable vowel received the accent. Note that
there now seem to be a number of Proto-Siouan suprasegmental andlaryngeal features associated with accent.
a. The second syllable was accented.
b. The accented vowel was generally lengthened. There
are very few confirmed second-syllable short vowels
in the database.
c. The syllable-initial stop received preaspiration,i.e., Carter's Law.
d. If we are right, an accented syllable with fallingpitch got glottalization (losing falling pitch inthe process).
None of these is 100% predictable, i.e., we have some exceptions in our reconstructed database to all of these rules. But,
they are very strong and clear tendencies that suggest that, at
one time, all these laryngeal features were related via accent.
If we remove the features of PSi phonology that now appear
to have been conditioned, we arrive at an altogether different
phonological inventory for pre-proto-Siouan. Let us finish hereby suggesting that this possible pre-proto-Siouan inventory may
have been considerably simpler. Perhaps it was something like:stops:tp

Fricatives:
Resonants:w

Same 5 vowels: i, e, a,Same 3 nasal vowels:

s

5

r

y

0,

u

k

?

x

h

(plus/minus length) •i, ct, 1.! (maybe long or short).

Probably pitch accent (N.B. Catawba accent doesn't seem to be thesame general iambic sort as Siouan) •This is essentially the PSi inventory minus (a) the secondary or rule-generated formations like preaspiration, glottalization (1), obstruentized resonants and (b) the probable loanwords
which can have initial syllable long vowels and accent and postaspirated stops. This inventory turns out to be quite close tothat of the distantly related Catawba.
Turning briefly to typology, grammar and syntax, ProtoSiouan was a mildly agglutinating language of moderate complexity
showing minor kinds of incorporation that usually amount to little more than compounding. It was also active/stative in alignment, head-marking and syntactically SQV. Verbs were the primary
inflected category and they were marked for person, number, aspect, mode, instrument and certain other categories. Many of themodern languages have evidentials, quotatives and numerous gender-sensitive particles, but many of these are not cognate fromsubgroup to subgroup and their status in PSi is uncertain.
The rather long and involved verb prefix template that canbe constructed synchronically for most Siouan languages disintegrates diachronically (Rankin, to appear). The Dakotan prefix
order is rather typical of what is found in the rest of Siouan
and is in some respects actually more elaborate. It is used here
only slightly simplified for illustrative purposes. There is not
space to discuss every aspect of it, especially an extensive inventory of enclitics that appear following the verb root. Thesesignal the tense, aspect and modal categories. The template:3PL
1ST & 2ND DAT
ABSO- PATI- DUAL LOCA- PERSON AGNT VERT INSTRU-IVERBIASPECT &REFLX MENTALS ROOT MODE ENCLITICS
LUTIVE ENT
INCL TIVES & PATIENT
wawicha \IkIPRONOMINALSIRECIPII

I

Let us examine several of these categories in more detailand from a diachronic perspective.
The third plural animate patient prefix, wicha-, is innovated in Dakotan alone from wichasa or wichasta 'man' and was not
Proto-Siouan (Rankin 1996). This eliminates one prefix position.
The dual inclusive agent/patient prefix, qk-, (in some languages *w~k-) represents a late grammaticalization or reanalysis
in two Siouan subgroups of *wq'ke (possibly earlier *wa-?qke) the
Proto-siouan noun meaning 'man, person' (Rankin 1996). If qk- is
a true innovation and not a reanalysis of some earlier pronominal, this would eliminate a second prefix position.
There is fairly good evidence that the three so-called locative prefixes, a- 'on, at', 0- 'in', i- 'toward', as well as theprefix of instrument, i-, were in fact accented long vowels in
Proto-siouan or pre-Proto-Siouan and so probably distinct roots
or proclitics, not prefixes, but there is little else that can besaid about them at the moment.
The first and second person agent and patient prefixes havetheir own internal ordering conventions (as is often the casewith pronominals), but in the proto-language the 1st and 2nd person patient markers preceded agent marking, were syntacticallydistinct, and probably proclitics, as they did not participate incontemporary accentual phenomena, inclUding concomitant vowel
lengthening (when accented). Nor did these patient markers everundergo the initial syllable vowel syncope when not accented that
affected real Proto-giouan prefixes. The agent prefixes did undergo vowel syncope.
This appears to eliminate the patient prefix position in the Proto-Siouan or pre-Proto-Siouan verb complex.
Also proclitics or, more likely, distinct verbs in Protosiouan were the well known instrumental prefixes (by pulling, bypushing, by foot, by striking, etc.), that seem virtually tocharacterize the Siouan verb.
Like the patient person markers, the instrumentals also failto undergo the expected phonological processes associated withprefixes (inclUding contextual aspiration, syncope or lengthening).
In fact, the instrumentals behave as if they were distinct
verb roots. And this analysis of the instrumental prefixes asverbs in serial construction is historically confirmed in Catawban, where the Siouan instrumental prefixes are found as distinct, conjugated verb roots, only sometimes used instrumentally(Siebert 1945; v. also Shea 1984 and Voorhis 1984, 1992).

Siouan

*ru
*ka

*ril
*Wo

*ra
*aRa

Catawbadu'by hand' and 'to take' (Siebert)'by hand'ka?
'to strike, hit' (Siebert)'by striking'da'by foot'; also da? 'go' (Siebert)'by foot''by blowing' (Siebert)'by blowing/shoot' pu
nil sg., wira pI. 'to eat' (Voorhis)6'by mouth'
wi"rej 'to bum' or de 'blaze' (Shea)'by heat'

Even in present-day Siouan these instrumentals, when they
are present, remain the conjugated elements: the agent prefixes
precede and fus; with the instrumental rather than the verb rootin these cases.
So we must eliminate yet another prefix position, that of the instrumentals.
Lastly, Koontz (1996) suggests that even the reflexive andreciprocal prefixal morphology of most Siouan languages was deverbal (from a comitative verb 'to be with').
If this is confirmed we must eliminate one last prefix position.
Tense, aspect and mode enclitics generally are not cognate
across Siouan and much innovation has occurred in these categories. There is not space to deal with them here.
As we see, moving backward in time, the Proto-Siouan verb
morphology template has so shrunk that apparently the only set ofpresent day verb prefixes that is reconstructible as such (i.e.,
as real prefixes) is the pronominal set: first and second person
agent and dative-possessive. So while the reconstruction ofProto-Siouan has strengthened the already demonstrated relationship of Siouan with Catawban (probably at a time depth of 4000+
yrs. B.P.), it has also revealed an actually decreased lexicalcohesion in verbs.
PSi nouns were inflected primarily for possession. There
are first, second and third person prefixes for inalienably possessed nouns, but not for the dual-inclusive. Alienably possessed nouns attach the possessor prefixes to a special possessive base, *-hta. Kin terms and external body parts were inalienable. Some internal body parts and basically all other nouns
were alienables. A single definite article with the shape *kj
may be reconstructible. Number was unmarked on nouns and ambiguously marked on verbs, where it could pluralize any or all of thenominal arguments or the action or intensity of the verb itself.
The set of positional verbs, rej·k- 'sit', hej·k- 'stand' andwq·k- 'lie', served to classify nouns by shape/position (Rankin1977), while older prefixes (shared with Catawba and possibly
Yuchi) classified nouns as human, animate or inanimate (Rankin
forthcoming). The prefix *ko- marked humans (including indefinitely possessed kinterms), wi- marked the class of animals, somefoodstuffs and weather-related phenomena, while wa- seems to havemarked all other categories.

Virtually all of the Siouan languages have basically OV syntax. With this comes the expected dependent/head pairings ofconstitutents lower than sentence level that typologists expect:subordinate clause/main clause, adverb/verb, verb/auxiliary,
postpositions, etc. Adjectives follow their head noun. Since
these patterns are so general in Siouan it would be very hard to
imagine that PSi was not also consistently SOV.
NOTES
(1) This highly condensed presentation of Proto-siouan phonology
and grammar is a product of the decade or more of intensive research that underlies the forthcoming Comparative siouan Dictionary of which the authors are senior editors. The dictionary
project was sponsored by NEB (RT-21062-89; RT-21238-91) and the
University of Colorado's Center for the study of the Native Languages of the Plains and Southwest. David S. Rood was the principal investigator.
The authors also owe a great deal to numerous discussions held with John E. Koontz, David S. Rood and other participants in the 1984 Comparative Siouan Workshop held at the University of Colorado under sponsorship of NSF (BNS 8406236) and NEB(RD 20477-84). These included prominently Fr. Randolph Graczyk,
Willem de Reuse, Pat Shaw and Paul Voorhis.
(2) Standard abbreviations for the Siouan languages are: PSi
Proto-Siouan, CR Crow, HI Bidatsa, MA Mandan, DA Dakotan, CH Chiwere, WI Winnebago, OP Omaha-Ponca, OM Omaha, PN Ponca, KS Kansa,
OS Osage, QU Quapaw, BI Biloxi, OF Ofo, TU Tutelo, CA Catawba.
(3)
In Mandan the reflexes of *s and *5 have become exactly reversed, a sound change that is basically impossible without anintermediate step of some kind. It is possible that *s > c(=[ts], as in Hidatsa) and that then *5 > s and then *c > s.
(4) The chief exception is sequences of Proto-Siouan /*wyh-/
which occurs in a few roots, notably 'flint, chert' and 'woman,
female'. Bere the oral resonant is preserved, e.g., in Dakota.
B may be a conditioning factor; there is at least a correlation.
(5)
In addition to the nominal prefixes, wa- and wi- describedabove, the agent prefixes *wa- '1st person' and *ya- '2nd person'
also underwent systematic truncation in most if not all of
Siouan. The same is true of *ki- 'dative/possessive'. The resultant consonantal allomorphs of the pronominal prefixes include
1st sg. b-, m-, p- and 2nd sg. s-, z- and are described in Rankin
1988. Siouanists still have much work to do if we are to understand all of the effects of initial syllable syncope and subsequent analogical restoration of "regular" pronominal allomorphs(the latter especially in Dakotan).
(6) The first four sets were noted by Siebert (1945); the last
two are possible additions based on two recent essays into Catawba lexicography: Shea (1984) and Voorhis (1992).

(7) The phonological fusion of the pronominals with the instrumentals is important here, as it shows that the relationship of
the two elements is old. I have ignored for the purposes of thispaper the innovated set of so-called outer instrumentals. These
are most often ordered just before the dual inclusive marker inthe template.

REFERENCES
Carter, Richard T., A. Wesley Jones, Robert L. Rankin, et al.,eds. To appear. Comparative Dictionary of the Siouan Languages.
Koontz, John.
1996. Mississippi Valley [Siouan] Stop Stem Reflexives. Paper presented at the SSILA Annual Meeting, San
Diego, CA.
Rankin, Robert L. 1977. From Verb to Auxiliary to Noun Classifier and Definite Article: Grammaticalization of the Siouan
Verbs 'sit', 'stand', 'lie'. Proceedings of the Mid-America Regional Linguistics Conference, St. Paul: Univ. of
Minnesota Linguistics Dept.
Rankin, Robert L.
1994. On the sources and scope of Siouan aspiration, in Gomez de Garcia, Jule and David S. Rood. Proceedings of the 1993 Mid-America Linguistics Conference &Conference on Siouan/Caddoan Languages. Boulder: University of Colorado.
Rankin, Robert L. 1996. Nouns to Pronouns: The Siouan Dual
Inclusive. Paper presented at the SSILA Annual Meeting,
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358
pp.
Siebert, Frank T.
1945. Linguistic Classification of Catawba.
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Voorhis, Paul.
1984. Catawba Morphology in the Texts of FrankSpeck and of Matthews and Red Thunder Cloud. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 9:1-29.
Voorhis, Paul. 1992. Catawba Vocabulary from the Texts Recorded by Frank Speck. MS, 126 pp.