Theoretical Implications Of The Great Menominee Vowel Shift

Abstract

I attempt here to detail some of the historical phonology of Menominee, a Central Algonquian language, in a tentative effort to fill in the bare outlines hinted at in Bloomfield 1924 and 1939. The central topic is the development of the Menominee vowel system. The facts appear to suggest that in Menominee and perhaps in Central Algonquian in general, word-initial position is a weak, rather than a strong, phonological position, contrary to a general hypothesis of Foley 1977.