Archaic A1 p- in Dakotan

Koontz John E John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU
Sun Apr 4 08:00:09 UTC 1999


On Sat, 3 Apr 1999, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> ...                 If the vertitive meaning was given for both phu and
> $ku, then the Dakotan conjugation patterns like the Dhegiha conjugation,
> with assimilation of the root-initial /k/ to the labial place of
> articulation of the 1st person *w. I can't speak first hand about the
> vertitive verb in this series in Dakotan, but in Dhegiha the conjugation
> runs
>
> Underlying 1sg	*w-ku -->   p-pu  (Dakotan phu??)
> Underlying 2sg	*y-ku -->  s^-ku  (Dakotan $ku)
>
> The Dhegiha forms I give here are the attested Kansa forms.  Omaha-Ponca
> and Quapaw unround the u (IPA [y]) to i.  Otherwise it's the same.

Precisely.

> John's looked at the Dakotan and Chiwere-Winnebago conjugations in detail
> in his pronoun paper and may be able to clarify it for us

Actually, I would like to modestly remind those interested in this issue
that I wrang two pages out of these forms in:

  Koontz, John E.  1985.  A syncopating conjugation *k-stem in Lakota.
      IJAL 51.4:  483-4.

They had been drawn to my attention by Allan Taylor, and I had noticed, as
Bob has here, that given the behavior of Proto-Mississippi Valley
preaspirated stops they fitted the pattern of the Dhegiha vertitive gi'
'to return hither' (here in OP form), presumably Proto-Dhegiha *ku.

It is possible, of course, that the paradigm offered is mixed, but from
the context I doubt it.  In the paper I suggest that the first persons of
this Dakotan form and the Dhegiha form might have been reformulated by
analogy with the *p-stems, but this doesn't seem all that likely.  I guess
that sort of analogy would be more likely to occur to an apprentice
linguist than a speaker!  I imagine that something about the history of
*w-k is relevant instead, though it's always interesting that this
produces *hk in *kaN= cf. OP gaN=dha 'to want', but *hp in other *k-stems,
like *kaghe 'to make (marks)', *ku 'to return hither', *kaN=yiNka 'be
unskillfull', *kare 'to donate'.

I'm not sure that the ?*wke 'turtle' form is relevant, but this is an area
where the inner circle of the Comparative Siouan Dictionary might have
opinions (possibly differing!).  Assuming Mandan pke matches Da kheya and
OP kke, it looks like *pku should yield ?khu regularly in Da, presumably
via *hku, like other hypothetical preaspirates that yield aspirates in Da
and IO and preaspirates or tense stops throughout Dh and voiceless stops
in Wi (Ho).  Anyway, in the paper I suggest that *hp for expected *hk in
the A1 form of *k-stem paradigms might be an innovation shared by Da and
Dh.  Gee, I wish there were a few more proper *k-stems in Da, though, and
that all the shared innovations didn't require one to flip a coin to
decide whether one believes them to be shared or independent.  I have to
admit that the coins I flip usually come up heads.

Note that I'm not distinguishing at all carefully among *wVC, *wC, *pC and
*hC, in this respect following what I think is the current trend, in
contrast with the approach of G.H. Matthews.

JEK



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