Catawba 'go' & 'come'

VOORHIS at BrandonU.CA VOORHIS at BrandonU.CA
Mon Apr 5 15:01:59 UTC 1999


For what it's worth, I examined Frank Speck's Catawba texts more closely to see
whether the many verbs of going and coming there could be matched to the
typical Siouan semantic divisions.  Perhaps the following have some small
measure of validity.  At least they seem to fit their contexts some of the
time.  This presentation supersedes previous speculations I have made about the
meanings of these verbs, and no doubt this will be superseded in turn.
(Phonemics are mostly a guess.  Verbs are cited with the 3rd sg prefix if any.)

da:' 'to be going', Dakota 'ya/e'
hu:' 'to be coming', Dakota 'u'
ku: 'to leave (going)', Dakota 'iyaya/e'
ku:wa: 'to leave (coming)', Dakota 'hiyu'
mara: 'to arrive (going)', Dakota 'i'
hau 'to arrive (coming), Dakota 'hi'
ku:ra -- possibly 'to go and return'
ha:ra -- could this be 'to come and then depart' ?
kuci 'to leave (ascending)'
mahu:ci 'to arrive (ascending)'

It has been suggested that da:' and hu:' not only translate Dakota ya/e and u
respectively but are also cognate with them.

Otherwise note that ku:wa: appears to contain ku: and mara: apparently derives
from da:' with a prefix, or compounded with, ma.  Maybe there was just ku: 'to
leave' and hau 'to arrive' originally and they have been differentiated for
going and coming with -wa: and ma more recently.   mahu:ci may contain ma plus
kuci too.  Both the d~r and the k~h alternations occur elsewhere in Catawba.

ku:ra may be a compound of ku: with da:' and ha:ra might come from hu:' and
da:'.  To what extent the apparent changes in phonemes in some of these complex
stems is real or just an artifact of poor transcription remains uncertain for
now.

' ... home, ... back' is expressed by duk ..., Dakota 'k-' (sometimes appearing
as hd-). Verbs of going and coming are converted into verbs of  conveying and
bringing by prefixing du-, Dakota 'a-'.

Just my 2 cents Canadian (= about 1.33 cents US).
	Paul



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