Catawba 'go' & 'come'

Tue Apr 6 13:00:19 UTC 1999

For the record, the phonemic forms for some of the Catawba verbs Paul cited
(i.e., those which I have found so far in Siebert's data) are as follows.

da:?- to move on foot' (Siebert 1945: 103) (underlying |-ra:?-| with regular
shift of |r| to /d/ when initial)

(As Siebert [1945: 103] notes, the verb da:?- is to be distinguished from the
inflectable instrumental prefix da:- by foot', although the two are almost
certainly related historically) which is also used in compounds to form
motion verbs.)

hu:?- to arrive, come' (Siebert 1945: 102) (stem |-u:?-| with /h-/ as 3rd
singular marker)

(I have not yet encounterd ku:-, ku:wa in Siebert's notes, although they
occur in Raven McDavid's and Bill Sturtevant's notes, whose transcriptions
suggest /ku:?-/ and /ku:wa-/)

mara:?- to arrive (going)' (a compound of ma- cislocative' and da:?- to
move on foot' [see Siebert 1945: 102 -- mahu:?- to bring hither' with hu:?-
to arrive, come')

(I have not yet encountered hau, ku:ra, ha:ra, kuci, or mahu:ci in Siebert's
notes.  I agree with Paul that ku:ra- is probably a compound of ku:- and
da:?- (thus, phonemic /ku:ra:?-); I am more skeptical about ha:ra being a
compound of hu:?- and da:?-, since a change of /u:/ to /a(:)/ would be
unprecedented; similarly, I am not convinced that mahu:ci contains kuci,
since a /h/, /k/ alternation would be unusual; to me, mahu:ci looks more like
a compound of ma- cislocative' + hu:?- arrive, come' plus an element -ci-,
just as kuci looks like ku:- leave' plus the element -ci-.)

duk- back, backwards' (Siebert, notes): dukh'u:re: ( = stress) he comes
back, returns'. Catawba verbs of motion compound with a variety of adverbial
preverbs indicating direction/location, some of which behave like prefixes
and some like proclitics.  Others include haap- 'up, towards the top', huk-
'below, down', and c^ik- 'forward, to the front'.

The verb hau- is intriguing for it bears an uncanny resemblence to the
widespread particle hao?, h'au? (Seneca and Tuscarora forms, respectively)
which variously means o.k., already, hello, come on in, welcome in languages
throughout the east and into the plains.  It might be a predication of that
particle.

Paul's note on verbs of going and coming being converted into verbs of
conveying and bringing by prefixing du- refers to the addition of the
inflectable instrumental du- by hand' (Siebert 1945: 103).