U.S. President and cloud/sky: more.

RLR rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu
Wed Feb 14 22:47:37 UTC 2001


Re 'President':

JGT gives Chiwere hiNtugaN hiNye 'their grandfather'. It's a causative
construction, as John described.

Quapaw has ittikaN dawe 'their grandfather' (the conjugated causative of
grandfather < ittikaN de).

Kansa has an exact analog of the QU form: iccigo yabe 'they have him for
a grandfather' or just 'their grandfather'. (Also w/ the conjugated
causative.)

And re 'sky, cloud(s)':

Quapaw has maNghe 'sky'; moxpi 'cloud(s)'

Kansa has maNghe 'sky, "the upper world"' and maxpu" or moxpu"
'cloud(s)'.

All of this leads me to speculate that the mysterious Chiwere form for
'sky', maNghu, is from earlier *maNxwu, which would be the outcome in
Chiwere of the same form that gives Kansa/Osage maNxpu". My recollection
is that the p > w in this context in CH. This would give Quapaw and
Omaha-Ponca maNxpi regularly, leaving only the Dakotan /i/ unexplained.

Bob
******************************************

Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:
>
> A query: what is the word for 'U.S. President' in your Siouan
> language?  Crow
> has baa-iila'pxisaahka and Hidatsa has maa-a'arutaahka (in both lgs,
> indefinite prefix + grandfather).  Is this perhaps a pan-Plains
> phenomenon?
>
> Randy



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