From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 4 00:52:17 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 17:52:17 -0700 Subject: Cheyenne Proverb Example Message-ID: I happened to note on Wayne Leman's Cheyenne site at http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language/index.htm. I assume from the context that this is a fixed form, though it may be thematic instead. It is definitely metaphorical. A Cheyenne Proverb Nv'novhe'tanme mshnstva, onset'ha'eta nethoestovevoo'o, onshestxvtno mshnstva! Don't race in craziness, try to stop your mounts, try to come in last in terms of craziness! This proverb was frequently quoted by the late Cheyenne historian, John Stands In Timber. Its essential meaning is "Don't live a hurried life!" From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 6 22:48:17 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 15:48:17 -0700 Subject: APS Online Catalog Message-ID: (This arises out of a discussion with Eric Nichol. We were wondering if the Winnebago versions of the myths that Radin so extensively published were available. I was able to determine from a comment in Marino's dissertation that the materials were in the APS and Eric told me that the APS catalogs were available online. I'll leave it to Eric as to whether he'd like to say something about the myths themselves!) Members of the Siouan list may be interested to know that it is possible to search the American Philosophical Society catalogs on-line at http://www.amphilsoc.org. You can use the site search facility, or go to the library and consult the online guide. Some overview materials (like one of the shorter descriptions of the Radin collection) are only available in the library's online guide. Examples: >>From the APS On-Line Guide Radin, Paul (1883-1959). American anthropologist. Papers, ca. 1912-1959. 12.5 lin. ft. There are notes, transcriptions, essays, etc., on the language and customs of several Indian tribes. There are numerous vocabularies, dictionaries, and grammatical notes on the Winnebago, Patwin, and Huave tribes, and some items on the Fox, Tukudh, Pomo, Wappo, and Wintu; 79 notebooks, in English and Winnebago, on myths, legends, stories, customs, dances, religious observances, costume, etc., of the Winnebago, with some on the Ottawa and Ojibwa; notes on Winnebago history; 2 boxes of Winnebago phonetic texts; and significant material on Mexican Indians (Zapotec). Some of the items are typed copies of Radin's published studies. Table of contents (ca. 40 pp.). Presented by Mrs. Doris Radin, 1960, 1972-1984 (497.3/R114) ==== Here's the longer version from Van Keuren Guide to Manuscript Collections Radin, Paul. 1883-1959. Anthropologist. Ethnologist, Bureau ofAmerican Ethnology, 1910-12; field ethnol., Canadian Dept. of Mines, 1912-17; asst. prof., ethn., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1918-20; lect., ethn., Cambridge Univ., 1920-24; Canadian fieldwork, 1925-26; Fisk Univ., 1927-31; Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1931-40; Black Mountain Coll., North Carolina, 1941-45; foundation supported lecturing and research, 1945-57; Samuel Rubin prof, and head of dept., anthr., Brandeis Univ., 1957-59. Correspondence, Mss. Boas, Franz. Professional Correspondence (B/B61). 28 May 1908 to 18 Feb. 1942. 124 Ls. (69 to Boas, 55 to Radin) + 3 Ls. to H.A. Andrews fr. Radin. Bureau of Amer. Ethn.; fieldwork; Indian ling., esp. Winnebago, Huave, Zapotecan; Mexican and Winnebago folklore; prof. positions; research support. 4-7/10-11 Mason, J. Alden. Papers (B/M3 84). 10 ~an. 1941 to 22 March 1960. 3 Ls. (1 to Mason, 2 to Radin) + 1 L. to Doris Radin. Mexican and South Amer. linguistics. Radin Festschrift. 7/10/12 Radin, Paul. Papers (497.3/R114). ca.1910 to 1959. 13.5 in, ft. (21 boxes, 79 notebooks). Linguistic and ethnographic manuscripts, notebooks, cards dealing with Mexican and American Indians. Linguistic materials on Patwin, Poma, Otomi, Wappo, Winnebago, Huave, Zapotec, and other langs. Folklore notes and manuscripts on Mandan, Winnebago, Ojibwa-Ottawa, and others. 6/7 ... Papers (497.3/B63c). ca.600 lvs. and 300 cards. Materials on Indian linguistics and ethnography. Includes manuscript material on Otomi, Huave, Mixtec, Chinantec, Patwin. 6/7 ==== You can also see the itemized list in the APS Indian Guides: WINNEBAGO (Siouan) Ethnography 3549. BARRETT, S. A. Correspondence with Franz Boas [1908-1928]. L. 23 items. Concerns his field work among Rio Cayapa Iodians and purchase of Winnebago specimens collected by Paul Radin for the Milwauliee Public Museum. Sauk and Fox rawhide boxes collected by Alanson Skinner mentioned. [31] 3850. RADIN, PAUL. Folklore texts, Winnebago [1908-1912]. D. 34 notebooks. 34 Winnebago texts in English; original field notebooks. ... This list includes materials from sources other than Radin, of course, and omits Radin's work on groups other than the Winnebago. === If anyone's interested, I can mail them the 30 screen version of this. I guess I'd better not actually post it here ... JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 6 23:01:43 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 16:01:43 -0700 Subject: National Anthropological Archives Message-ID: Incidentally, with respect to the National Anthropological Archive, see the index of BAE publications at: http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/BAE/Bulletin200/200conts.htm Also, the NAA generally: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/index.htm >>From there you can consult the Guide to the Collections of the National Anthropological Archives or search the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Oddly enough, the first has no useful entries for Dorsey and using Dorsey as a keyword in the second produces the message: A Problem with WebPAC has Occured: Database unavailable -- siarchives7 Z39.50 Host: 109 Unknown error I don't know if this means that the Dorsey materials aren't indexed on line, or if some part of the database isn't working at the moment. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 7 00:27:06 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 19:27:06 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Hi, folks. Happy 2002. Just bubbling up from lurker status to ask whether anyone has any ideas about the historical origins of the Siouan instrument and location affixes. I'm researching the phenomenon of bipartite structure generally. Most languages which exhibit such constructions have the lexical root interposed between the instrument/bodypart and location/pathway terms. In Native American languages generally the instr. comes first, while in the Old World those languages which show fossilized remnants (such as Kartvelian, even PIE) the instr. is suffixal after the main lexical root. I'm wondering whether Siouan represents some sort of transitional phase, given that the instr. is prefixing and the loc. terms are so broad and few in number and also come immediately before the lexical root (so perhaps are the last gasps of an older system). Has anyone on the list given any thoughts to the origins of the current state of affairs in Siouan? I'm hoping to find out as much as I can before I start setting my crosslinguistic findings to paper. Thanks in advance. Best wishes for a happy and peaceful new year, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 01:58:50 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 18:58:50 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <169.6c40f82.296a455a@aol.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Hi, folks. Happy 2002. Just bubbling up from lurker status to ask whether > anyone has any ideas about the historical origins of the Siouan instrument > and location affixes. ... > I'm wondering whether Siouan represents some sort of transitional phase, > given that the instr. is prefixing and the loc. terms are so broad and few in > number and also come immediately before the lexical root (so perhaps are the > last gasps of an older system). ... The structures I'm aware of are: nominals PRO1-LOC-PRO2-LLS nominals OuterInstrumental-PRO3-LLS nominals PRO4-InnerInstrumental-LLS where LLS is "lower level stem" (in derivational terms), and PRO is pronominal with the numbers appended for convenience below. LOC is locative (which includes the concept 'by means of; using'). PRO1 is generally the inclusive and any third personal plural or detransitivizer, though the Dakotan third person plural follows the LOC slot, and the inclusive follows some of the LOC forms in Dhegiha. For that matter, all pronominals of the form V precede wa in Dhegiha, if a wa (third person plural or detransitivizer) occurs, except, e.g., with causatives. PRO2 is the first person and second person. I usually imagine the zero-form third person being here, too, but ... well, it's a zero form! PRO3 and PRO4 are all pronominals in the patterns in question. Outer and inner instrumentals are defined in terms of the location of the pronominals. Outer instrumentals behave as proclitics, or, rather, the inflected stem behaves as an enclitic (postclitic) of the outer instrumental. Some outer instrumental stems behave as a single chunk OuterInstrumental-LLS when further derived (e.g., with a reflexive) in at least Omaha-Ponca in Dhegiha. I'd guess that locatives are historically a case of nominal postposition stem being handled in word formation as nominal postposition-stem instead of nominal-postposition stem I think this is probably a general tendency in head-marking languages. Rankin argues that the inclusive and some third person plurals remain before the locative because they originate in incorporated nominals ("man", "person") at a date subsequent to the fossilization of the locative construction. I'd guess that most of the outer instrumental stems are cases of generic-nominal stem being reformulated as NOM-stem That is, of noun incorporation. The inflectional slot remains where it was, following the stem. The outer instrumentals usually have the semantic domains 'heat', 'spontaneous' (derived from 'heat'?), 'by shooting', and 'with a blade/by cutting'. The explanation that has been offered with the inner instrumentals, based on evidence from Catawba (I'm blanking the name of the author of the paper) is that they are old verb stems, implying that the constructions were originally something like: nominals instrumental-verb resulting-state-verb Both verbs were inflected, or perhaps the first was a sort of participle. However, the modern constructions have the inflection only on the instrumental component, or, putting it another way, preceding the stem composed of the instrumental prefix and lower level root. The semantic domains of the inner instrumentals are 'pushing', 'pressing', 'with the hand/pulling', 'with the mouth', 'with the foot', 'by striking'. The latter is usually identical to 'by wind or water' in Mississippi Valley Siouan. Dakotan converts 'by foot' into an outer instrumental, apparently because it became homophonous with 'by heat/spontaneously'. I should say that the set of instrumentals is essentially fixed across Siouan. There is a particular set that seems to exist in all the languages. Extensions to it are vanishingly rare, as are omissions. I seem to recall one extension in Crow, ha-, but I forget what it does. Ioway-Otoe seems to have split *ru- 'by hand' into ru- and ri-, which, are, I think - but check - 'by hand' and 'by pulling'. What does happen commonly is that instrumentals may be more or less productive, and they may extend their meanings in subtle ways. The stems that can take instrumentals are generally roots. Locatives can precede stems of more general form, or, putting it another way, locatives stay outside the lower level stem, or can't be submerged in lower level stems. There are some compound locatives, cf. Dakotan iyo- and iya-, which have parallels throughout Mississippi Valley Siouan. Winnebago seems to have variants roo- and hiro- for the first. The inflection of these can be rather complex. Dhegiha seems to have -iu- and udhu- variants of the first, depending on the person. The developments of *i-r-a- are even odder. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 7 15:25:47 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:25:47 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Thank you, John. Just looking at what you wrote about the semantic ranges of the outer and inner instrumental sets (though a rather short list, so hard to prove in any statistical sense) leads me, impressionistically, to posit that perhaps the inner set is more "about" direct actions of body versus the mediated or body-external actions encoded prototypically by the outer set (except where historically shifted- but I wonder about "foot" in that I've found that different zones of the body in various language families are more external than others- specifically the feet and lower body versus the upper body- the upper body prototypically dealing with incoming events, the lower outgoing). In Yahgan, the general trend is for instrument prefixes to be themselves breakable into a generic initial (gross force source name- strike, squeeze, pull, tread, weight, blow, throw, etc.) followed by a specifier (a spatial distributive- into multiple bits, short or long lengths, slabs, spheres, etc.). I suppose one might call these latter incorporated shape classifiers or some such- they are apparently state-naming. Following is another assembly consisting of a main verb root followed by a pathway/location affix. Any one, two, or three of the four elements can be absent, and in addition the specifier slot can contain at least two items for even more specificity. I don't get any direct sense that there is anything like an inner/outer instrumental split -is there some relation having to do with control?? Outer instruments in Siouan seem inanimate (biologically) though animated energywise (impersonal). Iconic?- outer force source versus inner (egocentrically) placed similarly relative to the verb, and nominal versus verbals precursors relevant iconically too? Reanalysis of nom-postp stem to nom postp-stem feels right- does this possibly mean that the parent language was originally dep-marked? Most of the bipartite languages with richer affixation are dep-marking to some extent (and those with apparent ancient fossil bipartitism, such as can be seen in Salishan, for instance, have gone heavily head-marking). Constituent order link too- think about it. Anyway, please forgive whatever above may sound like babble- still trying to work out all the possibilities. Having inflection anciently on both inner instrument and main verb sounds promising, since I've been promoting the notion (yet to be proven) that these constructions originate in something like serialization. More, please! Thanks, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 16:58:48 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 09:58:48 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Thank you, John. Just looking at what you wrote about the semantic ranges of > the outer and inner instrumental sets (though a rather short list, so hard to > prove in any statistical sense) leads me, impressionistically, to posit that > perhaps the inner set is more "about" direct actions of body versus the > mediated or body-external actions encoded prototypically by the outer set > ... Yes, there does seem to be a semantic difference, but I think this arises naturally from the probable syntax of the morphologized constructions. Of course, this is one of those situations in which in deductive terms there is a circularity in the reasoning. I think, however, that the reasoning involved is inductive, or, putting it another way, that a model can be proposed based on the whole situation and validated by repeated successful application here and elsewhere. It would also help, of course, if cognates of the outer instrumentals were available. My recollection is that this is not the case as yet. Note that the basis of the terminology inner vs. outer instrumentals (my own coinage) is simply whether the instrumental morpheme is inside or outside the pronominal slot(s) relative to the underlying stem. The outer instrumentals behave (morpho)syntactically like various other strictly "outer" preverbal morphemes in Siouan. These can also be termed preverbs, though that also covers the locatives, which are movable preverbs (movable relative to the pronominal slot) as opposed to fixed preverbs. Another possible term would be proclitics, or, as I said, the main verb stem and its inflection can be seen as enclitic to the preverbal "base." Other fixed preverbs or proclitics are various incorporated nouns and demonstratives, and also the governed verb in causatives. There are also preverbs that are simply fixed parts of certain stems and don't have any clear etymology, though many of these must be old incorporated nouns. We probably want to call the syntactic (in the primitive sense of ordering, etc.) behavior of preverbs morphosyntactic, but I think that the description of Mississippi Valley Siouan morphosyntaxes can be considerably simplified if one treats preverbs, incorporation, compounding, causatives and other dependent verbal constructions, enclitics, etc., at a higher level than matters like the relative ordering of pronominals, locatives, reflexives, reciprocals, datives, reflexive possessives, and inner instrumentals. These latter are all much simpler to deal with, in terms of mutual ordering and pronominalization (pronoun placement), if we consider them only within the component units of the compositions produced by compounding, adding preverbs, etc. So, essentially, there are two levels of morphosyntax: a fairly simple one that accounts for the insides of inflected verb stems and noun stems, and manipulates pronominals, locatives, inner instrumentals, reflexives, etc., and a more elaborate one that manipulates preverbs, compounding, enclitics, etc. This latter system generates words, but not all of these words are lexical entities, though some are. In addition this latter system generates trees that ramify on both the right and left, i.e., they have a constituent structure of sorts, whereas the inner level structure ramifies only to the left - it simply adds new morphemes to the front of the whole, if we overlook the issue of the locatives. Looking at things this way does mean considering that the two classes of instrumental cannot be regarded as a single kind of thing, at least morphosyntactically. One other thing to note is that inner istrumentals typically have complex morphophonemic interactions with preceding pronominals, whereas outer instrumentals do not. > In Yahgan, the general trend is for instrument prefixes to be themselves > breakable into a generic initial (gross force source name- strike, squeeze, > pull, tread, weight, blow, throw, etc.) followed by a specifier (a spatial > distributive- into multiple bits, short or long lengths, slabs, spheres, > etc.). I suppose one might call these latter incorporated shape classifiers > or some such- they are apparently state-naming. The closest thing to this in Siouan that I can think of are the Mississippi Valley aorist/inceptive/iterative auxiliaries (moribund in Dakotan) - the "suddenly and repeatedly" auxiliaries - which are compounds of motion verbs (path elements) and positional verbs (shape elements). There are large sets of these in Omaha-Ponca, Ioway-Otoe, and Winnebago, it appears. They carry the overall notion that the action occurs suddenly or starts to occur, but the path and shape elements have to harmonize appropriately with the action and its patient. > I don't get any direct sense that there is anything like an inner/outer > instrumental split -is there some relation having to do with control?? I hope I've clarified the basis of the distinction. > Reanalysis of nom-postp stem to nom postp-stem feels right- does this > possibly mean that the parent language was originally dep-marked? Maybe not. I may have overstated this if I called it reanalysis. Maybe it would be more appropriate to simply call it analysis. Think of the element that we've called the postposition as a directional adverb. If it fused to the noun, it can be characterized as an adposition. If it fuses to the verb, it can be characterized as a locative. Probably it will be closer to the verb than the nominal argument, and on the same side, depending on whether the language tends to place sattelites before or after the verb. > ... since I've been promoting the notion (yet to be proven) that these > constructions originate in something like serialization. More, please! I suspect everyone is off at the SSILA/LSA meetings, or somebody with a better memory would have cited the paper that provides Catawba verbal cognates for the Siouan (inner) instrumentals. At a previous SSILA/LSA I provided a serial verb explanation of the Mississippi Valley reciprocal/in the middle prefixes in terms of a commitative coverb. Several of the MV languages still have cognate or non-cognate commitative coverbs. Crow, Hidatsa, and Mandan all have benefactive coverbs based on 'give'. All of the MV languages have extensive compounding of verbs of motions. JEK From BARudes at aol.com Mon Jan 7 18:26:00 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 13:26:00 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: The paper on the Catawba cognates for Siouan instrumentals is Frank T. Siebert, Jr. 1945. The Linguistic Classification of Catawba. IJAL 11:100-104, 211-218. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 18:29:39 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 11:29:39 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I believe the reference on Catawba cognates of Siouan instrumentals that I've been trying to recall (the article contains various other things, too) is: Siebert, F. T. (1945). Linguistic classification of Catawba: I. IJAL 11: 100-4. Siebert, F. T. (1945). Linguistic classification of Catawba: II. IJAL 11: 211-8. I obtained the citations from John Boyle's enormously helpful on-Web Siouan bibliography at http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html, but the recollections of their content are my own responsibility. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 9 03:15:26 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 20:15:26 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I'd like to briefly mention the availability of a couple of reprints of potential interest to Siouanists, from Evolution Publishing (http://www.evolpub.com). I've seen: Lawson, John. 1998 (1709). A Vocabulary of Woccon. 33 pp. Hale, Horatio. 2001 (1883). The Tutelo Language. 109 pp. These are a bit expensive, compared to the cost of xeroxing, say, the Hale article from the fairly accessible serial publications, but there are advantages to having a nicely bound copy of a reference. The printing of Lawson contains convenient references to recent work, including Richard Carter's essential analysis of the Woccon materials. Unfortunately, the printing of Hale overlooks the less accessible, but equally important work that has been done recently on Tutelo, including Mithun's work with a semi-speaker of Tutelo, and Oliverio's extremely important dissertation on Tutelo (A Grammar and Dictionary of Tutelo), and various papers by Rankin and Oliverio. For these, see http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html. From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 9 11:44:48 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 05:44:48 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Images of a manuscript vocabulary of Tutelo taken by Hale and held in the National Anthropological Archives are available online through the Occaneechi-Saponi website at: http://www.occaneechi-saponi.org/tutelo-saponi/LRDP/index.shtml There is also a link from that page to the Early Canadiana Online edition of Hale's The Tutelo Language : http://www.canadiana.org/cgi-bin/ECO/mtq?id=f1d901e4ba&doc=04399 The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for yet. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 9:15 PM Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > I'd like to briefly mention the availability of a couple of reprints of > potential interest to Siouanists, from Evolution Publishing > (http://www.evolpub.com). I've seen: > > Lawson, John. 1998 (1709). A Vocabulary of Woccon. 33 pp. > > Hale, Horatio. 2001 (1883). The Tutelo Language. 109 pp. > > These are a bit expensive, compared to the cost of xeroxing, say, the Hale > article from the fairly accessible serial publications, but there are > advantages to having a nicely bound copy of a reference. The printing of > Lawson contains convenient references to recent work, including Richard > Carter's essential analysis of the Woccon materials. Unfortunately, the > printing of Hale overlooks the less accessible, but equally important work > that has been done recently on Tutelo, including Mithun's work with a > semi-speaker of Tutelo, and Oliverio's extremely important dissertation on > Tutelo (A Grammar and Dictionary of Tutelo), and various papers by Rankin > and Oliverio. For these, see > > http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html. > > From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 15:10:29 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:10:29 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 9 16:12:58 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 09:12:58 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) In-Reply-To: <001b01c19903$0d4baf20$a096fb0c@attbi.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Eric wrote: > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for > yet. I'd have to agree on a basis of sheer volume. Of course, I have no idea how useful the numerous Algonquian items are. For Siouan contributions I'd recommend maybe Lipkind's Winnebago grammar. Among things that I think are essentially unpublished (manuscripts or dissertations) there's Sussman's Winnebago grammar, Hollow's Mandan dictionary, Hahn's (Omaha-)Ponca grammar, and Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago ethnobotany. (I think his Oneida ditto is also unpublished.) A really heroic effort might be Dorsey's Omaha-Ponca grammar or slip file. However, these last from Smith on are longhand or heavily long-hand, and I think more like some projects that HRAF has undertaken in the past than the typical EP project. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 9 17:10:10 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:10:10 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: > Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a > more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. > Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of > Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal > of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of > UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair, Yes please: I'd very much like a copy. Thanks, Alan -- Alan H. Hartley 119 West Kent Road Duluth MN 55812-1152 U.S.A. 218/724-5095 http://www.d.umn.edu/~ahartley/ From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 9 17:07:53 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:07:53 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 10:12 AM Subject: Re: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > > ,,,,,,,,,,,, Among things that I > think are essentially unpublished (manuscripts or dissertations) there's > Sussman's Winnebago grammar, Hollow's Mandan dictionary, Hahn's > (Omaha-)Ponca grammar, and Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago > ethnobotany............... > The Smith Winnebago material has been published in : Kindscher, Kelly. Hurlburt, Dana P. Huron Smith's ethnobotany of the Hocak (Winnebago). [Article. Feature article] Economic Botany. v. 52 no4, Oct./Dec. 1998, p. 352-72. I can't speak to the quality of the edition or how it compares to the manuscript. From bcoon at montana.edu Wed Jan 9 17:14:57 2002 From: bcoon at montana.edu (Coon, Brad) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:14:57 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I would very much like to have a copy as well, thank you, Brad Coon The Libraries P.O. Box 173320 Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717-3320 bcoon at montana.edu (406) 994-6026 -----Original Message----- From: Alan H. Hartley [mailto:ahartley at d.umn.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 10:10 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a > more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. > Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of > Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal > of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of > UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 17:45:07 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 12:45:07 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Alan, I will put one in the mail. Blair From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 17:45:59 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 12:45:59 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I will send one to you. Blair From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 9 19:15:52 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 13:15:52 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for > yet. There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in most instances. >Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago ethnobotany. (I think his Oneida ditto is also unpublished.) This (the Winnebago) has been published now -- by Kelly Kindscher and some others in botany at the U. of KS. I don't have the biblio handy at the moment, but they worked on it with the Winnebago Tribe. Ultimately they didn't bother with vowel length, but the rest looks OK. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 9 19:27:37 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 13:27:37 -0600 Subject: Winnebago ethnobotany. Message-ID: The Smith Winnebago material has been published in : Kindscher, Kelly. Hurlburt, Dana P. Huron Smith's ethnobotany of the Hocak (Winnebago). [Article. Feature article] Economic Botany. v. 52 no4, Oct./Dec. 1998, p. 352-72. I can't speak to the quality of the edition or how it compares to the manuscript. Ah, thanks Eric. You anticipated me. That's it. Kindscher has published two book-length treatments of Indian medicinal and food plants and is in an excellent position to do this sort of thing. His stuff's pretty good. They tried to be very politically-correct and work with the Winnebago on the MS, and they got good cooperation, but, as I said, no vowel length was noted in their updated forms. Smith's original didn't have it either as I recall though. I had sent them to Ken Miner, but apparently Ken wasn't interested. Bob From enichol4 at attbi.com Thu Jan 10 08:05:52 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 02:05:52 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rankin, Robert L" To: "'Koontz John E '" ; Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 1:15 PM Subject: RE: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the > Siouan > > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking > for > > yet. > > There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices > they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in > most instances. > ......... I trust that the "reprints for the outrageous prices" comment referred to the Evolution Publishing series and not to the Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection referenced in my preposed quote. I should have known there'd be no economy in acronymy! From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:06:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:06:41 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: >I trust that the "reprints for the outrageous prices" comment referred to the Evolution Publishing series and not to the Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection referenced in my preposed quote. I should have known there'd be no economy in acronymy! Aaaaaaaah, OK, sorry. I'm only familiar with one of these reprint series for "little bitty" articles from the distant past. And it's far more expensive than a trip to the library and a few nickles in the photocopier. 8-) Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:14:09 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:14:09 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: NPR's Morning Edition this a.m. (Thurs) carried a piece from a Hopi writer in Flagstaff about story-telling in the Winter month(s). He mentioned that they believe that in the coldest (lunar) month of Winter, spirits are wandering about after dark so they don't whistle, make loud noises or beat drums. There's the belief about whistling attracting spirits again, this time from the SW. It seems to be widespread enough. If you're in the MST or CST zones, you still may be able to hear it. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:15:03 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:15:03 -0600 Subject: PST Message-ID: Oops. I meant PST, not CST. Bob From claudiap at ccppcrafts.com Thu Jan 10 08:24:00 2002 From: claudiap at ccppcrafts.com (claudiap at ccppcrafts.com) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 08:24:00 +0000 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: The Catawba traditionally were not supposed to tell stories in the summer time or a black snake would lay across their path. Telling stories was a winter time activity when all the harvest was in. Mothers and young children were also told not to leave the children's tracks in the ground at night or the "yeN hasuri" (the little wild people) would find them and not let them sleep. The mother would always sweep away all the tracks before retiring at night. It's also a good way to keep the children out of the woods where the yeN hasuri dwell. Claudia Y.Heinemann-Priest Catawba Cultural Preservation Project ------------------- - From simpsond at email.arizona.edu Thu Jan 10 17:39:15 2002 From: simpsond at email.arizona.edu (Erik) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 10:39:15 -0700 Subject: publication on the Woccon language Message-ID: Blair A. Rudes, I would also like to have one if possible. Erik Simpson 3145 E. Terra Alta blvd. Tucson, AZ 85716 From BARudes at aol.com Thu Jan 10 18:29:22 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:29:22 EST Subject: publication on the Woccon language Message-ID: O.k. I'll put one in the mail. Blair From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Jan 10 18:48:27 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:48:27 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Re the discussion on Siouan instrumentals: In Crow and Hidatsa, there is no inner/outer opposition--all the instrumentals are 'inner'. As far as I can tell, the same is true in Mandan and in Southeastern Siouan. Biloxi appears to have lost the instrumentals that would be outer in other languages, but there is evidence from Tutelo in Oliverio's grammar that indicates that all the instrumentals are inner. Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in Mississippi Valley languages? Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Jan 10 18:49:13 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 11:49:13 -0700 Subject: Suggestion on Communications About Paper Distribution Message-ID: My apologies in advance for this post on list mechanics. I'd suggest that communications responding to offers to distribute a copy of a paper and similar matters should be handled off-list if possible. This isn't any strict requirement, but I recommend it. It reduces traffic that might not interest others, and also reduces clutter in the permanent archives of the list at www.linguistlist.org. I don't have any way to delete material from the archives easily, unfortunately, or I wouldn't worry about the latter. Incidentally, the managers of LinguistList have kindly deleted some embarassing misposts for us by hand in the past. Anyway, by default, letters from the list should cause simple replies that you formulate to go to the list, though some mail client programs manage to undo this scheme one way or another. I've set things up this way to encourage discourse. Otherwise all replies would tend to go to the original sender instead of to the subscribers at large, and that is a recipe for a very quiet list indeed. If you do actually want to conduct a side conversation (and handling the mechanics of sending a copy of a peper would be a reasonable situation for this), you'll need to make sure explicitly that your response is going to the address of the original poster of the offer, rather than to the list. It's always a good idea to look at the to-field of a letter anyway, as that can save a lot of grief. From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Jan 10 19:09:56 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:09:56 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Blair: I would like a copy of this article. Randy Graczyk Address: Fr. Randolph Graczyk St. Charles Mission P.O. Box 29 Pryor, MT 59066 From Zylogy at aol.com Thu Jan 10 19:12:09 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:12:09 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Re Randy's post (and by the way, thanks!)- this is interesting. A spread of construction types might provide a better base for musings about the grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. It would be interesting to see whether such a spread of types has any relation to the patterning of constituent order in North America. Instrument-left bipartitism has its greatest flowering near the verb-initial zone in the Northwest- the farther you go away the fewer prefixes there tend to be. What's left tends to be quite lexicalized. Those interesting spatial-distributive suffixes in Muskogean are possibly the remnants of a suffixal location/pathway system (and the prefixes- what is the relation to bodypart systems?). More please! And thanks! Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From shanwest at uvic.ca Thu Jan 10 20:03:26 2002 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 12:03:26 -0800 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: <200201101624.g0AGOY622281@raq10.dnssys.com> Message-ID: Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. Shannon > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of > claudiap at ccppcrafts.com > Sent: January 10, 2002 12:24 AM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Re: Proverbs/superstitions. > > > The Catawba traditionally were not supposed to tell stories in > the summer time or a black snake would lay across their path. > Telling stories was a winter time activity when all the harvest was in. > Mothers and young children were also told not to leave the > children's tracks in the ground at night or the "yeN hasuri" (the > little wild people) would find them and not let them sleep. The > mother would always sweep away all the tracks before retiring at > night. It's also a good way to keep the children out of the > woods where the yeN hasuri dwell. > Claudia Y.Heinemann-Priest > Catawba Cultural Preservation Project > ------------------- > - > > > From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 20:11:27 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:11:27 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: >Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. The Hopi fellow didn't mention this consequence though. Bob From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Thu Jan 10 20:38:43 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 12:38:43 -0800 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is very widespread. Iroquoians think you'll get a snake in your bed. > Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. Wally Chafe From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 21:04:10 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:04:10 -0600 Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: >Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in Mississippi Valley languages? The evidence is messy. My analysis is still that the outer instrumentals were indeed grammaticalized later than their inner counterparts. Then, the languages in which they're all "inner" placed them with the main inner set by analogy. BUT there is no complete uniformity in the outer set. Ordinarily in Mississippi Valley languages they are *Wo- 'by shooting', *WaN- 'by blade' and *aRa:- 'by extreme temperature (hot or cold)'. (Dakotan includes na- 'by foot' in the outer set, probably from confusion with homophonous 'by extreme temp.', but that's an anomaly.) *Wo- 'by shooting' is found only in Mississippi Valley languages. Personally, I would derive it from older *wa-?o: 'to shoot at and hit something' that was in serial construction with another verb. Ordinary phonology would then give us the "funny W+o" we need here. *WaN- 'by bladed instrument' is found in the same MVS languages plus Mandan. I can't suggest quite as good an etymology for this one, but perhaps it is again *wa- 'indef. obj.' used with the same root that we reconstruct for 'chert, flint, knife', namely *waN-. *waN would have to occur as a verb root in order to be used with this prefix however. Nevertheless, phonology would again give us the "funny W" we want here. *aRa:- 'by extreme temp.' is found in all the Siouan languages as far as I can tell, but it has other idiosyncracies, at least in the languages I know about. It causes the verb to be conjugated with the stative pronoun set. And in Dhegiha languages, it often has fused with the following verb stem in such a way that other, inner instrumentals can be added in front of it. Thus it is the only instrumental that appears to be compounded with additional instrumentals (sometimes). In sum, I think Randy is mostly right in that the outer set tends to be more transparent etymologically and probably arose from more recent serial constructions. AS I recall, Giulia Oliverio has a conference paper she did on these that may go into greater detail. I don't know if she ever published it or not. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 21:21:42 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:21:42 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Ardis, Catherine, John, Rory, et al., I recently queried Kathy Shea about the reality of a construction that John discovered in Dorsey 1890. The only 2 sentences using it are copied below. I am sending this to all of you because Kathy's Ponca speakers didn't recognize these as legit Ponca sentences. No doubt the pattern was rather rare. I wonder if ANYone working with Omaha (or Osage) can get recognition of this pattern using a conjugated forms of /the/ (aspirated T + e) with the forms a-the, dha-the "I must have..."? Bob Here is my original note to Kathy: "Here is an excerpt from my ICHL paper in which I quoted JOhn Koontz. I hope the 'funny characters' came through OK. If they did not, please let me know if clarification is needed: (G) Conjugated evidentials. Koontz (2000 and personal communication) reports a few instances in which evidential classifiers are found in Omaha (Dorsey 1890:63) with person-number prefixes, i.e., they are conjugated as verbs just like the verbal classifiers discussed above, except that here it is the inanimate set of classifiers that is involved even if the subjects are animate. If we have analyzed these correctly, they represent yet another stage in the grammaticalization of the evidential-classificatory articles and the only instances in which inanimate classifiers are used with actual animate pronominal prefixes. Both are with the 'standing inanimate evidential'. (53) na! agðáthe -- a-thé -- é-ama EXCLAM SUUS-eat I-EVIDENTIAL say, they say. 'Why! I ate mine -- I must have -- he said, they say. (54) na! agðá-snì kki a-zhaN a-thé, é-ama EXCLAM SUUS-swallow when I-sleep I-EVIDENTIAL, say, say. 'Why! When I swallowed mine I must have been sleeping, he said, they say.' WHAT I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT IS WHETHER THIS IS REALLY A CONJUGATED "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLE" OR SOME OTHER, UNIDENTIFIED, PARTICLE. SO ONE WAY TO FIND OUT WOULD BE TO CITE THE SENTENCE TO PARRISH WILLIAMS AND TELL HIM WHAT DORSEY SAID IT MEANT. THEN SEE IF IT CAN BE SAID IN THE 2ND PERSON, E.G. (53') na! ða-gðáthe -- ða-thé -- é-ama EXCLAM SUUS-eat YOU-EVIDENTIAL say, they say. 'Why! YOU ate YOURS -- YOU must have -- he said, they say. (54') na! ða-gðá-snì kki ða-zhaN ða-thé, é-ama EXCLAM SUUS-swallow when YOU-sleep YOU-EVIDENTIAL, say, say. 'Why! When YOU swallowed YOURS YOU must have been sleeping, he said, they say.' THE CRITICAL FORMS HERE OF COURSE ARE THE /DHA-THE/ IN EACH SENTENCE. IF THOSE WORK OUT, THEN YOU MIGHT TRY FOR A FEW OTHER ANALOGOUS CASES WITH /THE/ AND DIFFERENT SUBJECTS. YOU CAN TRY FOR OTHER 'YOU MUST HAVE...' OR 'I MUST HAVE...' OR 'WE MUST HAVE...' SENTENCES. THESE AREA ALL CASES IN WHICH THE SUBJECT DOES SOMETHING UNAWARES AND THEN REMARKS UPON IT. THERE IS ALSO THE QUESTION WHETHER OTHER "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLES" CAN APPEAR IN THE SAME SLOT. THIS SEEMS MORE DOUBTFUL, SINCE /THE/ WAS THE ORIGINAL 'RUMORED' EVIDENTIAL PARTICLE. IT IS WORTH EXPLORING THOUGH. I HOPE YOU HAVE GOOD LUCK ELICITING THESE. I SUSPECT THE CONSTRUCTION WASN'T USED MUCH SINCE IT ONLY OCCURS TWICE IN DORSEY'S TEXT COLLECTION. YOU NEVER KNOW THOUGH.... THAT LITTLE BOOKLET THAT KINKOS DID UP FOR MY WORKSHOP PAPER IN BOULDER CONTAINS FURTHER DISCUSSION." Bob Part of Kathy's reply: "I finally got around to asking Uncle Parrish about the sentences you sent when I went over to his house last Sunday to take him a Christmas present. Uncle Paul Little Voice happened to be there visiting, so I submitted the sentences to both of them. Both of the them said the sentences didn't make any sense, even though I read the them several times with the translation. They were pretty emphatic about their opinions." From jschudli at indiana.edu Thu Jan 10 23:20:37 2002 From: jschudli at indiana.edu (Joel David Schudlich) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 18:20:37 -0500 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <2d.1699eefb.296f4189@aol.com> Message-ID: Just an observation: re > grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in > genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. > I'm sure this is so besides the point that it might not even qualify as a tangent, but the direction of causality of the parallels between genetics and historical linguistics is not what most people assume: Indo-European philology is one of the models Darwin based his theories on (or at the very least, the "family trees" common to both theories predate Darwin, and I have been assured by those who have better reason than I to know that he was aware of them) so if the parallels persist, it may simply reflect the common origins of the models. Just an observation, feel free to ignore me. p.s. Hi Randy! Long time no see. ::::::::::::::::::::: "...in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all." -Edward Sapir, 1927 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Joel D Schudlich 2351 Worthington Lane Bloomington, IN 47401 (812) 336-2898 jschudli at indiana.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 05:40:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:40:42 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <2d.1699eefb.296f4189@aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Instrument-left bipartitism has its greatest flowering near the verb-initial > zone in the Northwest- the farther you go away the fewer prefixes there tend > to be. What's left tends to be quite lexicalized. Those interesting > spatial-distributive suffixes in Muskogean are possibly the remnants of a > suffixal location/pathway system (and the prefixes- what is the relation to > bodypart systems?). More please! And thanks! It may be somewhat misleading to consider the Siouan cases of prefixal instruments, bipartite or otherwise, as peripheral to the NW. Siouanists tend to feel that the present westerly extension of the family is relatively late. All of the Siouan parts of the Siouan-Catawban family have the instrumentals, including Southeastern/Ohio Valley. The shape/path components in Siouan tend to be suffixal, too, because they are embodied in NP and sentence/VP-final article and auxiliary systems. For example, in Dhegiha, the continuative or progressive auxiliaries are close to being homophonous with the definite articles. In Omaha-Ponca they are the same, though more frequently in inflected contexts (when inflectable) as auxiliaries. In Osage the paradigms have been filled out with additional forms drawn from the current positional verbs and the motion verbs in their uses as auxiliaries, so that the two systems are not the same in detail. In addition, there are some differences in the article system itself, between Omaha-Ponca and Osage and other more southerly Dhegiha langages. In addition, the Dhegiha "suddenly/frequently" (momentaneous / inceptive / iterative) auxiliaries, which contain path as well as shape elements, also follow the main verb and agree with it in transitive active inflection. There is a suffixal auxiliary in Crow which very much resembles a fragment of one of these stems. We've discussed these before, so I'll refer those interested to the archives. From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Jan 11 06:20:38 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 01:20:38 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Interesting. Auxiliaries (including posturals sit, stand, lie) seem to be at the core of the Yahgan loc/path suffix system- it would be of use to know whether there is an implicational hierarchy of sorts detailing the relative order of entraining of such elements into the system. Perhaps, then, these items in Siouan are the beginnings of a refreshing of the system? I did get some sense that instr and path terms were on separate (and competing?) schedules in bipartite languages, in terms of openness and productivity of the sets. Any info about Yuchi relevant here? I've been trying to remember how things work in other families nearby- Tonkawa, for instance, various "Gulf" outside Muskogean, etc. And Caddoan? If I remember correctly, pretty much the entire SE of NAmerica is solidly verb-final in syntax preference. One would then expect aux-right. So perhaps, then, the growth of a suffixal path system is easiest in this type, even as one sees the withering of the instr-left system. But then what's the deal with Muskogean? Clearly the spatial-distributive system is on the wane, at least the lexicalized portion of it. Maybe the regrammaticalization of the system at the constructional level offsets this? That, at least, would make some sense. I've been told that Guaykuruan in S.Am. has a quite well developed path/loc suffix system, but no instr affixes- manner commonly simply being left out of discourse. Anyway, looks like I may have to keep an eye on the synthesis/analysis axis at all times in this endeavor. I've been focussing so much on the zipping up of structure at the lexical level I've probably too much ignored the extreme analysis end of things. It would be nice to know whether there was a manner/path alternation there too- assuming of course there is one at all in the first place. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 07:43:53 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:43:53 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <97.2144928b.296f3bfb@aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re the discussion on Siouan instrumentals: In Crow and Hidatsa, there is no > inner/outer opposition--all the instrumentals are 'inner'. As far as I can > tell, the same is true in Mandan and in Southeastern Siouan. Biloxi appears > to have lost the instrumentals that would be outer in other languages, but > there is evidence from Tutelo in Oliverio's grammar that indicates that all > the instrumentals are inner. > Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in > Mississippi Valley languages? Bob's explanation of *Wo- 'by shooting' < *wa-?o# makes sense to me, and it the form is literally 'shoot(ing) something', that would explain its outer morphosyntax naturally, and suggest that it was original. Einaudi cites putcpi 'to miss in trying to hit' for Biloxi. However, this pu is has a u-breve, Dorsey's u-circumflex, representing schwa, or, apparently, an /a/, so this is probably /pa-/. It seems to be inflected the same way: First person aNk-, second person i-. I'm not sure that the *WaN- 'with a blade, by cutting' is actually nasalized. It's just ma= (not maN=) in OP, and pa= in Osage. It's just wa= in Teton. If this has the same structure as 'by shooting', the underlying stem formation would be something like *wa-?a#, but I don't know of an example of the root *?a, which would presumably be inflected *pa, *s^a, *(?)a or some regularized variant of that. Einaudi didn't notice the *aRa- 'by heat' instrumental in Biloxi, but I think the examples Bob has in mind are hidden under ade' 'to blaze or burn', e.g., ada'tctka=...ye 'to scorch any object', at.axni' 'to be burnt'. The inflection of this verb is interesting: 1st yaNk-ataxni..., 2nd a-yi-taxni... (or i-aNk-ataxni..., ay-itaxni...?). It's conceivable that the instrumental actually is related to the independent verb. === I've been meaning to provide the data to show that the 'spontaneous', 'by heat' and 'by foot' forms are divided three ways. Teton (cf. Buechel dictionary examples, also Boas & Deloria pp. 45, 82) 'by foot or leg', also 'by inner force' (including 'by boiling, by heating, etc.') 1 na=wa'- 2 na=ya'- 3 na=CV' ? 12 na=uN'- But, with the inner force reading, must be stative: 1 na=ma'- (however, I've noticed ma-nagnaNke 'I twitch') ? 2 na=ni'- 3 na=CV- ? 12 na=uN- Omaha-Ponca (cf. Boas & Santon, Dorsey texts) 'by foot' 1 a-naN'- 2 dha-naN- 3 naN-CV' 12 aN-naN'- 'by heat' (including various more spontaneous readings) 1 na'=aN- 2 na'=dhi- 3 na'= 12 na'=wa- Winnebago (Lipkind pp. 18, 20, 21, Miner) naNaN= 'by use of the foot' naNaN= 'An obsolescent prefix naN- is still sometimes used when the meaning is very forcibly "of its own accord."' 1 naNaN'= (naNaN=a'-) naN'aN=?V (naNaN=a'-?V) 2 naNaN=na'- naNnaN=s^-V'- 3 naNaN=CV' naNaN=?V' 12 ??? ??? daa= 'by fire, with heat' (d written t conventionally by Lipkind and Miner) 1 da'a= (daa=a'-) or da=i- (Active or stative depending on the stem) ? 2 daa=ra- or daa=ri'- 3 daa=CV' 12 ??? From cqcq at compuserve.com Fri Jan 11 14:10:44 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 09:10:44 -0500 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Bob, I don't believe I have seen any of these would-be conjugated evidentials in Osage. Carolyn From hu_matthews at sil.org Wed Jan 9 15:45:38 2002 From: hu_matthews at sil.org (Hu Matthews) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:45:38 -0500 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair Could I please trouble you for a copy. Thanks Hu Matthews 710 Conway Billings MT 59105 hu_matthews at sil.org From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 15:23:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 08:23:42 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices > they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in > most instances. This is certainly true - I wouldn't recommend the series as an economy move - but I've been meaning to point out that xeroxing works better for the individual scholar than a library. I believe this series is primarily aimed at libraries. And I've actually worn out a few of my xeroxes over the years. Hale's Tutelo is tending toward that, which is why I was interested in the reprint copy. In fact, I've even worn out both a xerox and an original of LaFlesche's Osage Dictionary - the BAE paper binding, not the deluxe reprint of a few years back that I've seen at the CU library. Worn out doesn't mean unusable, but when it gets to where you need a bag or a folder to keep the pages collected, I'd call it worn out. A point in regard to Lawler's Woccon is that I'm not sure if it is readily available - I suppose in earlier reprints! - to be xeroxed. I believe Carter says he reproduces the whole list, but I was curious to see the original as a whole. From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 11 16:57:07 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:57:07 EST Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Re: wo- 'by shooting' < wa?o: Crow has a small set of verbs beginning in oo-: o'ottach 'break by shooting' oo'xeechi 'pierce through by shooting' o'oxexawi 'shot up' (stative) oo'xxaxxi 'shoot an arrow or bullet into a hole' oo'xpi 'wound, shoot at and hit' --also-- uu' 'hit target' Several of these stems also occur with other instrumental prefixes, e.g., alaxxaxxi' 'insert foot into', du'xxaxxi 'insert hand', pa'xxaxxi 'insert'. It looks to me like Crow has preserved the 'by shooting' instrumental without wa-. Randy From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 11 17:00:57 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 12:00:57 EST Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Re: WaN 'by bladed instrument': In Crow and Hidatsa this instrumental prefix is (h)a-. The h is preserved in Hidatsa, while most of the Crow reflexes have lost h. This also suggests that Crow and Hidatsa have preserved an instrumental without Wa-. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 18:19:47 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:19:47 -0700 Subject: Outer instrumentals. In-Reply-To: <25.2136a863.29707363@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re: wo- 'by shooting' < wa?o: > > Crow has a small set of verbs beginning in oo-: > > o'ottach 'break by shooting' > oo'xeechi 'pierce through by shooting' > o'oxexawi 'shot up' (stative) > oo'xxaxxi 'shoot an arrow or bullet into a hole' > oo'xpi 'wound, shoot at and hit' --also-- > uu' 'hit target' > > Several of these stems also occur with other instrumental prefixes, e.g., > alaxxaxxi' 'insert foot into', du'xxaxxi 'insert hand', pa'xxaxxi 'insert'. > > It looks to me like Crow has preserved the 'by shooting' instrumental without > wa-. In Omaha-Ponca, and, I think, Dhegiha generally, the equivalent of *wa-o- > *wo'- is accented u'- (or uu'-) as opposed to unaccented u- from just *o-. The development of *wa-?o > *Wo# > OP mu(u)'= is a bit different, because of timing (when in the history of Siouan) and/or the glottal stop. Is there any possibility that Crow oo' could be a case of wa-o-? I'm interested, because I'm not entirely convinced that the ?-initial of ?-stems is organic. It sometimes looks to me more like just the onset of V-initials combined with some reanalysis. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 18:23:22 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:23:22 -0700 Subject: Outer instrumentals. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re: WaN 'by bladed instrument': > > In Crow and Hidatsa this instrumental prefix is (h)a-. The h is preserved in > Hidatsa, while most of the Crow reflexes have lost h. This also suggests > that Crow and Hidatsa have preserved an instrumental without Wa-. I think this is just the form that Bob needs to support his logical analysis. I suppose it couldn't include the hypothetical wa-, so probably oo- doesn't either. There is a difference in length, and the h- seems to require an explanation. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 19:19:21 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 13:19:21 -0600 Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Many thanks to Randy for pointing out those truly interesting forms in Crow. So it looks like ALL the instrumentals are reconstructible in Proto Siouan now. But there is still some sort of relative chronology separating the "inner" ones from the "outer" ones. John Koontz writes: >In Omaha-Ponca, and, I think, Dhegiha generally, the equivalent of *wa-o- > *wo'- is accented u'- (or uu'-) as opposed to unaccented u- from just *o-. The development of *wa-?o > *Wo# > OP mu(u)'= is a bit different, because of timing (when in the history of Siouan) and/or the glottal stop. >Is there any possibility that Crow oo' could be a case of wa-o-? I'm interested, because I'm not entirely convinced that the ?-initial of ?-stems is organic. It sometimes looks to me more like just the onset of V-initials combined with some reanalysis. I tend to agree that vowel-initial stems do funny things. Some insert [?] in some languages, some seem to insert /r/ and some /w/ also, and Winnebago inserts /h/ before initial short V's. BUT I think we mustn't confuse these synchronic constraints/processes with the, clearly very old /?/ that occurs consistently with roots like ?iN 'wear', ?u:N 'do, be', ?o: 'wound', ?e: 'demonstrative' and others. These are quite different phenomena. It may be that these "organic" glottal stops were at some remote time epenthetic, but it is clear from the cognate sets we have that they were phonologized in pre-proto-Siouan. There's still a lot of comparative phonology yet to be done!! Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 19:42:27 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 13:42:27 -0600 Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: >I'm not sure that the *WaN- 'with a blade, by cutting' is actually nasalized. It's just ma= (not maN=) in OP, and pa= in Osage. It's just wa= in Teton. That's absolutely right. The evidence for any nasality would have to be semantic, not phonological. I was thinking about the various cutting instruments with [maNhin] or similar forms as a base. This may be the wrong way to go. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 20:01:25 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:01:25 -0600 Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Yes, it often comes as a great surprise to biologists that this model is based to no small degree on Linguistics rather than the other way around. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Joel David Schudlich To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/10/02 5:20 PM Subject: Re: Bipartite structure Just an observation: re > grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in > genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. > I'm sure this is so besides the point that it might not even qualify as a tangent, but the direction of causality of the parallels between genetics and historical linguistics is not what most people assume: Indo-European philology is one of the models Darwin based his theories on (or at the very least, the "family trees" common to both theories predate Darwin, and I have been assured by those who have better reason than I to know that he was aware of them) so if the parallels persist, it may simply reflect the common origins of the models. Just an observation, feel free to ignore me. p.s. Hi Randy! Long time no see. ::::::::::::::::::::: "...in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all." -Edward Sapir, 1927 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Joel D Schudlich 2351 Worthington Lane Bloomington, IN 47401 (812) 336-2898 jschudli at indiana.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 21:52:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:52:55 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: ...examples of foot/heat/spontaneous instrumentals ... I omitted to remind people that the initial da/la/na in da=...khota, etc., probably belongs in this set of forms, presumably as a fossilized old or just alternative version of 'by heat'. Notice that Winnebago combines 'spontaneously', but NOT 'by heat' with 'by foot'. I don't know, off hand, if Ioway-Otoe does it differently yet again. If I've questioned an inflectional form, it means I deduce it, but can't find a specific example or attestation of it at the moment. Siouanists tend historically to provide just first persons as examples of inflection, on the theory that anyone can easily deduce the rest from that. Hah! (Or maybe it's just some faded echo of Latin grammatical theory. Did it really work there?) It's always wise to give 1st, 2nd, 3rd (probably the stem, modulo a final vowel or so), and inclusive. You can omit them if you can supply an abbreviation keying into an ironclad table of paradigms. Never assume that anyone coming after you will know what you know about the paradigm. > Winnebago (Lipkind pp. 18, 20, 21, Miner) > > naNaN= 'by use of the foot' > naNaN= 'An obsolescent prefix naN- is still sometimes used when the > meaning is very forcibly "of its own accord."' Notice that 'by foot' is outer, even though different from 'by fire' (also outer)! > 1 naNaN'= (naNaN=a'-) naN'aN=?V (naNaN=a'-?V) > 2 naNaN=na'- naNnaN=s^-V'- This should be naNaN=s^-?V'- > 3 naNaN=CV' naNaN=?V' > 12 ??? ??? Miner shows the second pattern for an underlying ?-stem. Someplace I located the first pattern, which seems to be regular. I think the source may have been something by Hale & White Eagle. > daa= 'by fire, with heat' (d written t conventionally by Lipkind and > Miner) > > 1 da'a= (daa=a'-) or da=i- (Active or stative depending on the stem) > ? 2 daa=ra- or daa=ri'- > 3 daa=CV' > 12 ??? Miner gives apparently active and apparently stative first persons (only, no second persons). The instrumental precedes the pronouns. The d in daa is the unambiguous reflex of *R, as is the d/l/n in Dakotan da/la/na. (OK, it's not unambiguous in the case of n, and it could be s^ + r.) From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jan 11 22:23:10 2002 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:23:10 -0700 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I actually experienced this one. The very first Wichita text I ever recorded was a winter story told in the summer; the speaker laughed about the superstition at the time. But when the lady went home that very same day she discovered a giant bull snake behind her bread box in the kitchen. Needless to say, I never got another winter story in the summer. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > >Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox > and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. > > Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. > > The Hopi fellow didn't mention this consequence though. > > Bob > From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 12 17:27:15 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 11:27:15 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: That's a great field work story! Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is certainly the way those things stay alive. Bob >I actually experienced this one. The very first Wichita text I ever recorded was a winter story told in the summer; the speaker laughed about the superstition at the time. But when the lady went home that very same day she discovered a giant bull snake behind her bread box in the kitchen. Needless to say, I never got another winter story in the summer. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 12 21:21:06 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 14:21:06 -0700 Subject: Comment to Rankin from Chad Nilep Message-ID: Chad Nilep (chad.nilep at colorado.edu) asked me to post this letter for him: The Morning Edition segment is available through NPR's Real Audio archives at the following URL: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020110.me.18.ram You must have a Real Audio player to access the program. Descriptions for this morning's show are at: http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=01/10/2002&PrgID=3 Transcripts are available for purchase. Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > NPR's Morning Edition this a.m. (Thurs) carried a piece from a Hopi > writer in Flagstaff about story-telling in the Winter month(s). He > mentioned that they believe that in the coldest (lunar) month of > Winter, spirits are wandering about after dark so they don't whistle, > make loud noises or beat drums. > > There's the belief about whistling attracting spirits again, this time > from the SW. It seems to be widespread enough. > > If you're in the MST or CST zones, you still may be able to hear it. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 14 06:07:04 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 23:07:04 -0700 Subject: Hennepin & Dakota "Louis" = "Sun" Message-ID: I have confirmed the suggestion offered, that the source I recalled was Hennepin. I am not sure that this is the particular reference I recalled, but here is one: A Description of Louisiana by Louis Hennepin. Translated by John Gilmary Shea. Ann Arbor. University Microfilms, Inc. 1966. p. 45: Hennepin is certainly the first who gave Dakota words: and he gives them accurately as will be seen by the reference to Riggs' Dakota Dictionary. Parkman who lived for some weeks in a Sioux lodge says that a variety of trivial incidents mentioned by Hennepin are perfectly in accordance with usage. In regard to Hennepin's Dakota terms he says: "These words as far as my information reaches, are in every instance correct." Even the word Louis, which Hennepin says signifies the sun, is no invention. "The Yankton band of this people, however, call the sun oouee," which, it is evident, represents the French pronunciation of Louis, omitting the initial letter. p. 215-6 The father in a doleful voice, broken with sighs and sobs, with his whole body bathed in tears, sometimes addressed the warriors, sometimes came to me, and put his hands on my head, doing the same to our two Frenchmen, sometimes he raised his eyes to heaven and often uttered the word Louis, which means sun, complaining to that great luminary of the death of his son. JEK From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Tue Jan 15 00:33:08 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 18:33:08 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Bob, I submitted your sentences to Emmaline Sanchez, one of our two Omaha speakers, in class today. She had no trouble at all accepting the two sentences from Dorsey as valid: Na! Agdha'the athe'! Well! I must have eaten it (my own)! Agdha'sni kki azhaN' athe'! When I swallowed it, I must have been asleep! When I tried to conjugate it, though, I got into trouble. Something like Dhagdha'the dhathe'! sounded redundant, as the last word also means 'eat'. In fact, at one point in there it seemed she was telling me that athe' itself could also mean 'eat', which it probably does if they elide the initial dh-. (I ruefully recall a moment last semester when I was all ready to rush onto the list with news of the discovery of a brand new article, iNkhe'.) I think I got acceptance when I tried athe' with 2nd and 3rd person forms, but I'm not quite sure, as we were possibly at the point of confusion by then. I'll try running these by them again later. In the first person, at least, I think we're clear that this form is valid and still used in Omaha. Emmaline explained the word athe' as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: AzhaN' athe'. I must have been sleeping. > WHAT I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT IS WHETHER THIS IS REALLY A CONJUGATED > "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLE" OR SOME OTHER, UNIDENTIFIED, PARTICLE. At present, the evidence here seems to be that athe' is an independent particle that does not conjugate. We'll need to do a little more work to be sure of this, however. Rory From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Tue Jan 15 01:28:14 2002 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:28:14 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: >Emmaline explained the word athe' >as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example >of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of >you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: > > AzhaN' athe'. > I must have been sleeping. What a great example! This is really nice. The homophony of the predicted second person dhathe with the "eat" stem is unfortunate and likely a confusing factor. I wonder if you would have more luck with "we" forms (we must all have been sleeping -- aNzhaN aNthe?? -- when you knocked on our door this morning)? Or second person with a non-eating verb (dhazhaN dhathe??), though second person forms often seem hard to elicit. >I think I got acceptance when I tried athe' with 2nd and 3rd person >forms, but I'm not quite sure, as we were possibly at the point of >confusion by then. Hmm... this does look like it might be a simple particle of some kind. Alas -- much less interesting than a conjugated evidential, though still kind of cool... Do try Mrs. Sanchez again, with a different verb, when she's feeling fresh. I haven't had a chance to ask any speakers any of these myself yet, but hope to before too long. Catherine From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Tue Jan 15 01:32:51 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:32:51 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: While we're on the subject, I'm wondering if I could get a little discussion of the OP article/positional { the }. It's been referred to repeatedly on the list as an EVIDENTIAL particle. For { athe' }, at least, this is clearly the case. But for { the } itself, I'm not seeing it. After a noun, { the } means "standing" or "ordered, in a bundle". After a verb, it seems to me to make the action perfective. It can wrap up an entire preceding sentence into a nominal package that we might translate with a "that"-clause, as in the classic greeting: Dha-thi' the u'daN. It is good that you have come. In the letters section of Dorsey, { the } is used almost incessantly when the writer is describing the actions that have been done by a local person: [Subject] [Verb] i the. is the standard form for completed actions where we would probably use the simple past tense in English. In the myths, where the account is hearsay and statements about characters' actions generally close with -bi-ama', the standard way of saying that something had been done prior to the current point in the story is to change the closing sequence to -bi-the'-ama', [s/he] had done it, they say. In all of these cases, { the } seems to signal the prior completion or accomplishment of the verb's action. It is as if the implication were: "This action STANDS", which would connect the verbal use to the standard nominal use. I have seldom, if ever, seen any cases where { the } seems to signal EVIDENTLY. Is it possible that the EVIDENTIAL use of { the } could be a reduction or confusion of a different morpheme { athe' }, which certainly does seem to be EVIDENTIAL? Comments, anybody?? Rory From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Tue Jan 15 08:24:31 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:24:31 -0000 Subject: Siouan Caddoan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Is it to early for me to ask about the next Siouan-Caddoan conference. I believe it was planned to be in Spearfish. I would very much like to attend and hope to stay over there for about a week, but am planning to be away from the 8 -15 of June. Any information available yet? Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 15 15:25:39 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:25:39 -0700 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is really great, Rory! On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > When I tried to conjugate it, though, I got into trouble. Something > like > > Dhagdha'the dhathe'! > > sounded redundant, as the last word also means 'eat'. In fact, at > one point in there it seemed she was telling me that athe' itself > could also mean 'eat', which it probably does if they elide the > initial dh-. (I ruefully recall a moment last semester when I was > all ready to rush onto the list with news of the discovery of a > brand new article, iNkhe'.) I remember that iNkhe' (and the plural aNkha) in my own limited field work, I think I also got ege for egidhe once. Intervocalic dh tends to disappear in fast speech. I think Carolyn has found iNkshe in Osage, too, for that matter, if I don't misremember. I've noticed that Omaha speakers feel comfortable with second persons that seem to be flat assertions about the hearer. You notice this as soon as you start to try to elicit paradigms. They prefer a question in many cases. This discomfort is, I would say, much stronger than the discomfort with immodest self-assessments in the first person, e.g., 'I am strong'. I tend to put it down to pragmatic factors, but perhaps, given the use of assertionals, it's appropriate to think of the unmarked sentence as a term in the system and treat "unmarked" assertions regarding the hearer as ungrammatical under some circumstances. I have never tried to work this out systematically, however, and this is an area of confusion and unsupported hypotheses for me. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there's a possibility that the difficulty with second persons of -the 'must' falls under this heading. It may actually be that -the lacks a second person. It may not be possible (or maybe it's just not "polite?") to say things like "you must have tripped" or "you must be a complete idiot" or even more neutral things like "you must be very happy/tired." This would produce what amounts to a defective paradigm, like Dakota epc^e 'I think', which can only be first person. (Perhaps this is related to the fact that OP edhe 'to think', can only occur in a sort of mitigated for using egaN 'it's like, to be like': ebdh=egaN, etc., though it does have all four persons.) In general, this might be a situation where it would be safest to start by seeing what speakers produce as translations of various "you just have" sentences in English. The closest things to this sort of context that I can recall from the texts involve 'I suspect' as a superordinate verb. I remember a sentence 'I suspect you're asleep' for a case where 'you must be asleep' would have worked. > In the first person, at least, I think we're clear that this form > is valid and still used in Omaha. Emmaline explained the word athe' > as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example > of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of > you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: > > AzhaN' athe'. > I must have been sleeping. I agree that 'you must have been sleeping' or 'you must be asleep' would be good examples, especially, as you know Ms. Sanchez liked the first person. It's also interesting that this is something that Omaha speakers liked, but Ponca speakers didn't. I should check the examples in the Dorsey collection to see who produced them. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 15 15:56:28 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:56:28 -0700 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > While we're on the subject, I'm wondering if I could get a little > discussion of the OP article/positional { the }. It's been referred > to repeatedly on the list as an EVIDENTIAL particle. For { athe' }, > at least, this is clearly the case. But for { the } itself, I'm not > seeing it. First of all, I'm responsible for suggesting that the (and analogous uses of khe, dhaN, and ge, in sharply decreasing order of frequency, could be regarded as as "evidential" in the literal sense of "evidently" or "it seems that" ot "must have." This may be one of those ideas I've had that turn out not to work in practice, or, at least, as in the case of the obviative stuff, to have dimensions I never thought of. I compared this with the similar "evidential" use of the perfect tense in Turkish (and other Turkic languages), as well as various Caucasian and Iranian languages. I think it's something of an areal feature of Central Asia. I apologize for using the word "evidential" as that is also used in a generic sense for all particals expressing some evaluation of the evidence for a statement. I'm not sure "evidential" is the term used for the Turkish, etc., cases, either, as it's been a while since I read anything on the subject. As in the case of the obviative, I don't want to claim that this works exactly like it's namesake, so it's perhaps not too essential to know exactly how this works in Turkish, but it is interesting that the general idea is that use of the perfect tense in Turkish means that the speaker deduces that a given action has occurred or that a given situation has arisen from some evidence other actually witnessing it. In other words, "the trash has been picked up" (or rather, the Turkish perfect tense equivalent) implies not that I saw it being picked up and not that this happened immediately before now, but that I have some evidence like seeing the empty cans or having heard the noises of the truck and crew making the pickup. Note that this is obviously not too different in practical terms from situations like the English perfect indicating that some occurred relevant to some stated time, e.g., the present for the present perfect. I think this would account for the ease with which Rory sees perfect interpretations. It might be rather difficult in practice to distinguish the two senses. I have argued that the athe 'I must have' examples tend to show that an evidential sense is paramount, just because of that "must," but there may be reasons for disregarding this and treating it as a special case. In the end, the real argument is that OP has lots of evidential marking (in the more general sense), and seeing the as a kind of evidential marking (of the kind indicating "true by deduction") seems more plausible than treating it as a kind of tense in a language that generally lacks other tenses per se. On the other hand, perfect is a very peculiar kind of tense, by any lights, and the difference between the two concepts seems to me to be almost a matter of a continuum, in spite of the apparent difference in descriptions. > After a noun, { the } means "standing" or "ordered, in a bundle". > After a verb, it seems to me to make the action perfective. It > can wrap up an entire preceding sentence into a nominal package > that we might translate with a "that"-clause, as in the classic > greeting: > > Dha-thi' the u'daN. > It is good that you have come. Or: It's good that you're here. This is a syntactical context in which Dorsey often translates the (sometimes khe and dhaN) as 'when', though one can see why he didn't with this particular example! The evidential sense is very bleached here, and I think this is true generally of motion verb examples, but the idea is that the presence/arrival of the hearer indicates their coming. > In all of these cases, { the } seems to signal the prior > completion or accomplishment of the verb's action. It is > as if the implication were: "This action STANDS", which > would connect the verbal use to the standard nominal use. > I have seldom, if ever, seen any cases where { the } seems > to signal EVIDENTLY. "Evidently" and the other expedients for indicating this sense in English are all rather marked. The trouble is that English has no grammaticalized structure for marking this, so a very marked circumlocution has to be used to draw attention to it, just as a very marked circumlocition involving 'woman' has to be used to translate precisely the sense of 'she' into Omaha-Ponca. From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jan 15 19:12:38 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 13:12:38 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: Rory, Thanks very much for checking this. It's good news! I agree with John's comment also, that people shy away from flat 2nd person attribution, so it will be really interesting to see if you can get oN-the or just the or tha-i for 'we must have' and 's/he must have' respectively. >I submitted your sentences to Emmaline Sanchez, one of our two Omaha speakers, in class today. She had no trouble at all accepting the two sentences from Dorsey as valid: On your other question, John has a very nice paper on the topic of evidential use of the articles. All I can add is that there is an etymologically distinct particle, /the/ that exists in all Dhegiha dialects with a cognate, /rahe/ in Hidatsa. In Dhegiha, the older writers tended to gloss it 'narrative', a usage I followed for awhile myself. It is a homonym of the 'standing inanimate' /the/, but i think the syntax is different. Speakers may even confuse it with the positional, but it comes from a different source ('to say that'). My analysis is that numbers of speakers DID in fact confuse it with the positional and then, by analogy, introduced the other positionals that John has found good evidence of into the same syntactic slot over time. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 16 03:08:55 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 21:08:55 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: Bob, John, Catherine and Mark, Thank you all for your constructive comments and good advice! I concur that second person is a little dicey. We've had trouble with this, too. > On your other question, John has a very nice paper on the topic of > evidential use of the articles. All I can add is that there is an > etymologically distinct particle, /the/ that exists in all Dhegiha dialects > with a cognate, /rahe/ in Hidatsa. In Dhegiha, the older writers tended to > gloss it 'narrative', a usage I followed for awhile myself. It is a homonym > of the 'standing inanimate' /the/, but i think the syntax is different. > Speakers may even confuse it with the positional, but it comes from a > different source ('to say that'). > My analysis is that numbers of speakers DID in fact confuse it with the > positional and then, by analogy, introduced the other positionals that John > has found good evidence of into the same syntactic slot over time. So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this a valid re-statement of what you're saying? For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of aNzhaN' aNthe' vs. aNzhaN' athe' If one of those forms is preferred, that should just about decide it. After that, I should try Seth zhaN the vs. Seth zhaN athe' If the former of these two sentences is accepted, and neither of the first two were, then I should try Bob's suggested aNzhaN' the and aNzhaN' tha-i On the other hand, if it is rejected as ungrammatical, then I will want to try Seth zhaN i the and Seth zhaN the pi'azhi If these are accepted, then I will try to elicit their English translation, which I would predict to be Seth slept and It is bad that Seth has slept We'll see what we can find out next week! Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 16 04:36:01 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 21:36:01 -0700 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come > out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', > (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, > which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The > latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the > verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been > introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL > meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, > the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this > a valid re-statement of what you're saying? This is my understanding of Bob's position. I had left things at the point where rahe didn't exist to provide a cognate the for the narrative/evidential usage. I wasn't sure whether at what point the full set of inanimate articles got to be used evidentially. I wasn't aware of any examples of this outside Omaha-Ponca, except for /the/. I think Bob and Carolyn have said they have some Kaw and Osage examples of *the (c^he, che), but nothing else. Textual materials for all of the Dhegiha languages aside from Omaha-Ponca are scarce. > For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: > > 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. > > 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. One might want to distinguish two cases of (1), (1a), where other forms exist, at least in principle if perhaps unobtainable today, and (1b), where only the first person exists. There is another particle that can be rendered 'must' - I think with an obligational sense - which is as^e. It contracts with =tta irrealis and =bi plural and proximate as =tt=as^e, =b=as^e. The two examples of 'I must have' are both in Is^tiniNkhe, the Turkeys, Turtle, and Elk, from PpadhiNnaNppaz^i, an Omaha speaker. They are: agdha'the athe' 'I must have eaten my own' (1890:63.5) az^aN' athe' 'I must have slept' (1890:63.6) I looked for other persons with various plausible glosses and found only: s^aN me'ha= the=atta kkaN'=bdha yet winter hides the beyond I want s^aN Kansas e'=di= ge= s^te=aN yet K. (they are) there must be so-ever 1891:19.2-3 And I desire winter hides "beyond all." And (in) Kansas "they must be in some places." I want winter hides above all. There must be some here and there in Kansas. The quoted bits of the glossing are from Dorsey's interlinear. I've rephrased it somewhat in the next verison. The second example is glossed with "must" but is third person. Note that there is no =bi or =i. I didn't expect one with an article. Here, even though =the 'the upright' is the article with "(stack of) hides" in the preceding sentence, =ge is used in the evidential slot, because the hides are conceived of as being available in small lots here and there in Kansas. Perhaps corresponding to a second person there is: dhaz^aN' e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect you sleep' (90:227.3) aN's^panaN i'dhibdhaN=zti e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect you have had your fill of looking at me' (90:230.16) wac^hi'gaghe i'dhahida=i e'z^aNmiN 'I supect they are tired of waiting to dance' (90:268.1) we'dhaz^iNga=i e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect they speak slightingly of (belittle) us' (90:441.1) edhi'giga=i e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect they say that about you' (90:441.3) [Notice the apparent case of eigige (?) 'to say something to some about someone' (?) < eg(i)e 'to say to', apparently a hapax legomenon in the texts.] Note that the slots in which the/khe/dhaN/ge occur, other than as articles per se, are: - sentence finally with perfect/past/evidential readings sequence =(i)=EVID sequence =(bi)=EVID sequence =bi=EVID=ama (only the and khe) - sentence finally after =ttE irrealis with the reading 'shall surely' =tta=(i)=the (the only) - subordinate clause finally with 'when' readings - in indefinite/interrogative compounds with 'where/when' readings - in 'suddenly'/'frequently'/'begin to' auxiliaries (the/he/naN and gdhe/khe/gdhaN) From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 16 15:02:20 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 09:02:20 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: >So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this a valid re-statement of what you're saying? Yep, exactly! >For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of aNzhaN' aNthe' My only caveat here has to do with the fact that the verb 'sleep' here has a final nasal vowel. Since the beginning of the putative 'we must have slept' contains the same vowel, there is some possibility of confusion on the part of speakers. Maybe some verb that ends in an oral V would improve chances. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 16 17:32:30 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 11:32:30 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: >> For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: >> 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. >> 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. >> I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of >> aNzhaN' aNthe' > My only caveat here has to do with the fact that the verb 'sleep' here has a > final nasal vowel. Since the beginning of the putative 'we must have slept' > contains the same vowel, there is some possibility of confusion on the part > of speakers. Maybe some verb that ends in an oral V would improve chances. That's a good point, although 'sleep' is advantageous semantically in the first person because it is something one does unawares. I'll try to vary the verb to cover different possible vowel endings though. Rory From shanwest at uvic.ca Wed Jan 16 22:31:13 2002 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 14:31:13 -0800 Subject: Linguistic theory in the NY Times Message-ID: Well, damn. I'm out of a job. :) Shannon ============================================================ 'Hard-Wired' Grammar Rules Found for All Languages January 15, 2002 By BRENDA FOWLER In 1981 the linguist Noam Chomsky, who had already proposed that language was not learned but innate, made an even bolder claim. The grammars of all languages, he said, can be described by a set of universal rules or principles, and the differences among those grammars are due to a finite set of options that are also innate. If grammar were bread, then flour and liquid would be the universal rules; the options - parameters, Dr. Chomsky called them - would be things like yeast, eggs, sugar and jalapeÒos, any of which yield a substantially different product when added to the universals. The theory would explain why grammars vary only within a narrow range, despite the tremendous number and diversity of languages. While most linguists would now agree that language is innate, Dr. Chomsky's ideas about principles and parameters have remained bitterly controversial. Even his supporters could not claim to have tested his theory with the really tough cases, the languages considered most different from those the linguists typically know well. But in a new book, Dr. Mark C. Baker, a linguist at Rutgers University whose dissertation was supervised by Dr. Chomsky, says he has discerned the parameters for a remarkably diverse set of languages, especially American-Indian and African tongues. In the book, "The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar" (Basic Books, 2001), Dr. Baker sets forth a hierarchy of parameters that sorts them according to their power to affect and potentially nullify one another. Just as the periodic table of elements illustrates the discrete units of the physical world, Dr. Baker's hierarchy charts the finite set of discrete factors that create differences in grammars. That these parameters can be organized in a logical and systematic way, Dr. Baker says, suggests that there may be some deeper theory underlying them, and that the hierarchy may even guide language acquisition in children. The hierarchy is not the same as a family tree, which illustrates the historical relations among languages - for example, Italian, French, Spanish and their mother tongue, Latin. Nor does it have anything to do with the way words vary from language to language. Instead, Dr. Baker analyzes grammar - the set of principles that describe the order in which words and phrases are strung together, tenses added and questions formed. Dr. Baker, like Dr. Chomsky, believes these instructions are hard-wired into humans' brains. His most spectacular discovery is that the grammars of English and Mohawk, which appear radically different, are distinguished by just a single powerful parameter whose position at the top of the hierarchy creates an enormous effect. Mohawk is a polysynthetic language: its verbs may be long and complicated, made up of many different parts. It can express in one word what English must express in many words. For example, "Washakotya'tawitsherahetkvhta'se' " means, "He made the thing that one puts on one's body ugly for her" - meaning, he uglified her dress. In that statement, "hetkv" is the root of the verb "to be ugly." Many of the other bits are prefixes that specify the pronouns of the subject and object. Every verb includes "each of the main participants in the event described by the verb," Dr. Baker writes. In all, Mohawk has 58 prefixes, one for each possible combination of subject, object and indirect object. Dr. Baker says the polysynthesis parameter is the most fundamental difference that languages can have, and it cleaves off Mohawk and a few other languages - for example, Mayali, spoken in northern Australia - from all others. That two such far- flung languages operate in the same way is more evidence for the idea that languages do not simply evolve in a gradual or unconstrained fashion, Dr. Baker says. At the next junction in the hierarchy, two parameters are at work: "optional polysynthesis" (in which polysynthetic prefixes are possible, but not required) and "head directionality," which dictates whether modifiers and other new words are added before or after existing phrases. In English, new words are at the front. For example, to make a prepositional phrase "with her sister," the preposition goes before the noun. In Lakota, a Sioux language, the reverse is true. The English sentence "I will put the book on the table" reads like this in Lakota: "I table the on book the put will." Japanese, Turkish and Greenlandic are other languages that opt for new words at the end of phrases, while Khmer and Welsh have the same setting as English. In all, Dr. Baker and others have identified about 14 parameters, and he believes that there may be 16 more. Dr. Baker's work is by no means universally accepted. Dr. Robert Van Valin, a professor of linguistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says the findings rest on a questionable assumption: that there is a universal grammar. "What they're doing in that whole program is taking English-like structures and putting the words or parts of words of other languages in those structures and then discovering that they're just like English," he said. Dr. Karin E. Michelson, an associate professor of linguistics at SUNY Buffalo, who also disagrees with the Chomskyan approach, said after reviewing Dr. Baker's Mohawk work that some of the sentences he selected seemed artificial. Dr. Baker acknowledged that some of the longer words in his study were "carefully engineered," but he said the parameter still held up using more common examples of Mohawk. He said using only examples from real discourse restricted the kind of analysis that linguists could do. "It would be like constraining a physicist to learn about gravity without ever building a vacuum tube," Dr. Baker said. Other linguists, however, say they are excited by Dr. Baker's work. "He's a very influential linguist, and my guess is that this will provide insights and will spawn research for the next few years," said Dr. Stephen Crain, a professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland. If Dr. Baker's theory is correct, a further question is how the parameters of grammar are set as a child learns language. Does a child in an English-speaking environment start at the top of the hierarchy, somehow grasp that polysynthesis is not at work, and then move on to the next level in the hierarchy? Dr. Baker also wonders why, if the brain is hard-wired for grammar, it leaves the parameter settings unspecified. Why aren't they hard- wired, too? Humans are assumed to have language in the first place because it allows them to communicate useful information to others. But perhaps, Dr. Baker speculates, language is also a tool of cryptography - a way of concealing information from competitors. In that case, he went on, "the parameters would be the scrambling procedures." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/health/anatomy/15LANG.html?ex=1012055275&e i=1&en=3575888daaf8dd03 Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Jan 18 10:36:43 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 05:36:43 EST Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: Here I am to pick your brains again- I'm learning a lot and thanks to everyone who responded to my last query about instruments and locational terms. Bernd Heine has asked me to assemble (finally) my scattered notes on various structured closed class lexical sets which demonstrate how they interact- one set often feeding another (such as pronouns and distance demonstratives, numerals, etc.) and apparently creating some sort of "field" effect whereby consistency of point-of-view or vantage is maintained. Anyway, I wanted to get some more info to facilitate this. I have access to a number of materials on hand, as well as more at my local university library (though its an 80 mile trip in each direction). Boas, in one of his papers on Dakota lists yuNka 'lie" and yaNka "sit". Now just from what I know about postural verbs in various languages these would seem to be constructs, with input from u- and a- locational affixes. Does this sound plausible? One would expect a further *yiNka "stand" if this were the case to at least be theoretically possible. I'm no Greenbergian, but close examination of these sets of terms in related and familially unrelated languages does show clearly that something is going on, and may well point to something along macro-lumper lines, assuming we're not talking about universal sound symbolic templates or something like that, which I sincerely doubt work for nonexpressive forms anyway. Noncognition between groups appears to some extent to be conditioned by having choices from which to draw from when creating smaller sets of terms- for instance, the term for generic "lie" has to choose from lying with various more detailed postural information- prone, supine, extended or curled up, in a lump, etc. Similarly for sitting and standing. When you start to take these more extensive choice sets into account, inter-family cognition starts to look much better. Perhaps there is a hierarchy to it all. One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. In Yahgan "other" also means "self". Nice economy- would be very interesting theoretically to find out how universal it might be and what the choices of alignment are- are they symmetrical? Do they also include non-1/2 persons, numerals, more diverse sets of distance demonstratives, etc.? What I've got so far seems to hint that bits and pieces can be missing from any given set- that you need to expand out to see the big picture. Unfortunately that also smacks of mass comparison- maybe though there is something to it (there are chess programs that assume a bigger underlying board than just the playing field of the particular game- something also in physics with symmetry breaking, etc.). So does anyone have any data on "other/another" in Siouan? Yuchi would be good too (Wagner doesn't have it that I could see). Thanks. Best, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 16:45:29 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:45:29 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: <33.20f7ea43.297954bb@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Boas, in one of his papers on Dakota lists yuNka 'lie" and yaNka > "sit". Now just from what I know about postural verbs in various > languages these would seem to be constructs, with input from u- and a- > locational affixes. Does this sound plausible? One would expect a > further *yiNka "stand" if this were the case to at least be > theoretically possible. Sorry, Jess, these are primitive (meaning not morphologically complex) roots. Although cognates sometimes appear without the -k(V), I think the ablauting status of the final vowel is usually considered to imply that the last syllable is not the verb stem formant *ka, though it might be some other formant. In any event, there is no evident connection of the first syllables with the locative prefixes, which are not nasalized. The locative u- occurs only in Omaha-Ponca, where *o- > u-. There is no *yiNka 'stand'. The standing stems are *the ~ *thaN in positionals, or *naN=yiN as a full verb. > One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I > own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are > transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. I'm not aware of such a pattern. As far as I can recall OP 'other' is aNma(N), which I think I have also seen used for both terms in 'the one' : 'the other' oppositions. I suppose you can use 'this one' and 'that one' forms, too. I also seem to recall a case where 'another person' in a free translation was rendered 'a atranger' in the actual text. I suppose this reflects a cultural situation in which the only potential 'other' people are those who are both (a) not actually related to the main characters and (b) not yet formally or at least operationally co-opted into the kinship system anyway. As far as feeding relations among closed lexical sets, the examples are PS *(w)uNk inclusive and Da wic^ha- 'them'. Rankin has argued that the former reflects an old term for 'man' and that the process here is somewhat analogous to Lat hominus > French on. He has a paper which I think can be obtained from him or John Boyle. The wic^ha- form for 'them' (animate) is related to indendent forms wic^has^a ~ wic^hasta 'man', depending on the dialect. Wic^ha- is also used a first term in bodypart compounds in the sense of human. This noun is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Other Mississippi Valley Siouan languages use wa-, presumably from wa- 'indefinite object' where Dakotan has wic^ha-. As usual 'one' seems to be the source of indefinite articles. Definite articles are either obscure in origin (ki(N)), possibly inherited, or derived from positional verbs. Positional verbs contribute widely to progressive, future, and "suddenly" auxiliaries, not to mention positional/postural "classifier" markers with things like demonstratives. Numerals are sometimes derived from other numerals (of course), like two-sixes = 'twelve' (in a decimal system). Ordinals are sometimes derived from non-numeric sources like 'head-leading' = 'first', e.g., in Dhegiha. There are various patterns of verbal derivation or auxiliary formation that rely on serial use of helper verbs like 'give' or 'do' or 'be with'. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 18 17:08:19 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:08:19 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: >There is no*yiNka 'stand'. But there is a yiNka doublet for 'sit' that is found in Assiniboine (fide Parks) and throughout Dhegiha. And, as John may have mentioned, 'lie' really goes back to *?uN-ke. The w or y that sometimes appears is an inserted glide as far as we can tell. Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Jan 18 18:32:42 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:32:42 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: > This noun > is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', > say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but > this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Okay, here's a truly ignorant question or two. An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," but I can't be sure of where I even came across it. The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). I can see that thought more plainly in the second of the two above constructions, if only because I immediately recognize 'ni,' although I thought 'middle' was something more like 'oketsa.' Does anyone have any information about this? It's no biggee; I am just curious... and truly unaware of the facts of the matter! Jm From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 18 19:21:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:21:41 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do with snakes in some way. >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. >The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). Chungguo 'middle kingdom' That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better idea. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 19:33:07 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:33:07 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: <008301c1a04e$8483adc0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > Okay, here's a truly ignorant question or two. An Osage friend of mine once > told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this > before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I haven't heard that before. I'd tend to be skeptical, because the name occurs in several of the Dhegiha groups as a clan or subclan name. It's one of the standard pan-Dhegiha clan names, in fact: Honga, Ponca, Osage, and Kansa. There are some others less well known, but equally well-distributed, e.g., Washabe (Hunt Police Standard), Light-colored Buffalo Bull, Stiff-Legs, etc. Anyway, the Omaha-Ponca instance of the Osage clan is among the Ponca. The closest equivalent outside Dhegiha is waz^az^a as a band name among some Dakotan groups. This would be more or less regular as a correspondence, if *z^V'z^E were an expected root pattern, but it's not. There are some *z and *z^ sets within Mississippi Valley, but, as Matthews pointed out, they're anomalous. It looks like the normal pattern is post-accentual voicing for essentially voiceless fricatives. The exceptions are few and hence interesting, or result (in Dhegiha) from some perturbation like *y > z^, which converts all *y-initials to z^-initials. Because of this, I tend to think that the waz^az^a band name might be a loan from Dhegiha. There is a Dhegiha stative verb *was^o's^e 'brave, generous' - one of those interesting wa-initial statives - that sometimes gets confused with waz^a'z^e, but it's probably unrelated. I seem to recall - but I'd have to confirm - that Miner gives the Winnebago version of Osage as woras^, which is consistant with *yas^- as the root, but offers yet another vowel in the prefix. > Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," but > I can't be sure of where I even came across it. Dhegiha terms for 'man' (in the sense of 'human') are based on nikka-, e.g., OP nikkas^iNga ~ nias^iNga. The root nikka- - I don't know that it occurs indendent of various compounds - is sort of a parallel of Dakotan wic^ha-, but not cognate with it (by any regular processes). It would come from *nihka- or *riNhka-, whereas Dakotan wic^ha- looks like *wihka- (or possibly *wiya-. Obviously there's a potential for an irregular connection. I assume s^iNga is some how connected with OP s^iNgaz^iNga 'baby', in which z^iNga 'little' matches Dakotan c^hiNc^a < *yiNka. I don't know if s^iNga is a doublet of z^iNga, but I suspect it might be. (I've seen somewhere that the Osage call themselves 'the little ones', but I don't know the actual Osage of that.) I'm not sure how to account for OP nias^iNga, but I suspect it might be a backformation from nikkas^iNga, perhaps on the assumption that kk is from kki- , the reflexive. I think that nias^iNga does tend to be applied to 'other people' as opposed to nikkas^iNga 'related people'. I'm not sure the semantics work for that and I may be off target on the meaning. It's not easy to figure this out from the texts what distinction, if any, exists between the two terms. It's not a regular phonological reduction, say, for fast speech. I have the impression that Omahas and Poncas aren't precisely sure when they use one term or the other, though I suspect some regular principle is involved. It's certainly an interesting question from a lexicographical point of view. The word nialus^ka that you cite isn't familiar to me. There is Os iloNs^ka : OP hedhus^ka for the Hethushka (or Omaha or Grass or Hot) Dance. > The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption > of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for > China?). ?Jung Gwo 'middle country' I'm blanking 'middle' in OP! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 19:50:14 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:50:14 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do > with snakes in some way. Possibly in the same way Kansa has to do with wind or (OP) Wez^iNs^te has to do with elk, i.e., by association of the clan name with some separate aspect of the clan's symboism. . In the Kansa case the connection is also just plain obscure to me, but Wez^iNs^te, which looks like it must mean 'means of anger/moodiness' is always rendered 'Elk' as a clan name because the elk is the clan symbolic animal. INkhe'sabe 'black-shoulder(ed)' as 'Buffalo (Clan)' is a bit clearer, because it's just a trope for 'buffalo'. Ttappa 'deer-head' is usually rendered 'Deer', I think, though the term is supposed to be the Omaha name for the Pleiades. > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. WakkaNdagi 'watermonster' in Omaha. (Which I think is 'wizard' in Kaw.) But OP wagdhishka (it would probably be walus^ka in Osage) is the cover term for the creature classification including bugs, snakes, lizzards, worms. etc. What Bob calls 'the creepy-crawlies'. Dakotan wablus^ka, wamdus^ka, etc., doesn't correspond regularly. OP suggests *wakrus^ka, while Dakotan suggests *waprus^ka. WakkaNdagi is interesting because it seems to be connected to WakkaNda 'god', which leaves over the element gi, which strikes me as a good match for Dakotan ki(N) 'the', though whether as a loan word or a fossil I couldn't say. We need all the help we can get with the articles, however. For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, though I don't recall such a stream. From tleonard at prodigy.net Fri Jan 18 19:52:36 2002 From: tleonard at prodigy.net (TOM LEONARD) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:52:36 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Thought I might chime in here regarding 'waz^az^e'. Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or "Snake"). Regards, Tom Leonard ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rankin, Robert L" To: Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 1:21 PM Subject: RE: Osage > >An Osage friend of mine > once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had >never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or >anything like it? > I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do > with snakes in some way. > > >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," > > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. > > >The popular story around these parts is that > 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar > to the word for China?). > > Chungguo 'middle kingdom' > > That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is > right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't > know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better > idea. > > Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 20:01:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:01:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <001801c1a059$af34ef60$07e3fc3f@Busprod.Com> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, TOM LEONARD wrote: > Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, > the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over > the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. > > It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the > Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, > generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or > "Snake"). We's?a 'snake' as a source of waz^az^e strikes me as a folk etymology. It's not phonologically very plausible, since we's?a has s?, not z^, etc., but the observation that many Waz^a'z^e clan personal names involve snake is very supportive of the sort of indirect association that connects We'z^iNs^te and 'elk', and so on. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 20:07:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:07:55 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > The wic^ha- form for 'them' (animate) is related to indendent forms > wic^has^a ~ wic^hasta 'man', depending on the dialect. Wic^ha- is also > used a first term in bodypart compounds in the sense of human. This noun > is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', > say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but > this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Other Mississippi > Valley Siouan languages use wa-, presumably from wa- 'indefinite object' > where Dakotan has wic^ha-. I omitted to say that this association only makes sense if the the -s^a of wic^has^a and the -s- of wic^hasta are taken as part of the root, i.e., the stem is something like wic^has^- ~ wic^has- matching (albeit irregularly) waz^a'z^(e) to suggest w(a/i)yas^-. Another problem with this is then accounting for the -ta in wic^hasta, though, as far as I can tell, we're not a whole lot ahead trying to account for -s^a vs. -sta. From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Jan 18 20:50:15 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:50:15 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," > > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. > > >The popular story around these parts is that > 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" Well, I must have pulled that word out of the wrong corner of my brain. I just went to the Osage Nation website (http://www.osagetribe.com/ if you are interested) to see what they had. The word I was searching for is in fact 'NiuKonska,' at least according to the website. Their orthography is seemingly inconsistent, so I am not exactly certain what it is supposed to mean. I catch 'ni' for water and the 'u' locative, but other than that, I am at a loss--I assume 'ska' is not clear or white, but I have no special reason for believing this. They translate it as "the little ones from the middle waters." Perhaps this is a romantic sort of title, or perhaps invocative of another, more primary term for the tribe. However, it does build on John's recollection of the Osages term of identification as "the little ones." Interesting, to say the least. Jm From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Sat Jan 19 02:26:15 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 20:26:15 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John wrote: > For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, though > I don't recall such a stream. Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' might not be an ancient name for the Dhegihans before they broke up into separate tribes, with only the Osage retaining the original name. According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in Fletcher and La Flesche, the original home of the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. On one particular day, they made a poorly planned and probably urgent crossing of the Mississippi. Some got across, while others were swept downstream. Those who went downstream eventually made it across into Arkansas, where they became the Quapaw. Those that made it across in the first attempt became the Omaha (including the Ponca, who had not yet split off). The two groups apparently made no serious effort to get back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest across Iowa. (The Ioway themselves had been with the Dhegihans at the time, and were among those who crossed successfully.) This event must have been crucial in Omaha history. Prior to the crossing, the Sacred Legend consists mainly of culture history mythology. After the crossing, the Legend seems to be a fairly solid account of their wanderings and adventures. The Osage and Kaw are not mentioned in this story. I've read in some popular English accounts that they share this tradition, but I don't know the details. If we suppose that they were part of this event, then we have a reasonable explanation of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream People', the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the Osage, who stayed in the middle, were the 'People of the Middle Water'. If the Osage and Kaw were not part of the crossing, however, as the Omaha Sacred Legend seems to imply, then a more interesting possibility becomes obvious. In that case, they were presumably already on the west side of the Mississippi before the Omahas and Quapaws came across, and likely settled in the lower Missouri valley where they were found later on. If so, then Dhegihan territory prior to the crossing would have included both the lower Ohio valley and the lower Missouri valley, together with the stretch of the Mississippi that connects the mouths of these two rivers. At this point, one has only to look at a map of North America to appreciate the implication of the name 'People of the Middle Waters'. In an era when waterways were the easiest avenues of transportation, these people were living at the very crossroads of the continent. In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake and as the central god of their daily existence. There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete collapse of MVS *u into *i. More generally, it would tend to imply that Dhegihan must have been an unusually cosmopolitan language. As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble making sense of them. Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan languages in MVS reminds me of nothing so much as comparing modern English with Icelandic in the Germanic languages. Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 03:56:05 2002 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:56:05 -0900 Subject: Osage Message-ID: There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). I wonder if washunshun (etc.) is related to wazhazhe? It seems so, and that would help tie 'snake' and 'water' together, as the undulation, the back and forth looping of both a river and a snake. Lance rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > John wrote: > > For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, > though > > I don't recall such a stream. > > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in > Osage? In OP, there are actually several words > we can gloss as 'middle' in English, varying > according to whether we are talking about being in > the middle of a crowd, the center of a village, or > the middle of a lake, etc. > > I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' > might not be an ancient name for the Dhegihans > before they broke up into separate tribes, with > only the Osage retaining the original name. > > According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in > Fletcher and La Flesche, the original home of > the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. On one > particular day, they made a poorly planned and > probably urgent crossing of the Mississippi. > Some got across, while others were swept > downstream. Those who went downstream eventually > made it across into Arkansas, where they became > the Quapaw. Those that made it across in the > first attempt became the Omaha (including the > Ponca, who had not yet split off). The two > groups apparently made no serious effort to get > back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest > across Iowa. (The Ioway themselves had been with > the Dhegihans at the time, and were among those > who crossed successfully.) > > This event must have been crucial in Omaha history. > Prior to the crossing, the Sacred Legend consists > mainly of culture history mythology. After the > crossing, the Legend seems to be a fairly solid > account of their wanderings and adventures. > > The Osage and Kaw are not mentioned in this story. > I've read in some popular English accounts that > they share this tradition, but I don't know the > details. If we suppose that they were part of > this event, then we have a reasonable explanation > of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream People', > the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the > Osage, who stayed in the middle, were the 'People > of the Middle Water'. > > If the Osage and Kaw were not part of the crossing, > however, as the Omaha Sacred Legend seems to imply, > then a more interesting possibility becomes obvious. > In that case, they were presumably already on the > west side of the Mississippi before the Omahas and > Quapaws came across, and likely settled in the > lower Missouri valley where they were found later > on. If so, then Dhegihan territory prior to the > crossing would have included both the lower Ohio > valley and the lower Missouri valley, together with > the stretch of the Mississippi that connects the > mouths of these two rivers. At this point, one has > only to look at a map of North America to appreciate > the implication of the name 'People of the Middle > Waters'. In an era when waterways were the easiest > avenues of transportation, these people were living > at the very crossroads of the continent. > > In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very > much centered on the big rivers, which might explain > how a 'water-monster' would come to be so important > in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' > might very well represent the River itself, seen > both as a crawling snake and as the central god of > their daily existence. > > There are some advantages to this hypothesis > linguistically as well. For one thing, it would > give us good grounds for a dialect difference > between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and > 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw. The > latter are distinguished by the complete collapse > of MVS *u into *i. More generally, it would tend > to imply that Dhegihan must have been an unusually > cosmopolitan language. As a rule, languages that > have a high interface with speakers of foreign > languages tend to break down phonologically and > grammatically, becoming more word centered and > syntactically chaotic. This seems to be what we > are seeing in our respective Dhegihan languages, > and probably accounts for why we are having so > much trouble making sense of them. Comparing > Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular > Dakotan languages in MVS reminds me of nothing > so much as comparing modern English with > Icelandic in the Germanic languages. > > Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 09:47:03 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 02:47:03 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there > are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, > varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle > of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. The LaFlesche dictionary (of Osage), gives uskoNska 'directly in the center of', 'in the middle of' for 'middle' as in 'middle of a lake', 'middle of the heaven (zenith)', and one possibility for mid in 'midnight'. There are some other 'middle' terms, too. I suspect uKonska is a rendition of uskoNska, though skV => hkV sounds more like Ioway-Otoe. > I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' might not be an ancient > name for the Dhegihans before they broke up into separate tribes, with > only the Osage retaining the original name. > > According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in Fletcher and La > Flesche, the original home of the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. > On one particular day, they made a poorly planned and probably urgent > crossing of the Mississippi. Some got across, while others were swept > downstream. Those who went downstream eventually made it across into > Arkansas, where they became the Quapaw. Those that made it across in > the first attempt became the Omaha (including the Ponca, who had not > yet split off). The two groups apparently made no serious effort to > get back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest across Iowa. > (The Ioway themselves had been with the Dhegihans at the time, and > were among those who crossed successfully.) I've always thought that this account, which is sometimes patched onto the Winnebago 'Redbanks' story, sounded like the sort of story that people develop over the years by a sort of deductive process to explain various patterns they notice and gradually come to believe and then to pass on as history. I don't know if there's a term for this process or any literature on it. You could call it a folk etiology or a folk provenance. As an example of the sort of process by which this thing develops, I think whoever it was who wrote Wars of the Iroquois adds its bit by asserting that the cause of the crossing was an Iroquois campaign. In essence a story like this is a model, offered to explain various facts known to the model builders, like the similarity of the languages and cultures of the tribes included in the account, or the coincidental similarity of the English name Ohio /ohaio/ to OP /uhai (h)au/ 'they followed it', the names of the tribes Omaha 'upstream' and Quapaw 'downstream', etc. Of course, model building is fine, as long as the model remains firmly labeled a model and doesn't slip from that to being a historical narrative ex post facto. If something is still a model, then it can be subjected to verification. But the difficulty of keeping models as models in the hands of humans, especially when they are not original written documents, accounts for the historians' insistence on careful attribution and analysis of sources and, in effect, of their practice of handling everything as if it might be a folk etiology anyway. There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to differentiation from a common source language. There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? While we might be inherently suspicious of an attempt to explain Omaha 'upstream' and Quapaw (Okaxpa) 'downstream' in such simple terms, we might be even more suspicious if we knew that the Quapaw name is just one of five Quapaw village names, another of which is IMaha(n) (imaNhaN), also meaning 'upstream'. The Imahan villagers later joined the Caddo, interestingly enough. It's not even clear, though it may be true, that the name Okaxpa ~ Quapaw originally applied to all the Quapaw people, as opposed to just the residents of Okaxpa village proper. It certainly did after the remaining three villages merged with the Quapaw village proper. This story is repeated quite a bit in ethnohistorical accounts, especially various tribal histories prepared in the last century. (Hey! That was fun to say!) While there are schools of archaeological thought that accept it, they are usually careful to buttress it with references from early historical sources to a Kansa River south of the Ohio, or perhaps the mouth of the Ohio? The real difficulty is showing any archaeological connections between the various Dhegiha groups and the lower Ohio. There are some unassociated local cultures that last through the very early contact period, but I think nothing to tie any of the existing Dhegiha groups to them. Unfortunately, the Dhegiha groups seem to be very chameleon-like. They look pretty much like their contemporary neighbors, to the extent that their early villages have been securely identified. Some of them, at least the Osage for certain, maybe the Omaha (with the Ponca) and Kaw seem to be Oneota associated, but the connections are tenuous, and the overlap of territory with the more securely Oneota-affiliated Ioway, Otoe, and Missouria makes it difficult to be sure which village sites belonged to whom. It's probably fair to say that archaeologists are more or less split between adopting the Ohio Valley analysis, origin in situ, and some sort of Oneota connection. Origin in situ only makes sense if the similarities in language and details of social organization are assumed to be due to a separate group that merged with a set of unconnected in situ populations. Naturally, this is more or less always true, but we can safely apply the term Dhegiha to the former, and neglect the in situ populations. Beyond that it should be noted that Oneota and Ohio Valley explanations are not entirely incompatible, though the Ohio Valley explanations do not usually appeal to Oneota manifestations in Illinois (and I think they tend to be more northerly). Personally, my model is Oneota, but with a more northerly source, maybe southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa. This would make the Omaha and Ponca relative stay-at-homes, and the Kansa, Osage, and Quapaw progressively more ambitious parts of the diaspora. Presumably the Kansa name in the south is actually a generic reference to Dhegiha speakers presence there at some point in this diaspora, perhaps the Quapaw. > ... If we suppose that they were part of this event, then we have a > reasonable explanation of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream > People', the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the Osage, who > stayed in the middle, were the 'People of the Middle Water'. In spite of my comments on the risks of trying to connect Omaha and Okaxpa, the existence of the Osage name might actually support such a scheme. Of course, it would only establish relative locations at some unspecified point in time, perhaps not the situation at contact, and it wouldn't support one point of origin over another. Now if the Kaw were 'the people of the original water', that would certainly help! > In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the > big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be > so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might > very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake > and as the central god of their daily existence. On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. > There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. > For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference > between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, > Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete > collapse of MVS *u into *i. On the other hand, this is a relatively simple change, and in other ways Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw are not very much alike. For example, Quapaw has k? and x? for *k? and *x?, while Osage and Kaw have k? for both, and Omaha has ? for both. I think the first three also have the *niNke 'round' article where OP has dhaN. But then OP agrees with IO and Wi in having h for *ph in 'I say'. I think Quapaw does, too, but Osage and Kaw have ph - [ps^] in Osage. In general, I think we're not yet sure how or if we can subgroup Dhegiha, apart from Omaha + Ponca and Osage + Kaw. > More generally, it would tend to imply that Dhegihan must have been an > unusually cosmopolitan language. Certainly true, since there are loans in and out of at least Algonquian and Muskogean, but perhaps not exceptionally so for a Siouan language. > As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of > foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, > becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. I'm not sure if I agree with this concept of breakdown, though of course there would be traces of the contact. Maybe you're thinking of pidginization? > This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan > languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble > making sense of them. I don't consider any of the Dhegiha languages to be notably chaotic. I admit to having trouble understanding all kinds of things, but I think it is just me and my neophyte status with the language. > Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan > languages ... Dakota is also at an interesting crossroads, geopolitically speaking, and, personally, over the years I've come to think that it looks like someone who wasn't familiar with some of the finer nuances of proper Siouan morphology has been at work simplifying it. It's not as devoid of irregular inflection as Mandan, but they've been working on it. And what's with those second datives and reflexives! JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:07:29 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:07:29 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C48EE55.E53EDD9E@earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Lance Foster wrote: > There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something > like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a > river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). > > I wonder if washunshun (etc.) is related to wazhazhe? It seems so, and > that would help tie 'snake' and 'water' together, as the undulation, the > back and forth looping of both a river and a snake. Relying on Jimm Good Tracks's recension, I find wa^sansan 'zigzag', wasunna ~ washunna 'soft, pliant', wasun'sun ~ washun'shun 'bends (River)', wasun'sun ma'n~yi 'crawl (Snake)' (ma'n~yi 'to walk'), wasun'sunna ~ washun'shunna 'to shake back and forth'. Jimm's ^ is usually a glottal stop. I'm not sure what wa^sansan indicates. This suggests was^uN 'to bend, change course', reduplicated often to was^uN's^uN, and with s^ > s over time in the historical period as is normal. I don't think this is likely to be connected to waz^a'z^e or we's?a either one. Note that I also see waso'se 'brave', cf. OP was^u's^e 'brave'. I also looked up 'Osage' and found wa'sasi, wa'shashi (< *was^as^e ?) and wara^iye. The first two are probably borrowings. Miner gives wara's^ for Winnebago (< waraz^- ?), which may suggest that the last (wara'-language) is a folk revision of *wara'ye (< *waraz^e). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:14:11 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:14:11 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there > are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, > varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle > of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. Actually, I also notice that LaFlesche lists Ni'-u-k.oN-c,ka (Wa-zha-zhe) [i.e., NiukkoNska Waz^az^e JEK] the ancient name of the Wa-zha'-zhe and signifies they of the mid-waters. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:24:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:24:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <00cb01c1a061$be08bc80$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > ... John's recollection of the Osages term of identification as "the > little ones." This term is in Matthews, I think, as Bob recalls it. It may relate to the use of z^iNka 'child' in the traditional ritual chants. From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:14:55 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:14:55 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). I think the related words in more phonologically conservative languages like Dakota have a /ks^/ cluster in this morpheme. It is the "bend" root. Bob From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sat Jan 19 18:16:41 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:16:41 -0800 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Siouanists, This is irrelevant to the Siouan discussion, but I have to throw it in anyway. Seneca ohi:yo? (with a Y) actually refers to what is conceived of as a single river from its source in Pennsylvania to its confluence with the Mississippi. In English we conceive of this as two rivers, the Allegheny (in NY spelled Allegany) and the Ohio, changing its identity in Pittsburgh. The -h- means "river", but the -iyo- part is a little harder to translate. Perhaps "nice river" comes closer. "Beautiful" as an aesthetic judgment doesn't quite do it. The cognate in Tuscarora means "big", but the other languages seem to have moved away from the size meaning alone. It's interesting to compare English "grand", with both the size and value judgments. Seneca, at least nowadays, has moved toward the value end of it. Wi:yo:h (without any incorporation) means "it's good" or "nice". The Osage name has been borrowed into Seneca as wasa:se?, which is the name for the war dance. Wally Chafe > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:22:18 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:22:18 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. >It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or "Snake"). Although wazhazhe can't really be derived phonetically from wes'a 'snake', it is certainly true that most, if not all, of the groups that have a wazhazhe clan or sub-clan associate it with snakes. I think all those separate attestations must mean something. Snake seems to be one of those words that has undergone periodic taboo replacement in Siouan. I don't recall that there is any word for it reconstructible to Proto-Siouan. Dhegiha languages all use wes'a (in local pronunciations), Chiwere speakers have coopted the wakhaN 'sacred' word for 'snake'. There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the languages around Iowa. Bob From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 18:22:46 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:22:46 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > languages around Iowa. From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:48:59 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:48:59 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Thanks. I didn't remember the Shawnee part. And I should acknowledge that my original information came from Paul Voorhis. Interesting that Shawnee would be included but not Illinois. Bob -----Original Message----- From: David Costa To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/19/02 12:22 PM Subject: Re: Osage In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > languages around Iowa. From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 19:03:59 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 11:03:59 -0800 Subject: manitous Message-ID: Well, there's good reason to believe that the (genetically) closest relative of Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo is Shawnee, so it might be an inherited innovation rather than something areal. There appear to be many other little bits of evocative vocab shared between SFK and Shawnee as well, though the grammars have many striking differences. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:48 am > > Thanks. I didn't remember the Shawnee part. And I should acknowledge that > my original information came from Paul Voorhis. Interesting that Shawnee > would be included but not Illinois. > > Bob > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Costa > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Sent: 1/19/02 12:22 PM > Subject: Re: Osage > > In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. > > David > > ---------- >>From: "Rankin, Robert L" >>To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >>Subject: RE: Osage >>Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am >> > >> There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the >> languages around Iowa. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Sat Jan 19 22:16:19 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 16:16:19 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John, Thanks for your thoughtful reply! Let me briefly restate the two hypotheses I raised in my last post, and your own view as I understand it. 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) 2) By the Sacred Legend, the Omahas and Quapaws were living as one people in the Ohio Valley, together with the Ioways. The Osage and Kaw were already settled in the lower Missouri. This situation (minus the Ioways) was reflective of an earlier situation where common Dhegihan territory covered both the lower Ohio and the lower Missouri, together with a section of the Mississippi connecting these. At this time, the name NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Waters' applied to the Dhegihans in general, because they lived right at the point where the biggest river systems of temperate North America intersected. All commerce between the northern Rockies and the Appalachians, and between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, tended to pass through them. Then some catastrophe, presumably a military defeat, forced the eastern Dhegihans and associated Ioways to flee to the western side of the Mississippi. The crossing itself was disastrous, and the refugees split into two major groups temporarily lost from each other. On the west bank, the refugees had no recognized territory of their own for subsistence, and spent a few hard years bulling themselves into the margins of other peoples' territories as they gradually reorganized themselves into the UmaNhaN and Ugaxpa tribes. The tradition of being the 'People of the Middle Waters' was abandoned by the humiliated refugees, but retained by the undisturbed Osage. (This is Rory's pet hypothesis.) 3) The Sacred Legend is a nineteenth century concoction designed to explain how linguistically related tribes such as the Osage and Quapaw came about with respect to the Omaha. It's claims of an earlier homeland in the Ohio Valley are false, as is its account of the crossing. In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) First, I think John's view has much to recommend it in terms of geographical parsimony. If we can place the Dhegihans here, with the Dakotans in south-central Minnesota, the Winnebago in eastern Wisconsin, and the Chiwere in eastern Iowa, then we have all four branches of MVS neatly wrapped up in a compact area. Within this area, dialect gradients can nicely explain features that link Dakotan with Dhegihan and Winnebago with Chiwere, and that link Dakotan with Winnebago and Dhegihan with Chiwere. Further, we might also be able to recognize a common MVS archaeological culture in the Effigy Mound culture, which covered a good section of that territory. Is this your thought too, John? On the other hand, I have to confess to being more credulous than John is regarding the value of early accounts based on a people's oral history. It's not that I believe in taking them at face value-- I recognize that a lot of 'history' can be invented by rationalizations. However, I think that a lot of the rationalizing has to do with trying, more or less honestly, to reconcile local oral traditions with the larger and better documented body of knowledge known to the literate community. Both traditions may be quite valid, but getting their reference points to connect is tricky. The fact that parts of the story as written may be untenable does not mean that the account is completely fabricated; more likely it just means that the author mistakenly attributed the traditional account of one event or place to another event or place known to the current literate community. That being said, let's discuss some of the specific arguments. > There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are > all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways > that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of > the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack > of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to > differentiation from a common source language. Why should it be a difficulty that these tribes should be together? (I assume you're referring to the Ioways being with the Dhegihans.) We don't know enough about the history of the tribes before contact even to be sure where they were, much less to rule out possible social relationships between them. Even if we assume that the Ioways were Oneota and based up in Iowa, just one group of Ioway visitors that made an impression at the time could easily have ended up in the Sacred Legend. And if the Sacred Legend is no more than a naive rationalization of language differentiation (which seems intrinsically unlikely to me), why should it include the geographically distant Quapaw and the linguistically rather distant Ioways while ignoring the Osage and Kaw, and the geographically proximate Dakotans and Winnebagoes? > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? Thanks to you and Wally for this information! This is definitely relevant, but not necessarily a counter-argument. So English got Ohio from the French, who got it from the Seneca, whose name for the entire Ohio River, including the Allegheny, was ohi:yo?, probably originally meaning something like 'Great River', or 'Rio Grande'. Now, am I understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? If so, then the question is where the Dhegihans came up with their name for it. The Omaha form might easily have come from a rationalization of the English pronunciation, but the Osage version could never have arisen by that route. It could have come about by recasting the Omaha into Osage, but why should the Osage adopt a name for the Ohio River from the Omaha, who had never been near it, and at such a late date that the Omaha had learned it from the Anglo-Americans? This avenue seems improbable. If the resemblance of the Omaha term Uhai to the English form Ohio is not pure coincidence, then the name of the Ohio River must have been common to both Dhegihans and Iroquoians, with both rationalizing a single 'international' name into something plausible in their own respective languages. For the Iroquoians, it was rationalized as 'Great River', and for the Dhegihans it was rationalized as something like 'Roadway', or 'They Pass Through on It'. If we accept this, then there are two main possibilities: 1) The Dhegihan term is primary. It was reduced from something like Opha=p=a originally to something like *Oha=i in that wing of Dhegihan closest to the Seneca, who picked up the name from them and rationalized it to ohi:yo?. 2) The Dhegihan name is a loadword from Seneca or some other source. In that case, the wing of Dhegihan most closely involved with the Ohio River rationalized the term as Uha=i or whatever, and passed it back to the Osage, who recast it into their own dialect as Opha=p=a. Either way, we tend to place the Omaha on the Ohio River, and east of the Osage. > While we might be inherently suspicious of an attempt to explain Omaha > 'upstream' and Quapaw (Okaxpa) 'downstream' in such simple terms, we might > be even more suspicious if we knew that the Quapaw name is just one of > five Quapaw village names, another of which is IMaha(n) (imaNhaN), also > meaning 'upstream'. The Imahan villagers later joined the Caddo, > interestingly enough. It's not even clear, though it may be true, that > the name Okaxpa ~ Quapaw originally applied to all the Quapaw people, as > opposed to just the residents of Okaxpa village proper. It certainly did > after the remaining three villages merged with the Quapaw village proper. Of the Okaxpa and the ImahaN Quaxpa villages, which was upstream and which downstream of the other? If they are in the order expected, then all this means is that it was common to refer to any group of related people who lived upstream of you as the 'Upstream People', and any who lived downstream of you as the 'Downstream People'. This could be equally used to refer to closely grouped villages or far-flung ethnic kindred. I don't see anything here to arouse great suspicion. > Unfortunately, the Dhegiha groups seem to be very chameleon-like. They > look pretty much like their contemporary neighbors, to the extent that > their early villages have been securely identified. Some of them, at > least the Osage for certain, maybe the Omaha (with the Ponca) and Kaw seem > to be Oneota associated, but the connections are tenuous, and the overlap > of territory with the more securely Oneota-affiliated Ioway, Otoe, and > Missouria makes it difficult to be sure which village sites belonged to > whom. Why should the Dhegihans be more chameleon-like than the Chiwere? One possible answer to this question would be that they were refugees from another archaeological province who moved into Chiwere territory and had to adopt a Chiwere-like mode of life. >> In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the >> big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be >> so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might >> very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake >> and as the central god of their daily existence. > On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and > adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. I think these myths would have to be compared in more detail. But in general, why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? >> There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. >> For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference >> between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, >> Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete >> collapse of MVS *u into *i. > On the other hand, this is a relatively simple change, and in other ways > Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw are not very much alike. For example, Quapaw has > k? and x? for *k? and *x?, while Osage and Kaw have k? for both, and Omaha > has ? for both. I think the first three also have the *niNke 'round' > article where OP has dhaN. But then OP agrees with IO and Wi in having h > for *ph in 'I say'. I think Quapaw does, too, but Osage and Kaw have ph - > [ps^] in Osage. In general, I think we're not yet sure how or if we can > subgroup Dhegiha, apart from Omaha + Ponca and Osage + Kaw. The collapse of MVS *u into *i may technically be a relatively simple change, but its effects are catastrophic. It means that every morpheme in the language that was formerly distinguished from another only by [u] vs. [i] is now indestinguishable. If a couple of rare consonants like k? and x? collapse, it's fairly trivial, but for two vowels to collapse, especially ones so common as [u] and [i], is devastating. I agree though that this doesn't conclusively link Quapaw more closely to OP than to Osage and Kaw. >> As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of >> foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, >> becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. > I'm not sure if I agree with this concept of breakdown, though of course > there would be traces of the contact. Maybe you're thinking of > pidginization? I'm thinking of what's likely to happen to the phonology and the subtler aspects of grammar when a high proportion of the people speaking the language are non-native speakers who speak it poorly. I don't know if you would call that pidginization, but the effects would be in that direction. >> This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan >> languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble >> making sense of them. > I don't consider any of the Dhegiha languages to be notably chaotic. I > admit to having trouble understanding all kinds of things, but I think > it is just me and my neophyte status with the language. See our discussions of -i/-bi, proximate and obviative, the vs. athe. We do not really understand these things, and yet we cannot reliably produce a third-person indicative statement until we do. I've been immersing myself in the Dorsey texts for the past year and a half. You wrote a 3"-thick scholarly grammar of OP back in the 1980's. I have trouble understanding all kinds of things too, but we aren't strictly neophytes any more, and in this case I don't think the problem is just us. >> Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan >> languages ... > Dakota is also at an interesting crossroads, geopolitically speaking, and, What sort of geopolitical crossroads do you have in mind here? > personally, over the years I've come to think that it looks like someone > who wasn't familiar with some of the finer nuances of proper Siouan > morphology has been at work simplifying it. It's not as devoid of > irregular inflection as Mandan, but they've been working on it. And what's > with those second datives and reflexives! I'm not sure we're connecting on what I was trying to get across. I would predict that a language which, for a very long period of time, was spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, would be complex in the sense of having a highly developed reportoire of grammatical subtleties, but that this grammar would tend to be regular. A language that had been swallowing a lot of foreign speakers, or especially one that had seen expansion and then remixing of people speaking substantially different dialects, would be complex in the sense of having a great deal of irregularities resulting from fragmented and partially abandoned grammatical forms, yet reduced phonologically and grammatically simplified in the sense of becoming more dependent on crude word order. I don't know about Mandan, but Dakotan seems to me more like the former type, and Dhegihan more like the latter. Rory From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sat Jan 19 22:34:43 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 14:34:43 -0800 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just for the record, the origin of the name Ohio in the Seneca language is quite clear, as is its passage from French into English, where of course it acquired a spelling pronunciation. The Senecas never "rationalized" it. The Omaha thing, which apparently resembles the later English spelling pronunciation, seems to me to be a coincidence, but there I'm outside my field. Wally > If the resemblance of the Omaha term Uhai to > the English form Ohio is not pure coincidence, > then the name of the Ohio River must have been > common to both Dhegihans and Iroquoians, with > both rationalizing a single 'international' > name into something plausible in their own > respective languages. For the Iroquoians, it > was rationalized as 'Great River', and for > the Dhegihans it was rationalized as something > like 'Roadway', or 'They Pass Through on It'. > If we accept this, then there are two main > possibilities: > > 1) The Dhegihan term is primary. It was > reduced from something like Opha=p=a > originally to something like *Oha=i in > that wing of Dhegihan closest to the > Seneca, who picked up the name from > them and rationalized it to ohi:yo?. > > 2) The Dhegihan name is a loadword from > Seneca or some other source. In that > case, the wing of Dhegihan most closely > involved with the Ohio River rationalized > the term as Uha=i or whatever, and passed > it back to the Osage, who recast it into > their own dialect as Opha=p=a. From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 23:04:15 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 15:04:15 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the > Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed > the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or > 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who > went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in > between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular > assumption.) It may be of interest to people that the Shawnee and Miami names for the Ohio River essentially translate as the 'Kansa River'. That is, that it contains a root which is otherwise the same root as found in both languages' names for the Kaws. This might indicate that the presence of Dhegiha speakers on the lower Ohio extended into more recent times than we think. >> On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and >> adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. > I think these myths would have to be compared in more detail. But in general, > why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > I would predict that a language which, for a very long period of time, was > spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, would be complex in the sense of > having a highly developed reportoire of grammatical subtleties, but that this > grammar would tend to be regular. Not necessarily -- Cheyenne probably has never been acquired by many second language speakers, yet it has a lot of highly irregular, unpredictable morphology. We know enough about Algonquian historical phonology to know that this is entirely the result of several waves of very severe sound changes sweeping over Cheyenne, creating a lot of surface opacity in the morphology, which, for whatever reason, the speakers never saw fit to regularize. Another example might be the Louisiana isolate Chitimacha, probably never learned by many 'new' people, which is characterized by surprisingly short words, and a lot of irregular and usually nonproductive morphology. I think we have to be extremely cautious about making generalizations on these typological grounds, at least where the pre-contact histories simply are not known. David From lcumberl at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 10:43:25 2002 From: lcumberl at indiana.edu (Linda A Cumberland) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 05:43:25 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? Linda > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:19:20 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:19:20 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I would like to add that an even earlier Iroquoian hydrological conception of the Ohio started at the headwaters of the Allegheny and flowed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Michael McCafferty On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Wallace Chafe wrote: > Dear Siouanists, > > This is irrelevant to the Siouan discussion, but I have to throw it in > anyway. Seneca ohi:yo? (with a Y) actually refers to what is conceived of > as a single river from its source in Pennsylvania to its confluence with > the Mississippi. In English we conceive of this as two rivers, the > Allegheny (in NY spelled Allegany) and the Ohio, changing its identity in > Pittsburgh. The -h- means "river", but the -iyo- part is a little harder > to translate. Perhaps "nice river" comes closer. "Beautiful" as an > aesthetic judgment doesn't quite do it. The cognate in Tuscarora means > "big", but the other languages seem to have moved away from the size > meaning alone. It's interesting to compare English "grand", with both the > size and value judgments. Seneca, at least nowadays, has moved toward the > value end of it. Wi:yo:h (without any incorporation) means "it's good" or > "nice". > > The Osage name has been borrowed into Seneca as wasa:se?, which is the > name for the war dance. > > Wally Chafe > > > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:20:59 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:20:59 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Also Potawatomi historically. On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. > > David > > ---------- > >From: "Rankin, Robert L" > >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" > >Subject: RE: Osage > >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > > > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > > languages around Iowa. > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:44:32 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:44:32 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > > why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? > > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) No, we actually (Dave and I) discussed this a few years ago and with the help of biologists and archaeologists here at IU determined that alligators (at least not in the memory of any humans) lived in the lower Ohio. There was considerable trade up and down the Mississippi dating to the Archaic. I imagine this is where the alligator teeth, presumably skins, and the words came from. Michael McCafferty Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu From egooding at iupui.edu Sun Jan 20 16:02:34 2002 From: egooding at iupui.edu (Erik Gooding) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:02:34 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >>From Riggs (1893:142) concerning Unktehi, the water monster of the Dakota (Santee-Sisseton): "They say it was Unktehi. So when Unktehi had come to the shore, they filled both his eyes with the burnt stones, and on his many horns they piled the baggage, and their husbands they placed among the baggage." The horned-water monster is at least common throughout the Dakotan groups, from the lakes of Minnesota, to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, to the lakes of southern and central Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. I'm not sure if this is a Dakotan-only idea or not, it may have come from the east and the Great Lakes groups. There is a drawing of one of these somewhere, perhaps in Dorsey (1894) or something from that time period. Erik G. At 05:43 AM 1/20/02 -0500, Linda A Cumberland wrote: >For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the >lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine >consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were >picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she >didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she >sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out >again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was >huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the >other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" >would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the >existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does >anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? > >Linda > > >> The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the >> Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this >> water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an >> English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times >> apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the >> Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, >> Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) >> > From Zylogy at aol.com Sun Jan 20 16:53:10 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:53:10 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Just a question- how far north did sturgeon go off the main Mississippi, and how big do they get- they're pretty spikey, aren't they? Jess Tauber From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 20 17:46:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:46:41 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: I have not weighed in on the Dhegiha migration business for a couple of reasons. I have been busy with the first week of classes at KU, but, more importantly, it would involve retyping for about the 8th time my considered position on the question. John and I have gone back and forth on this for many years with several correspondents. Interestingly, neither of us seems to be able to marshal sufficient argument to really carry the day or, at least, convince the other. The evidence is interpretable within more than one hypothesis. For various linguistic reasons including the study of Siouan agri- cultural terms, the bow, hydronyms, ethnonyms, tribal accounts, etc., I am strongly sympathetic to an Ohio Valley origin. In this I agree with Dale Henning, one of the preeminent Dhegiha-oriented archae- ologists. Rather than try to recapitulate all my points, let me attach a copy of a lecture I gave at the Kaw Mission here in Kansas a year ago. It was a public lecture, not an academic treatise, but it covers the ground in an elementary way. Beyond that, I only have a couple of comments and questions here. Rory writes: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) And this probably comes fairly close to what I agree with, although I never connected 'people of the middle waters' with the up- and down-stream analyses. Although it fits. When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to some particular document? Sacred legends are like rolling stones. With the advent of modern scientific studies and literacy, they tend to gather moss. I discount 20th cent. versions much more than earlier ones. But they're important at least to consider. >2) By the Sacred Legend, the Omahas and Quapaws were living as one people in the Ohio Valley, together with the Ioways. Linguistically, there is little reason to include the Ioways. It has been noted in the literature that the Omahas and Ioways traveled/lived together up in what is probably now Iowa at some point, and this would presumably account for some loans, etc., but this would have been long after splitting from the Kaw-Osage and Quapaw groups. A couple of points responding to John. First, it is my under- standing from Kathy Shea, that Ponca (as opposed to Omaha) preserves the /ph/ 1st person forms in verbs like e-he 'say', i.e., Ponca has /ephe/ like Kaw-Osage, but unlike Quapaw. If that is the case, the isogloss is not diagnostic for subgrouping. I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret /uhai/ alone. As for the Quapaws, the village John refers to (Okaxpa -- spelled Kappa, Qappa, etc. by the French) only bore the single name in its French incarnation. In Quapaw it was called Okaxpa-xti 'real Quapaws', so it seems clear that other villages also claimed the Okaxpa monicker. Lastly, Le Bourgmont visited the Kaw settlement in NE Kansas very early and mentions prominently that their village was overrun by the Otoes, who then settled in it. This foreign occupation would provide the very little Oneota-like pottery that was discovered there. File hopefully attached. If you wish to read it, you will need the Siouan font set that may be obtained from John's web site. Bob -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: councilgrove.doc Type: application/octet-stream Size: 83456 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sun Jan 20 18:37:34 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:37:34 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: True. That very likely would be under Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo influence, tho, since it's not found for Ojibwe. ---------- >From: Michael Mccafferty >To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >Subject: Re: Osage >Date: Sun, Jan 20, 2002, 6:20 am > > Also Potawatomi historically. > > > On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > >> In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. >> >> David >> >> ---------- >> >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >> >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >> >Subject: RE: Osage >> >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am >> > >> >> > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the >> > languages around Iowa. >> >> >> > > > Michael McCafferty > 307 Memorial Hall > Indiana University > Bloomington, Indiana > 47405 > mmccaffe at indiana.edu > > "Talking is often a torment for me, and I > need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. > C.G. Jung > > "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." > Rumi > > > From Rgraczyk at aol.com Sun Jan 20 21:28:15 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 16:28:15 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any possible cognates? Randy From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 20 23:26:03 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 17:26:03 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any possible cognates? Randy Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk taxonomy for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, arachnids and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. Bob From enichol4 at attbi.com Mon Jan 21 01:51:17 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 19:51:17 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Here's an address for a picture of the Cherokee water monster, Uk'tena: http://www.ahalenia.com/malm/paintings/wcg/detailed/ukten.html Some of what I read makes the Dakota Unktehi out to be "water oxen", and the Winnebago wak'tcexi (Radin) seems to be like a water panther. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Linda A Cumberland" To: Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 4:43 AM Subject: Water monsters > For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the > lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine > consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were > picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she > didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she > sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out > again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was > huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the > other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" > would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the > existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does > anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? > > Linda > > > > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 07:28:07 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 00:28:07 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it > is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any > possible cognates? Randy > > Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk taxonomy > for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, arachnids > and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. Specifically it looks like Dakotan wablus^ka, implying *waprus^ka, albeit with metathesis of s^k (and s^ > s). The *wakrus^ka and *waprus^ka variants don't correspond regularly, but the match looks reasonable. I wonder if the Crow form is regularly derived from *waprus^ka? Could it be a loan? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 09:05:15 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 02:05:15 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > It may be of interest to people that the Shawnee and Miami names for the > Ohio River essentially translate as the 'Kansa River'. That is, that it > contains a root which is otherwise the same root as found in both languages' > names for the Kaws. This might indicate that the presence of Dhegiha > speakers on the lower Ohio extended into more recent times than we think. This, of course, is a much more reliable sort of evidence than a "folk etiology." However, it's not clear what the name Akansea (> Arkansas), Kansea and other variants applied to the river implies. It's transparently Kansa (Kaw), of course, but seems to refer to the Quapaw (Arkansas) within the historical period. This could be a specialization from a more general use originally referring to all Dhegiha speakers, or at least more than the Quapaw alone. Costa, McCafferty, Rankin, and I and no doubt others have speculated as to what exactly it might have implied originally without being able to cite any ethnographic evidence that might clarify the linguistic similarity. We've also debated whether the name would imply that the Kansa (whoever they might be) originated somewhere up the river or simply lived on its lower reaches at one point. A lot depends on the way in which the namers were familiar with the river and the Kansa in question. Michael McCafferty points out that the Illinois were familiar with the Ohio along a fairly long stretch of the lower reaches, and the Shawnee were even further up stream. This makes it difficult for me if I want to claim that only certain elements, perhaps the Arkansas/Quapaw, lived there, and only near the mouth. It might suggest, for example, that these Algonquian groups found the Dhegiha speakers present along the river when they first encountered it. I find this not unnatural as a historical implication of the naming pattern, but really awkward linguistically. I keep wondering how the butler got to the pub in time for the Miami-Illinopis and Shawnee to see him sipping a pint in the Ohio room, when he was apparently diverging linguistically from the Dakota, Chiwere, and Winnebago in Upper Mississippi Manornot too long before. Unless, of course, they diverged in the pub, but then why don't the other have Ohio Valley mud on their shoes, too? No matter how you work it, somebody has an energetic itinerary and a tight time table. Or perhaps the butler has an identical twin? In regard to the interpretation of Kansa in this context, as far as I know the Kansa specifically are a separate group at contact, but linguistically they are very similiar to the Osage, albeit also with certain characteristic developments (e.g., voicing of the lax stops, a particular development of *s^R- in the second person of *r-stems, and so on). It seems like they must have been close neighbors of the Osage for a long time, or may even have diverged from them within the last few centuries. Since there are Kansa clans among the Omaha, Osage, and Kansa, it seems likely that Kansa (KkaNze) is primarily a clan name, and only secondarily a tribal name. The same is true of Osage (Waz^az^e) and Ponca (PpaNkka). During the historical period Dhegiha clans have served primarily as kinship units and residential subdivisions within the assembled tribe on the hunt. As far as I know they have not been the basis of villages or residential grouping within villages. So, it's hard to see names like Kansa arising among outsiders from a situation like encountering only the Kansa clan first, or from one like dealing primarily with a Kansa clan village. It's also not clear how a clan-based name could come to be applied to a whole tribe internally. One possible scenario would be that the three tribes with clan-based names were named for dominant clan-based factions within them. "Those who adhered to the Kansa faction" and so on. The only confirmatory evidence for this would be the absence of a Ponca clan among the Omaha, even though the Omaha and Ponca agree in general terms that they are fragments of an original whole. Seemingly after they divided no significant number of Ponca clansmen remained among the Omahas. For that matter, the Ponca lack a Kansa clan. So, if Algonquian groups call the Dhegiha or some portion of them Kansa, this would probably refer to a group with a prominent Kansa faction. The name may have been generalized from this to apply to all known groups with similar languages and cultures. The Kansa-prominent group might, of course, be the forebears of the modern Kansa, but they might equally be some entity no longer extant or known today under another name, perhaps the Quapaw. Incidentally, for what it is worth, the only uniquely Dhegiha clan name known among the Quapaw is Honga (HaNga). The other Quapaw clan names known are all based on natural phenomena like animals or stars. This is not terribly significant, because most Dhegiha clans have secondary associations of this sort, and the Quapaw clan structure seems to have been devastated during their demographic collapse and the successive mergers of the several villages. Still, we don't know of a Kansa clan among the Quapaw. One other possible reason for thinking of Dhegiha speakers as Kansa is that the Kansa clan in some cases is especially associated with pipes (perhaps the other association of wind is connected). Pipes are associated functionally with peace-making and so perhaps with foreign relations. Maybe the Kansa were the usual peaceful representatives of Dhegiha groups. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 09:22:22 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 02:22:22 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Linda A Cumberland wrote: > ... the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, > snake-like, and had antlers! ... Does anyone know of a tradition > involving such an antlered monster? Well, I think Chinese dragons are snake-like and have antlers. I should probably clarify that I believe the explanation of watermonsters in terms of alligators is not claimed to be direct in every case. I simply ran across the suggestion somewhere once. I didn't get the impression that alligators were supposed to have coincided at any point with the later distribution of watermonster stores. Lions and the like figure prominently in Old World stories far outside their natural range, even though those ranges were once greater than they are now. I think they idea is that such stories are popular even in the absence of the original creatures, and, of course, stories grow or at least vary with the telling and the distance from the original inspiration. Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North America. I think in the Omaha conception watermonsters are associated with whirlpools or eddies in the Missouri. In the Haxige stories they don't seem to be particularly described, but I think it's Orphan who kills one with seven heads. This sounds a bit like it may have been influenced by the Greek myth of Hercules and the Hydra. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 11:31:33 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 04:31:33 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the > Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they > crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the > UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or > 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of > the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. > (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) I agree, except that I think that the specifics of the Osage/Kaw as the Niu(s)kaNska are actually your interpretation, this term being specific to the Osage and, as far as I know, not previously attached to this story. In fact, I think you said the Osage and Kaw were missing in the Sacred Legend in your summary of the 18th. I mention this only because it shows how easily stories like this grow. Anything that makes sense becomes part of the canon. I may have misparsed the scope of "In the Sacred Legend, ..." failing to properly perceive your summary here as going intentionally beyond the legend to encompass your own hypothesis. I omit Rory's summarization and elaboration of his own version (# 2), which, if he will work it up, is certainly worth pursuing. > 3) The Sacred Legend is a nineteenth century concoction designed to > explain how linguistically related tribes such as the Osage and Quapaw > came about with respect to the Omaha. It's claims of an earlier > homeland in the Ohio Valley are false, as is its account of the > crossing. False as presented. If true in any sense, they would presumably apply only the the Dhegiha, and then a Dhegiha population that was linguistically undifferentiated. A systematic tripartite terminology like Omaha/Niu(s)kanska/Quapaw, if the system isn't a figment of our ex post facto analysis of the pieces, only makes sense after emplacement in the Transmississippi. It seems to be a fallacy to assume that any part of it existed before that, like assuming that the 13 colonies were founded by an immigration of 13 tribes named Hampshirites, Massachusettsians, etc. I'd say that a sure sign that a story is made up after the fact to explain an existing situation is an attempt to explain the whole cast of nations at the time the story is first known by importing them as a set from someplace else. If an immigration occurred, it would probably have been made by an undifferentiated ancestral nation. I might add that as soon as one starts thinking in terms of a story that recounts the immigration of undifferentiated Mississippi Valley Siouan people or even merely undifferentiated Dhegiha people, one is probably talking about something so long ago that it becomes rather difficult to credit there being a useful memory of it. Of course, if this story were available in independent versions from all or even several of the Dhegiha groups, e.g., not just the Omaha, Ponca, and Otoe (a local group in the historical period), but also the Osage, or, particularly, the Quapaw, it would have considerably more weight. But when the sources are all centered on the Omaha Agency area and differ rather widely in detail, I tend to see it as a local (and recent) tradition. > In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of > southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, > Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral > homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) I used to get much more specific about this, but as Oneota archaeology and my own understanding of Mississippi Valley Siouan get more complex, I've retreated to a sort of core of two things that I take to be facts: A) A linguistic entity like Mississippi Valley has to originate in a relatively restricted area. It cannot have come out of the ground over the entire territory attested for MVS languages at contact, let alone the more extended range that developed subsequently. B) Several MVS groups have been assigned by archaeologists to Oneota and "quasi-Oneota" entities (i.e., Psinomani for Dakota) in the Minnesota (Dakotan) - NE Iowa (Ioway) area. Others have been assigned to Oneota in Wisconsin (Winnebago) or the lower Missouri River area (Omaha, Kansa, Osage), though these assignments have been hotly disputed in various quarters. I suspect there is something in the general association. I'd go further, with a sort of syllogism: given A, either B is correct. including some of the disputed assignments (in general, if not in specific), or B is wrong. I should emphasize that this sort of argument is pretty fuzzy. I'm not sure how big the area involved would be. Maybe it could extend from Minnesota to the lower Ohio, though I'd be surprised if the cultures involved were as divergent as this would imply. And, perhaps B really is wrong. I've sometimes suggested that the southern influences Bob Rankin sees in Dhegiha could be explained in Minnesota in terms of the known Mississippian settlements in the area, contemporaneous with Oneota, Aztalan being the best known, though not the only one and not in what I'd assume to be Dhegiha territory. But maybe the influence I attribute to these settlements was more intense even than I've assumed, and included introduction of some of the more northerly of the Mississippi Valley Siouan languages, and not just some areal influence on them. Things are always a little bit slippery when we try to assign languages to pots. > First, I think John's view has much to recommend it in terms of > geographical parsimony. If we can place the Dhegihans here, with the > Dakotans in south-central Minnesota, the Winnebago in eastern > Wisconsin, and the Chiwere in eastern Iowa, then we have all four > branches of MVS neatly wrapped up in a compact area. Within this > area, dialect gradients can nicely explain features that link Dakotan > with Dhegihan and Winnebago with Chiwere, and that link Dakotan with > Winnebago and Dhegihan with Chiwere. Further, we might also be able > to recognize a common MVS archaeological culture in the Effigy Mound > culture, which covered a good section of that territory. Is this your > thought too, John? That's pretty much what I like about it, though I'm thinking in terms of Oneota and I'm not sure to what extent archaeologists are willing to identify Effigy Mound as the burial manifestation of Oneota or some of Oneota. It does seem that there is a historical tendency to perceive the settlements and the burial sites as separate, perhaps erroniously. > > There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are > > all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways > > that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of > > the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack > > of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to > > differentiation from a common source language. > > Why should it be a difficulty that these tribes should be together? > (I assume you're referring to the Ioways being with the Dhegihans.) Yes, and to the Dhegiha groups being together, too. I know of some limited cases of fragmentary groups associating with others or several fragments of larger groups coming together in larger settlements, but most of these associations seem to have been rather temporary. I think that seeing families of nations travelling together smacks of rationalization. Relatives may well travel together, and undifferentiated ancestral nations, but not usually entire fully differentiated related nations. Linguistic differentiation implies separation. Something else that may earmark this as a rationalization is that there are no specific individuals named. > We don't know enough about the history of the tribes before contact > even to be sure where they were, much less to rule out possible social > relationships between them. Even if we assume that the Ioways were > Oneota and based up in Iowa, just one group of Ioway visitors that > made an impression at the time could easily have ended up in the > Sacred Legend. I guess it just seems to me more plausible to see the presence of the Ioway as a flaw in the account than to take this line of reasoning. > And if the Sacred Legend is no more than a naive rationalization of > language differentiation (which seems intrinsically unlikely to me), > why should it include the geographically distant Quapaw and the > linguistically rather distant Ioways while ignoring the Osage and Kaw, > and the geographically proximate Dakotans and Winnebagoes? I've seen a version that includes the Winnebago, and, I think, the Osage and Kansa, but never one that includes the Dakota. I suspect some special knowledge is involved. For one thing, in the mid to late 19th century the Quapaw were largely resident with the Osage, if I recall. I've actually seen a proposal (from Ludwickson and/or Shea?) that Omaha familiarity with the Ohio Valley was acquired during steamboat and/or rail visits of chiefly delegations to Washington for treaty negotiations. I deduce that speculations on the etymology of "Ohio" might date to then, though such speculations might well occurred anytime and be secondary to the story. > Thanks to you and Wally for this information! This is definitely > relevant, but not necessarily a counter-argument. So English got Ohio > from the French, who got it from the Seneca, whose name for the entire > Ohio River, including the Allegheny, was ohi:yo?, probably originally > meaning something like 'Great River', or 'Rio Grande'. Now, am I > understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with > Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. In fact, the Omaha version is clearly a folk etymology of the English version. The Omaha name for the Ohio comes from English. If the Omaha ever had a name for the Ohio, I very much doubt it was uhaihau or anything like that. Before about 1880 or so, it would have been uhaiha. In Proto-Dhegiha it would have been ophapi, and it's getting progressively less like ohaio as it goes. Apart from this, English speakers did not learn the name of the Ohio from the Omaha in the 1890s, but from the French in the 1600s. > Of the Okaxpa and the ImahaN Quaxpa villages, which was upstream and > which downstream of the other? All I know is that they varied over time. My point is that if we have to see Okaxpa as opposed to some 'upstream' group, we can look a lot closer than Nebraska. In fact, you can easily be downstream of your neighbors without the neighbors being named upstream, and if you move at a later date to a location upstream of those neighbors you may be called downstreamers still. The English no longer dwell in the angle of the northern German coast, if that's the basis of the name, and there are Suffolks and Norfolks all over the landscape in the US, none of them south or north of anything in particular. > Why should the Dhegihans be more chameleon-like than the Chiwere? I don't know. Archaeologists are generally happy with the proposition of identifying all three Chiwere groups with Oneota focuses or phases (depending on the time of the attribution). But they have been unable to identify any consistent cultural pattern for Dhegiha. A number of Oneota suggestions have been made and some disputed, but otherwise they seem to be unable to distinguish the various groups among the local phenomena in the areas where they are first noted. I have actually overstated things a bit, since I think that a little hard looking will find Oneota antecedants for all five Dhegiha groups. The Chameleon effect actually only occurs with the replacement of most imperishable property with trade goods and the spread of various late cultural fashions. The more abstract aspects of Dhegiha culture are still present in the 1890s and even today and are quite distinctive. I'm thinking of things like the clan names and other aspects of their theories of their societies. Not to mention their languages ... > One possible answer to this question would be that they were refugees > from another archaeological province who moved into Chiwere territory > and had to adopt a Chiwere-like mode of life. Many aspects of the patterns attested in the Lower Ohio should have worked as well westward. In fact, Oneota transports rather well, too, and seems to spread progressively south, east and west along a broad front from Illinois through Missouri into Kansas and Nebraska over time. Archaeologists just don't have any idea who was living at most of these sites in most cases. Various Oneota sites in Illinois and elsewhere have been attributed to the Illinois. There are Oneota phases in Wisconsin that have never been attributed to the Winnebago. The Psinomani materials attributed to Dakotan look like Oneota pottery combined with a Woodland pattern of subsistance and a fair amount of less Oneota-like pottery, too, or, to put it another way, like Oneota influences spreading into new areas. The last layers in the American Bottom (OK - yuck!), the homeland of Cahokia Mississippian, are Oneota. There are more than enough Oneota phases around now to account for all attested Mississippi Valley Siouan groups. > The collapse of MVS *u into *i may technically be a relatively simple > change, but its effects are catastrophic. It means that every > morpheme in the language that was formerly distinguished from another > only by [u] vs. [i] is now indestinguishable. There aren't many grammatical distinctions that get lost this way, however. Actually, I can't think of any. Also, since both Kansa and Osage have *u > u" (umlauted u), both have already undergone a step very helpful in changing u > i. If this happened in Proto-Dhegiha, it wouldn't be surprising if two of the daughter languages independently changed u" > i. Actually, there are some cases in Kansa where *i appears as u" or *u as i, so I think that the merger is already in progress. > If a couple of rare consonants like k? and x? collapse, it's fairly > trivial, but for two vowels to collapse, especially ones so common as > [u] and [i], is devastating. I agree though that this doesn't > conclusively link Quapaw more closely to OP than to Osage and Kaw. The morphemes with k? and x? are realtively few, but they occur fairly frequently. For example compare Dakota k?u 'to give' with Omaha-Ponca ?i 'to give'. Which of the two changes involved is more of a problem? Anyway, we don't subgroup languages based on the consequences of a change to the structure of a language, but on the simple occurence of the change. We try to consider only changes that are connected, but in practice this is often a matter of judgement. It's very difficult to control for changes that occur in dialect continuums, especially complexly articulated ones. You do begin to get suspicious (or should) when your criteria lead to overlapping subgroups, or, as it usually happens, competing schemes of subgrouping. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 11:48:14 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 04:48:14 -0700 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'll leave the archaeology aside. It should be noted that Bob's analysis, besides being so well argued that it stretches me to the limits to dispute those that cause me difficulties with respect to my requirement for a plausible unity for Proto-Mississippi Valley, are, as far as I am aware, very much more in accord with the standard archaeological and ethnohistorical proposals. Rory's interesting observations on Niuskonska certainly don't help my case any, either. On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a > quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is > reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it > has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. > Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, > Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. > Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret > /uhai/ alone. Omaha uhe 'to follow something', udhuhe (< *irophe) to follow something by means of something'. The analysis of English Ohio as deriving from Omaha uhai (h)au 'they followed it' (usually without the h, which is supicious in itself, for those who know their folk etymologists) is an explicit part of the Omaha accounts of the story of the Dhegiha tribes (and various others) crossing the Mississippi from the Ohio and spreading "upstream" and "downstream." In fact, these three etynologies - one wildly incorrect, the other two obvious to any speaker of a Dhegiha language - are the essential basis of the story, along with the circumstance that the participants are all linguistically closely related. There are versions in Dorsey, Fletcher & LaFlesche, and other places, some, but not all, derived from these sources. Some good ethnohistorian with good linguistic consulting really should do something with this someday. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jan 21 19:25:10 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 13:25:10 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: I think that linguists often underestimate the time depths they are working with. This was true of American archaeology until the advent of technical dating systems too. There have been numerous statements over the years about Dhegiha languages that have posited a split in the years immediately preceding Columbus. If that were the case, there would indeed be a conflict between my views and those held by John, and there would be very little temporal wiggle-room. The Oneota archaeological complex in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa is roughly 1000 years old. I tend to believe the splits in Dhegiha are older however. There is no real way to prove this, although I've tried by showing that Omaha-Ponca, Kansa-Osage and Quapaw borrowed different Algonquian words for 'bow'. There are few such diagnostic words however, and there are even possible alternative explanations for 'bow'. Reduced to analogy, I'd look to languages like Spanish and Portuguese. These are often said to be mutually intelligible (although, outside of bare-bones communication, they are not). If you look at the earliest texts from Span./Port. dating conveniently from about 1000 years ago (like Oneota), you see that most of the features distinguishing these two languages were already in place. So the split between them is considerably earlier that 1K years ago, and really dates from the earliest Roman occupation. That is, the Span/Port time depth is nearly equal to the overall Romance time depth of 2000+ years. Now, if Dhegiha is similarly old, there would be plenty of time for them to have originated, as they must have, with the rest of Mississippi Valley Siouan and STILL have occupied the lower Ohio Valley at some more recent time. The Oneota similarities I still ascribe to contact and diffusion of the pottery style. I leave the question of geographical location for MVS as a whole open. At approx. 2000 years, I don't know where they were. The only real hint we have is the historical location of the other subgroups plus Yuchi and Catawba, and that doesn't tell us who did the moving. Bob From demallie at indiana.edu Mon Jan 21 20:33:22 2002 From: demallie at indiana.edu (Demallie, Raymond J.) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 15:33:22 -0500 Subject: Tribal ethnonyms Message-ID: Noting the interest in tribal ethnonyms in recent postings I thought it worthwhile to draw attention to the synonymies in the Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, Plains. This work was so long in preparation that many Siouanists may not be aware that it was actually published last October. Doug Parks and Bob Rankin also have a chapter on Siouan in the Plains volume. Ray DeMallie From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 21:11:05 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 14:11:05 -0700 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hey, that was pretty incomprehensible. I seem to have left it as a combination of two different ways to word things. Let me try again. Take two: I'll leave the archaeology aside, except to say that that Bob's arguments on the subject are always so well put that it stretches me to the limits to dispute those aspects of the hypothesis that cause me difficulties with respect to my requirement for a period of compact physical unity for Proto-Mississippi Valley. As I've said already, sometimes I wonder if maybe the Dakota and Chiwere aren't misassigned, instead. In addition, the Ohio Valley Dhegiha hypothesis is very much more in accord with the standard archaeological and ethnohistorical proposals. It amounts to the canonical version, whereas I have to admit that I am proposing a somewhat wild-eyed reanalysis of things. Rory's interesting observations on Niu(s)konska certainly don't help my case any, either, as they actually bolster the upstream/downstream aspect nicely. I hope that's clearer. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 21 21:25:25 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 16:25:25 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Pythons or anacondas are large water dwelling snakes who have two "horns" near the tail which are remnant toenails used to stimulate females during mating. So a story from far-afield? Some say these guys could grow to be 30 feet in length- archeological evidence shows in former days they indeed did (and not too long ago either- something to do with the old megafauna as prey- heck in Australia there were 28 foot long goannas that lived in caves until humans showed up, etc.). Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From BARudes at aol.com Mon Jan 21 22:13:10 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 17:13:10 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: In reply to Jess's comment, I cannot resist going speculative here. Is the water monster perhaps a legendary hold-over from an earlier abode of the people in question, or perhaps a legend that has been borrowed from people who have a link to the Amazon. There is SLOWLY growing evidence of migrations of peoples in pre-historic times out of the Amazon, across the Caribbean islands and onto the mainland of North America. (The evidence is archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic, but VERY speculative.) I am not saying here that the Proto-Siouan-speaking peoples and the related Proto-Catawban-speaking (and potentially related Yuchean-speaking [and perhaps related Iroquoian-speaking]) peoples personally arrived in North America from the Amazon, but there are some suspicious similarities with the Arawakan languages that I will hold for another day. In any event, if one reads through the texts that Douglas Taylor (1977) reported for Arawak and Island Carib, one finds remarkable parallels with Iroquois and Catawba legends. Blair From ioway at earthlink.net Tue Jan 22 03:49:02 2002 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 18:49:02 -0900 Subject: Absence Message-ID: I have decided to discontinue Internet for a time for personal spiritual reasons. I wish you all well. Please unsubscribe me or tell me how to unsubscribe. Lance From Zylogy at aol.com Tue Jan 22 04:36:32 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 23:36:32 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Interesting. That may be relatable to interesting coincidences in numeral terminology, pronominal systems, etc. The relations are: North to South on the west side of the Rockies, Andes, etc., but South to North on the east side. Big generalization. If one follows Nichols' speculations, people skirted the coastline from Asia in a maritime subsistance regime. Adapting inland in most places would have been troublesome because of mountains, deserts, or large-scale grasslands. Cutting across at Panama, etc. would have given migrants new coastlines to follow. And cultural advances appears to have generally gone South to North on the east side in latter times. People too? I've got solid numbers of parallel forms for Salishan and Yahgan (in Tierra del Fuego!) in both morphology and lexicon. I bet nobody has really looked closely for lexical parallels between Amazonian languages and Iroquoian or Siouan (though one should note that cursory examination of reconstructed Je and Macro-Je forms from Aryon Rodrigues made me instantly think of Iroquoian and Siouan. But I never looked further. One note: The postural auxiliaries of Yahgan looked an awful lot like those used in Tupi-Guarani. Jess Tauber From Zylogy at aol.com Tue Jan 22 10:25:17 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 05:25:17 EST Subject: north-south comparison: numbers Message-ID: Just thought I'd throw in a couple of bits and pieces. Make of it what you will. The following forms are from "Numbers in over 4500 languages" at http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml No time to double check for errors of transcription/phonetics, etc. Enjoy, throw raspberries, whatever. Lule 1 alapea 2 tamop 3 tamlip 4 locuep 5 moitle Chimu 1 onAk 2 aput 3 sopAt 4 nopAt 5 es'mAts 6 tsaitsa 9 tap 10 na-pong Zapotec 1 to 2 ChopE 3 ShoNE 4 tap 5 gueyE' 6 Xop 7 gazhE 8 Xon' 9 ga 10 shi N.Pame 1 santa 2 nuji 3 rnu? 4 giriui 5 gitsh'ai Yuchi 1 hit'e 2 noNwe 3 noNka 4 TaLa 5 tc'wahE 6 icdu 7 laXdju 8 bifa 9 tEka Keres 1 ?isga 2 dyuu(mi) 3 chami 4 dyaana 5 taama 6 sh'isa 10 k'azi Cherokee 1 saquui 2 ta?li 3 tso:i 4 nV:gu 4 hi:sgi 6 sudali 10 sgohi N.Iroquois (approx. common): 1 Nskat 2 tekni 3 ahseN 4 kayeriN (?) 5 wiskoN 10 washeN (experts feel free to correct) Wichita 1 chi?ass 2 wic 3 taw 4 ta:kwic 5 iskwi:c Chitimacha 1 hongo 2 hupau 3 kahitie 4 mechechant 5 hussa ProtoMayan 1 xu:n 2 ka?- 3 ?o:sh- 4 ka:ng- 5 ho?- 6 wahq- There are many other series I could throw into the mix, but really one would need a map to see the trends across continents. Note Pame, Iroquois, Mayan 1-5 Much larger scale comparison seems to indicate most numerals once ended or could end in something like -kwn which in some languages fronted, lost labialization, etc., and in others became labial, etc. The usual suspect sound changes. Meant "count"? Serialization and other process have taken their toll, but as one looks at variation, it appears far from random. Good thing I ain't claiming this is serious linguistics! Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From jmcbride at kayserv.net Tue Jan 22 14:51:49 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 08:51:49 -0600 Subject: Northward migration Message-ID: > There is SLOWLY growing evidence of migrations of peoples in > pre-historic times out of the Amazon, across the Caribbean islands and onto > the mainland of North America. (The evidence is archaeological, > ethnographic > and linguistic, but VERY speculative.) I was away from my computer all weekend, and look what I missed! Anyway, I did want to chime in a little on the particularly non-Siouan Cherokee issues touched on this weekend. I once heard an elder tell an interesting origin story--one of about thirty or more attibuted to the Cherokees--that lends some apocryphal credence to the "northward migration via the Caribbean" hypothesis. Way back, it seems we lived on an island that was sinking. We fled northward until it turned cold and "rained white." We stayed there only three days and then we moved slightly westward until we came to a place where people ate one another. And that's where we made our home. Definitely strange, but interesting from a speculative What-If point of view! As for the Ukten, this serpentine "water monster," it is mentioned by Mooney several times in his big three piece ethnographic work History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. If memory serves, it can fly and has a charm on its head. It seems to be suspiciously close to the Siouan Unktehi, perhaps coincidentally or perhaps through borrowing. A quick glossing of the name for the Cherokee beast indicates at the very least that "s/he looks/sees." I was wondering what the etymology of the Siouan might be. Does anyone know? Can it be traced, or does evidence support a borrowing (for all I know, it may have been borrowed into Cherokee and "matched" to the grammar)? -Jm From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 16:37:05 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:37:05 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My impression is that the watermonsters such as the one once painted on a cliff upriver from St. Louis included serpent morphology. On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Linda A Cumberland wrote: > > ... the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, > > snake-like, and had antlers! ... Does anyone know of a tradition > > involving such an antlered monster? > > Well, I think Chinese dragons are snake-like and have antlers. > > I should probably clarify that I believe the explanation of watermonsters > in terms of alligators is not claimed to be direct in every case. I > simply ran across the suggestion somewhere once. I didn't get the > impression that alligators were supposed to have coincided at any point > with the later distribution of watermonster stores. Lions and the like > figure prominently in Old World stories far outside their natural range, > even though those ranges were once greater than they are now. I think they > idea is that such stories are popular even in the absence of the original > creatures, and, of course, stories grow or at least vary with the telling > and the distance from the original inspiration. > > Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. > If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being > associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any > general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North > America. > > I think in the Omaha conception watermonsters are associated with > whirlpools or eddies in the Missouri. In the Haxige stories they don't > seem to be particularly described, but I think it's Orphan who kills one > with seven heads. This sounds a bit like it may have been influenced by > the Greek myth of Hercules and the Hydra. > > > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 16:43:15 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:43:15 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > > Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. > If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being > associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any > general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North > America. > There is, in my estimation, a "must-read" chapter on the Iroquian underwater cat in _Feline Symbolism in the Americas_, by whoms and published when I forget. You'll get a good taste of snake in this. Michael McCafferty From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:00 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:00 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Carolyn's comments: I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. I also show accent on o- in the instance of in o'kxaNkxai which the speaker says means 'generation after generation'. As Osage is wont to do, this word lost the nasality of the second a. The Osage male declarative is no longer present in today's Osage (unfortunately) as near as I can tell. At least I've never heard it. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:02:47 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:02:47 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Hi Bob, Chiming in on Osage, I can tell you that ni 'water' + ohkaN'ska 'in the middle' explains the term popularly glossed as 'children of the middle waters'. Osages do not call themselves this, but rather waz^a'z^e. I've never gotten any solid explanation for waz^a'z^e from speakers. Minus the wa-, it's 'name' --the noun-- (z^a'z^e), but that doesn't tell us much. And I've never heard any speaker relate it to 'snake'. Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). Carolyn PS On my email (Compuserve), I cannot tell who has written comments on the Siouan list, unless they sign as you have below. Would you have any idea why this is? It's disconcerting to try to follow some of the discussions between anonymous participants never knowing who's commenting. Does anyone else have this problem? Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >>An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do with snakes in some way. >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. >The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). Chungguo 'middle kingdom' That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better idea. Bob < From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:11 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:11 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: In Osage, walu's^ka is 'bug' or any insect. WahkoN'taki is 'doctor', 'minister' (although there are alternative terms for both). What about a derivation--off the top of my head-- from 'talks to god' wahkoN'ta ki i'e, with the dative ki [god+dative+speak] This occured to me as I looked at another version of 'preacher' which is wahko'Nta i'e odha'ke 'god-speak-tell'. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > WakkaNdagi 'watermonster' in Omaha. (Which I think is 'wizard' in Kaw.) But OP wagdhishka (it would probably be walus^ka in Osage) is the cover term for the creature classification including bugs, snakes, lizzards, worms. etc. What Bob calls 'the creepy-crawlies'. Dakotan wablus^ka, wamdus^ka, etc., doesn't correspond regularly. OP suggests *wakrus^ka, while Dakotan suggests *waprus^ka. WakkaNdagi is interesting because it seems to be connected to WakkaNda 'god', which leaves over the element gi, which strikes me as a good match for Dakotan ki(N) 'the', though whether as a loan word or a fossil I couldn't say. We need all the help we can get with the articles, however. < From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:20 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:20 -0500 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: In Osage, 'another' is e'z^i wiN [this/that+not a]. I've also found s^i e'z^i wiN 'another one' in which s^i 'again' appears. wiN is the indefinite article, based on the numeral 'one' - wiN'xce. And 'others' as in ' ..the others who are sick' is e'z^is^ki hu'heka in which e'z^i 'other' s^ki 'also' and hu'heka 'sick' The expression 'the other way' is interesting in that it uses i'ma which is 'or'; 'which of two': i'mahtaha, where htaha is 'toward' or 'along a path toward' . i'mahtaha madhiN' = 'go the other way' Any other tribe is ohki'hce, an "off-tribe". (I'm a bit unsure of the aspiration in -hce here). Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. In Yahgan "other" also means "self". Nice economy- would be very interesting theoretically to find out how universal it might be and what the choices of alignment are- are they symmetrical? Do they also include non-1/2 persons, numerals, more diverse sets of distance demonstratives, etc.? What I've got so far seems to hint that bits and pieces can be missing from any given set- that you need to expand out to see the big picture. Unfortunately that also smacks of mass comparison- maybe though there is something to it (there are chess programs that assume a bigger underlying board than just the playing field of the particular game- something also in physics with symmetry breaking, etc.). So does anyone have any data on "other/another" in Siouan? Yuchi would be good too (Wagner doesn't have it that I could see). Thanks. Best, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com< From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Jan 22 19:40:32 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 13:40:32 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: carolyn quintero wrote: > Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e > (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). Eng. Osage may be a result of Fr. orthographic confusion: Dhegiha inital wa- was probably originally transcribed as 8- (as in Marquette's map of 1673 where 8chage). But 8- was also used for native o- (and Fr. ou-), so O(u)sage may be a spelling pronunciation. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, from Chiwere watóta.) This orthog. problem (though not specif. in relation to Osage) is discussed by Mccafferty in his LINGUIST List posting on the etym. of Chicago, 21 Dec. 2001 (which is good reading). Alan From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 19:48:57 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:48:57 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4DC030.E2D1BCE5@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > carolyn quintero wrote: > > > Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e > > (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). > > Eng. Osage may be a result of Fr. orthographic confusion: Dhegiha inital > wa- was probably originally transcribed as 8- (as in Marquette's map of > 1673 where 8chage). Yes, Marquette and other early Jesuits in the Mississippi valley also used the digraph 8 to represent /wa(a)/. That is what Marquette indicates here. In fact, Marquette used 8 for /wa(a)/ in at least four terms on his 1673-4 map. But 8- was also used for native o- (and Fr. ou-), so > O(u)sage may be a spelling pronunciation. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, > from Chiwere wat�ta.) This orthog. problem (though not specif. in > relation to Osage) is discussed by Mccafferty in his LINGUIST List > posting on the etym. of Chicago, 21 Dec. 2001 (which is good reading). > Michael McCafferty From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Jan 22 21:28:22 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:28:22 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Excuse me: McCafferty (with capital C) From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jan 22 22:01:29 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 16:01:29 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Maybe he means /ophe/, = OS /op$e/ 'step, tread'. It would be ophape in the 3rd person. Bob -----Original Message----- From: carolyn quintero To: INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/22/02 1:03 PM Subject: RE: Osage Carolyn's comments: I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. I also show accent on o- in the instance of in o'kxaNkxai which the speaker says means 'generation after generation'. As Osage is wont to do, this word lost the nasality of the second a. The Osage male declarative is no longer present in today's Osage (unfortunately) as near as I can tell. At least I've never heard it. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 01:30:32 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 19:30:32 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: > The expression 'the other way' is interesting in that it uses i'ma which is > 'or'; 'which of two': > i'mahtaha, where htaha is 'toward' or 'along a path toward' . > i'mahtaha madhiN' = 'go the other way' I think John mentioned aN'ma in OP, which seems to be used in the sense of 'the other person', or aN'ma ... aN'ma, the one ... the other. > In Osage, 'another' is e'z^i wiN [this/that+not a]. > I've also found s^i e'z^i wiN 'another one' in which s^i 'again' appears. > wiN is the indefinite article, based on the numeral 'one' - wiN'xce. > And 'others' as in ' ..the others who are sick' is > e'z^is^ki hu'heka > in which e'z^i 'other' s^ki 'also' and hu'heka 'sick' In OP (Dorsey at least), we have a'z^i, meaning 'other' in the sense of 'different' or 'foreign'. I'm puzzled by the OP a- / OS e- difference here. In other cases, OP uses e- to mean this/that. Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 02:01:34 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:01:34 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >> Now, am I >> understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with >> Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? > The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where > Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is > =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male > declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The > older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with > the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage > equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and > presumably does not exist. > What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ > in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. [...] All right, John, you drew me out and got me square on that one! Well done!! I'll take it as established from here that Omaha Uhai is a morphologically rationalized adoption of the English name 'Ohio'. Now I'll leave it to you explain this unexpected addition to the Osage vocabulary set to Carolyn! ;-) By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 03:11:07 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 21:11:07 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: Bob writes: > I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a > quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is > reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it > has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. > Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, > Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. > Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret > /uhai/ alone. I haven't seen it in Dorsey either, but it is mentioned in a couple of spots at least in Fletcher and La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe". It does use /khe/. On page 94, it is listed near the end of several pages of stream names as Uha'i ke.....The river down which they Ohio river. came. > When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to > some particular document? Sacred legends are like rolling > stones. With the advent of modern scientific studies and > literacy, they tend to gather moss. I discount 20th cent. > versions much more than earlier ones. But they're important > at least to consider. Fletcher and La Flesche, chapter II, has a series of anotated extracts from what they call the 'Sacred Legend'. According to them, the Legend was in the custody of the person who had custody of the Sacred Pole. This was Shudenaci, who turned over the Pole and the Legend to the writers, who deposited them in the Peabody Museum. I don't know where or if the full Legend exists written down today, but I suppose the Peabody Museum would be the place to start looking. However, I was writing from memory last week, without the book. The part about the river crossing is listed earlier in the book, on page 36. It isn't clear here whether the accounts quoted are coming from the Sacred Legend or not. Following are the relevant paragraphs: The descriptive name Omaha (umoN'hoN, "against the current" or "upstream") had been fixed on the people prior to 1541. In that year De Soto's party met the Quapaw tribe; quapaw, or uga'xpa, means "with the current" or "downstream," and is the complement of umoN'hoN, or Omaha. Both names are said by the tribes to refer to their parting company, the one going up and the other going down the river. There are two versions of how this parting came about. One account says that-- The people were moving down the Uha'i ke river. When they came to a wide river they made skin boats in which to cross the river. As they were crossing, a storm came up. The Omaha and Iowa got safely across, but the Quapaw drifted down the stream and were never seen again until within the last century. When the Iowa made their landing, they camped in a sandy place. The strong wind blew the sand over the people and gave them a grayish appearance. From this circumstance they called themselves Pa'xude, "gray head," and the Omaha have known them by that name ever since. The Iowa accompanied the Omaha up the Mississippi to a stream spoken of as "Raccoon river"-- probably the Des Moines, and the people followed this river to its headwaters, which brought them into the region of the Pipestone quarry. The other version of the parting between the Omaha and the Quapaw is that-- When the wide river was reached the people made a rope of grape vines. They fastened one end on the eastern bank and the other end was taken by strong swimmers and carried across the river and fastened to the western bank. The people crossed the river by clinging to the grapevine. When about half their number were across, including the Iowa and Omaha, the rope broke, leaving the rest of the people behind. Those who were left were the Quapaw. This crossing was made on a foggy morning, and those left behind, believing that their companions who had crossed had followed the river downward on the western side, themselves turned downstream on the eastern side, and so the two groups lost sight of each other. At the bottom is a note reading: Uha'i ke, "the river down which they came;" the name is still applied by the Omaha to the Ohio Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 04:38:31 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 22:38:31 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John writes: > I find this not unnatural as a historical implication of the naming > pattern, but really awkward linguistically. I keep wondering how the > butler got to the pub in time for the Miami-Illinopis and Shawnee to see > him sipping a pint in the Ohio room, when he was apparently diverging > linguistically from the Dakota, Chiwere, and Winnebago in Upper > Mississippi Manornot too long before. Unless, of course, they diverged in > the pub, but then why don't the other have Ohio Valley mud on their shoes, > too? No matter how you work it, somebody has an energetic itinerary and a > tight time table. Or perhaps the butler has an identical twin? >> In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of >> southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, >> Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral >> homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) > I used to get much more specific about this, but as Oneota archaeology and > my own understanding of Mississippi Valley Siouan get more complex, I've > retreated to a sort of core of two things that I take to be facts: > A) A linguistic entity like Mississippi Valley has to originate in a > relatively restricted area. It cannot have come out of the ground over > the entire territory attested for MVS languages at contact, let alone the > more extended range that developed subsequently. I agree that Mississippi Valley would have to have originated in a relatively restricted area, though it might have first spread from its point of origin over a rather wide area as a single language before diverging into its separate subgroups. Another question is how mobile the people speaking the language were. In an earlier time, with a smaller population and a less intensified mode of procuring a living, a single band of people might have ranged over hundreds or even thousands of miles in the course of their yearly itineraries. But suppose we just try relocating that butler a little to the east, and pushing him back farther in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say more like two thousand years ago than one. If we give him a range covering roughly the modern states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and southern Wisconsin and Michigan, we still have a fairly compact and reasonable territory for MVS to differentiate on. In time, one group intensifies to the south, along the Ohio River, and evolves into the Dhegihans. To the west, another group intensifies along the Mississippi, and becomes the Dakotans. To the north, another group focusses on the shores of Lake Michigan, and becomes the Winnebagoes. In the middle, yet another group adapts to an upland type of environment, and becomes the Chiweres, who remain rather intermediate to the rest. Later, the Dakotans move up the river to Minnesota, while the Dhegihans expand westward into the Bottom areas of southern Illinois and up the lower Missouri. The Winnebagoes become concentrated around the Green Bay area, and the Chiweres expand across the Mississippi into Iowa. Finally, we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the disaster, all players are where we want them at the time of contact, and nobody but the Omahas, Poncas, Quapaws, and perhaps a few of the Ioways has any Ohio Valley mud on his shoes. Would this scenario fit everybody's requirements? Rory From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Wed Jan 23 04:54:20 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:54:20 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio River Valley. :-) Dave > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > disaster, From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Wed Jan 23 04:56:30 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:56:30 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio River Valley. :-) The Dhegihans probably just wanted out to get away from the alligators. Dave > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > disaster, From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 06:19:03 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 23:19:03 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <200201221403_MC3-EEF1-11F7@compuserve.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, carolyn quintero wrote: > Chiming in on Osage, I can tell you that ni 'water' + ohkaN'ska 'in the > middle' explains the term popularly glossed as 'children of the middle > waters'. Osages do not call themselves this, but rather waz^a'z^e. I've looked further at this 'middle' term. LaFlesche, in the his Osage dictionary, gives u-ckoN'[-]cka (p. 166b) or /uskoN'ska/ 'directly in the center of, in the middle'. However, he also gives u-k.oN'-cka (p. 172b) /ukkoN'ska/ 'the center'. Under this last he mentions /ni'uskoNska/ 'center of the waters (the earth)'. He goes on to add 'This was the name given to a subgens of the water division (Wa-zha-zhe gens) of the Osage tribal organization.' Under Ni'-u-k.oN-cka (Wa-zha-zhe) (p. 110b) he says 'the ancient name of the Wa-zha'-zhe and signifies they of the middle waters. Wa-t.se'-tsi, also of the Wa-zha'-zhe, signifies they who came from the stars; both belong to the same gens.' It's clear here that he's talking about the Waz^'az^e clan, not the Waz^a'z^e or Osage tribe. It also appears that the expression is a trope for 'earth'. I guess I don't know at this point if the term is attested elsewhere as applying to the whole of the Osage (and Kaw). Incidentally, I looked in Omaha-Ponca and found: JOD 1890:151.6 niN' ukkaN'ska i'daNbe ahi=bi=kki water in a straight line through the middle when they arrived The term occurs consistently as 'in a straight line', 'right in a line with', and 'just in a line with', sometimes paired with i'daNbe 'in the middle'. We also find uskaN'ska(=xti) 'in a (very) straight line with'. This term occurs in a question form, too, a'wath=uskaNska, though this is plainly a'wathe + uskaNska 'where in a place' + 'in a straight line with'. I also see that uskaNskaN 'in a straight line with' occurs. For the moment I'd have to characterize the three forms as irregular variants. I have the impression that 'in a line with' means aimed at or falling on an extension of a line from something or between two things. It looks like there is some shift in meaning between Omaha-Ponca and Osage. JE Koontz From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 23 06:42:35 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:42:35 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 10:38 PM Subject: RE: Osage Rory wrote: > I agree that Mississippi Valley would have to have > originated in a relatively restricted area, though > it might have first spread from its point of origin > over a rather wide area as a single language before > diverging into its separate subgroups. > > Another question is how mobile the people speaking > the language were. In an earlier time, with a > smaller population and a less intensified mode of > procuring a living, a single band of people might > have ranged over hundreds or even thousands of > miles in the course of their yearly itineraries. > > But suppose we just try relocating that butler a > little to the east, and pushing him back farther > in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say > more like two thousand years ago than one. If > we give him a range covering roughly the modern > states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and southern > Wisconsin and Michigan, we still have a fairly > compact and reasonable territory for MVS to > differentiate on. Hopewell, as in George Hyde's pre-C14-ly anachronistic _Indians of the Woodlands_? > In time, one group intensifies > to the south, along the Ohio River, and evolves > into the Dhegihans. To the west, another group > intensifies along the Mississippi, and becomes > the Dakotans. To the north, another group > focusses on the shores of Lake Michigan, and > becomes the Winnebagoes. In the middle, yet > another group adapts to an upland type of > environment, and becomes the Chiweres, who > remain rather intermediate to the rest. Later, > the Dakotans move up the river to Minnesota, > while the Dhegihans expand westward into the > Bottom areas of southern Illinois and up the > lower Missouri. The Winnebagoes become > concentrated around the Green Bay area, and > the Chiweres expand across the Mississippi > into Iowa. Finally, we have an influx of > Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. > The Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are > defeated, and many are forced to flee for their > lives, down the Ohio River and across the > Mississippi. The crossing is a confused mess, > and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, > and the other wandering northwest to become the > Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the > Ohio as the River of the Dhegihans, this > specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for > hundreds of years after the disaster, all players > are where we want them at the time of contact, > and nobody but the Omahas, Poncas, Quapaws, and > perhaps a few of the Ioways has any Ohio Valley > mud on his shoes. > > Would this scenario fit everybody's requirements? > > > Rory > > Well, there's that 900 lb. archaeological gorilla sitting on his American Bottom and at Angel and Kincaid. It always seemed to me that the "bones of animals and of men" that "lay scattered and bleaching around the village" of the strange people encountered by the Wa-zha'-zhe, HoN'-ga, and Tsi'-zhu in their wanderings after their descent from the sky, according to Francis La Flesche's "Rite of the Chiefs" in the 36th Annual Report to the BAE, (a strange people later incorporated into their tribal structure as the HoN'-ga U-ta-noN-dsi, "the Isolated HoN'-ga"), might actually have something to do with Middle Mississippian moruary practices. Just a thought. Eric Nicholson From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:00:19 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:00:19 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <200201221403_MC3-EEF1-11F9@compuserve.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, carolyn quintero wrote: > I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble > following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring > to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting > certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' > that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its > variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in > expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. The Omaha-Ponca verb uhe' is glossed 'follow' in the sense of follwing a course (or an object delineating the course). I looked before I leaped in attributing the gloss to Osage, as Carolyn Quintero and Bob Rankin point point out. Moreover, as Bob Rankin also points out, I managed to cite the hypothetical ablauted stem opha, instead of the unablauted stem ophe (or ops^e). Actually, what I find in LaFlesche is not 'tread on', but op'-she 'that which is walked upon: a bridge' and op'-she 'passing from one group to another', both p. 123a, which could refer to 'treading on' but also perhaps to following a physical object (the bridge) or a route delineated by end points. But, as I've been forcibly reminded, it doesn't pay to rely to closely on Omaha-Ponca-based hints in elucidating Osage glosses. LaFlesche does list (p. 179b) u-thu'-pshe 'to follow a trail of an animal'. A homophone below this means 'cradle board', or perhaps the underlying sense is 'device by which the body is constrained to follow a course (shape) by means of a support'. To give a hint of how much fun it is to conjugate udhu- verbs, he gives the paradigm as: 1: udh- u'-wa- ps^e < *i(r)- o-(w)a- 2: udh- u'-dha-ps^e < *i(r)- o-ra- 3: udh- u'- ps^e < *i(r)- o- 12: oNdh-oN'g-u- ps^a=i < *i(r)-uNk-o- Morpheme divisions are my own. Proto-Siouan or at least Proto-Mississippi Valley Siouan contributes the epenthetic r between the *i and *o locatives, but the extensive assimilation of vowels across the epenthetic *r is Dhegiha. We know that LaFlesche always used OP =i, never Osage =pi ~ =pe in his dictionary, and we also know that he often also used the Omaha-Ponca treatment of the inflections, too, so this may be more OP than Osage! Notice that pha is still ps^a even though the vowel is a, not e. This may also be just LaFlesche. As far as Omaha-Ponca usage with the stem uhe and its derivatives ugi'he 'to follow again', and udhu'he 'to follow by means of', consider: wac^his^ka=khe uha' adha'=bi=ama creek the following he went JOD 1890:40.19 uz^aN'ge ugi'ha=bi=ama road she followed again JOD 1890:147.7 wi'uha=bi=ama, si'gdhe adha'=i=the he followed them trail (tracks) going (along) (participial approach) he followed them trail (tracks) he went (paired sentences) JOD 150.4/5 (I'd call this a pretty good evidential use of /the/, by the way, though only the context suggests what it's doing.) Note that wiuha < wa-i(dh)-u-ha. In other words, the *i resurfaces when preceded by wa-, and the epenthetic *r (dh) is lost. More fun with udhu-. Idha- from *i(r)-a- is also fun. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:28:44 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:28:44 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > In OP (Dorsey at least), we have a'z^i, meaning 'other' in the sense > of 'different' or 'foreign'. I'm puzzled by the OP a- / OS e- > difference here. In other cases, OP uses e- to mean this/that. Perhaps also relevan: OP e'z^aN=miN 'I suspect that', e'z^a=z^iN 'you ...', e'zh=iN 'he ...' Os a'z^iN=miN 'I think or suppose that', a'z^a=z^iN 'you ...', a'z^(a)=iN 'he ...' Here there's an alternation between e'z^a= and a'z^a= in the preverb, which is paralleled by Dakotan ec^h(a)=iN 'to think, to suppose', incidentally. (These verbs are all glottal-stop stems.) There's also an alternation of eaN 'how' and aN 'how' within Omaha-Ponca itself. I think the latter is really aaN, since we find examples like: e=a'thaN a'=maN wi' bdha'th e=the=daN how I do something (it is) I I eat apt What shall I do so that I am likely to get something to eat? JOD 1890:60.3 These last are just cases of e 'it, that, the aforesaid' vs. a 'something, the indefinite'. But this indefinite a- is ha- in Osage. Incidentally, e=the'=daN is a sort of modal particle with variants ethe (etha=i), ethedaN (contingent daN), ethegaN (subordinating gaN), and negatives of these (like ethegaNbaz^i 'they are not apt' or ethegaNmaz^i 'I am not apt'). JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:36:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:36:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ > > in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. [...] > > All right, John, you drew me out and got me square on that one! Well > done!! I'll take it as established from here that Omaha Uhai is a > morphologically rationalized adoption of the English name 'Ohio'. The fun is at this point mostly historical, and wasn't intended to be at Rory's expense, but (on past occasions) at the expense of a series of somewhat innocent ethnohistorians, who never seem to comment on the etymology. > By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? I don't know. I'm not sure there is one at present. I'm not sure that there's actually an unborrowed Omaha-Ponca name for it, either, though there's a good possibility that such terms existed in the past, even without the Ohio Valley connection. JEK From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:33:08 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:33:08 -0000 Subject: Monsters and the like In-Reply-To: Message-ID: There are cases of monsters or ghouls or the like originating in actual historical human characters. In Persian there is a word - landahour- used to refer to something big and frightening, which originates, I am told, in a bandit of that name who terrorized parts of south west Persia,though I don't know when exactly. The character is not generally known however in Persian folklore. Bruce On 22 Jan 2002, at 20:56, David Costa wrote: > Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio > River Valley. :-) > > The Dhegihans probably just wanted out to get away from the alligators. > > Dave > > > > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > > disaster, Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:36:29 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:36:29 -0000 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4DC030.E2D1BCE5@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On 22 Jan 2002, at 13:40, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > carolyn quintero wrote: > >. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, > from Chiwere watóta.) So that's where Lakota watoh^tah^ta 'Oto' comes from Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:42:12 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:42:12 -0000 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > But suppose we just try relocating that butler a > little to the east, and pushing him back farther > in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say > more like two thousand years ago than one. Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From jmcbride at kayserv.net Wed Jan 23 16:03:52 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:03:52 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? > Bruce I got this from http://www.angelfire.com/wi/oneota/ Oneota: an archaeological culture in upper central U.S., ca. AD 900- ca. AD 1700. Archaeologically Oneota refers to a number of post- woodland cultures in the Prairie Peninsula which date from ca. A.D. 1000 to Historic times. Shelltempered pottery typifies Oneota sites and serves as the diagnostic artifact for the Oneota tradition" (Tiffany 1982:1, in Gibbon). The pottery is often decorated with parallel wavy or zig-zag lines. On the prairie lands, bison and corn play a crucial role in subsitance. In the forests, wild rice, deer, corn and squash are also important. Geographically, Oneota extended over much of Iowa, into Missouri, Minnesota, much of Wisconsin (up to the Door Peninsula), western and perhaps north-eastern Illinois and perhaps Michigan. Hope this helps JM From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 17:45:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:45:55 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <004701c1a427$8da587c0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > > Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? > > I got this from http://www.angelfire.com/wi/oneota/ > > Oneota: an archaeological culture in upper central U.S., ca. AD 900- > ca. AD 1700. ... Shelltempered pottery typifies Oneota sites and > serves as the diagnostic artifact for the Oneota tradition" (Tiffany > 1982:1, in Gibbon). The pottery is often decorated with parallel wavy > or zig-zag lines. And areas or lines of punctates or "dots." These are thought by some to represent, somewhat abstractly, the patterning on hawk tails, four of them, arranged around the pot. The pots are pretty much globular in shape, small, with rims and small handles. In some peripheral areas, the pottery is tempered with grit or other materials. Shell-tempered pottery is characteristic of several Mississippian cultures, including Cahokia(n). The lime helps to make corn cooked in the pots more nutricious. > On the prairie lands, bison and corn play a crucial role in > subsitance. In the forests, wild rice, deer, corn and squash are also > important. In general the subsistance patterns look a lot like those in the area at contact - horticulture, hunting of large herding animals, and systematic exploitation of the available small game and wild plants. House forms and sizes vary with locale and time. Both small camps and large settlements, sometimes with simple defensive works, are found. A few field systems have been located. Village sites were occupied for relatively short periods, and sites often show signs of reuse by similar groups over time. > Geographically, Oneota extended over much of Iowa, into > Missouri, Minnesota, much of Wisconsin (up to the Door Peninsula), > western and perhaps north-eastern Illinois and perhaps Michigan. Psinomani (should be PsiN-omani) is found in more the eastern Dakotas, too, and there are several Oneota sites in eastern Nebraska and Kansas. The number of known Oneota sites in western Illinois is now fairly extensive. The term Oneota is an old name for one the rivers in Iowa now imaginatively called "Iowa" (I think). I forget which - Iowa hydrography is not one of my strong points! Something in the North East. The name is supposed to be of Iroquois origin. The original form was Oneonta, but that variant has never been used by archaeologists. The name is supposed to have been collected from displaced Iroquoian-speakers and applied in English by Euroamericans unable to distinguish local and immigrant Indian populations. (I forget where I read this last - probaly somewhere in the Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society.) I think the original Oneota focus was Orr (named for Ellison Orr), in NE Iowa, identified by Mildred Mott, later Mildred Mott Wedel, and assigned by the direct historical method (ehtnographical equivalent of guilt by association) to the Ioway. To give this a linguistic twist - I think the Proto Mississippi Valley word for pot is something like *rex(e) ... Most of the MV Siouan groups seem to have stopped making pottery in the 1700s, so that by the time anyone thought to make any detailed notes on the subject the people they asked were quite vague about the whole process of making them, let alone specifics of form and decoration. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 17:49:25 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:49:25 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4ED87D.20574.1A30CCB@localhost> Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 bi1 at soas.ac.uk wrote: > So that's where Lakota watoh^tah^ta 'Oto' comes from. Yes. Ethnonyms in the Plains/Prairie area are often loans, though it can be difficult to determine their origin and meaning. They seem to be visiting everywhere from nowhere. Ray DeMallie was quite correct to suggest we all hold our horses until we get to look over the synonymies in the Plains volume(s) of the HBNAI. Unfortunately I haven't bought a copy yet! JEK From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 23 22:35:43 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:35:43 -0600 Subject: Oneota Message-ID: The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. I don't have the url as the university just "fixed" my hard drive, ravaging my files and address book and bookmarks in the process. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 23 23:13:47 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 17:13:47 -0600 Subject: Oneota Message-ID: > The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice > Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the > phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. > > Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. > > I don't have the url http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/learn/prehistoric/oneota.htm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 23:18:11 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:18:11 -0700 Subject: Oneota In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice > Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the > phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. > > Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/ http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/oneota/ http://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/PastCultures/Oneota/oneota.htm Looks like Zimmerman might be at USD, but it's hard to say from this.. http://www.usd.edu/anth/sdbib.html JEK From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Jan 24 12:47:53 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 12:47:53 -0000 Subject: Oneota In-Reply-To: <004701c1a427$8da587c0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: Thanks for all the explanations of Oneota. Bruce > Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From cqcq at compuserve.com Thu Jan 24 15:00:40 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 10:00:40 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? Rory < I don't think the Osage language has a particular name (at least these days) for the Ohio River, sorry. If I find out differently in the next couple of weeks as I do more field work, I'll post it. Carolyn From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 07:02:02 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:02:02 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." Message-ID: I just got the current issue of IJAL (67.2, April 01) yesterday and discovered in it Bruce Ingham's new article "Nominal and Verbal Status in Lakhota: A Lexicographical Study." In it Bruce argues that Dakota stems can be divided into five classes: 1. Active Verbal, with active inflection, incapable of being head of subject phrase. e.g., lel wathi 'I live here' 2. Stative Verbal, with stative inflection, incapable ditto. e.g., mawas^te 'I am good' 3. Mixed Active Verbal/Nominal, with active inflection, can be predicated with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., wauNspe=wakhiye 'I teach, am a teacher' wauNspe=khiya hemac^ha 'I teach, am a teacher' wauNspe=khiye kiN c^haNzeke 'the teacher got angry' 4. Mixed Nominal/Stative verbal, with stative inflection, can be predicated with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., wimac^has^a 'I am a man' wic^has^a hemac^ha 'I am a man' wic^has^a kiN he Lakhota hec^ha ;that man is a Lakhota' 5. Nominal, uninflected, can be predicated with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., he s^uNka hec^ha 'that is a dog' s^uNka kiN xlo 'the dog barked' There is also what amounts to a sixth class, of perhaps several similar classes, which take =pi as an impersonal marker and are plural predicates, can be predicated with he..c^ha (stative), and can be heads of subject phrases. A classical example is thipi, which Bruce analyses as 'thing dwelt in by someone', though, interestinglyy, the Dakotan version of this stem lacks the locative *o- found in, say, Winnebago or Mandan (I think). e.g., ho he wic^hilowaNpi hec^ha olowaN Ho, that [song is one which] is a praise-song This classification deliberately omits transitives, which for purposes of discussion are essentially a sort of combination of 1 and 2. I'm not sure if there is an analogous transitive mix of classes 3 and 4. Members of class three are sometimes inflected for plural with =pi in nominal contexts, and sometimes not. Since members of class 1 can serve without explicit heads as relative or other nominal clauses, it might be possible to regard the plural-marked forms as cases of this, the stem serving in these cases (for whatever reasons) as the predicate of a relative without a separate head. Obviously I concede the point that this is nevertheless a sort of behavior intermediate between being a predicate and being a nominal. This general approach is somewhat similar to something I've been feeling driven to with Omaha-Ponca, to wit, identifying verbal vs. nominal stems based on their morphology, not their syntactic slot. If they have verb derivational prefixes and/or inflection, they're verbs, even though they may typically occur in a nominal slot. I believe, however, that for OP this still leaves us with verb stems that predicate and verb stems that denominate, with two subcases, those that denominate but are still inflected (?he teaches me = my teacher), and those that substitute alternative syntax for inflection - the analog of Dakotan internal inflection vs. he..c^ha. I think it would be very interesting to apply Bruce's approach in other Siouan languages. I certainly can't do it off the top of my head for Omaha-Ponca, where I've never quite escaped morphology, I'm afraid! I do know that analogs of type 4, or, at least, things commonly nominals in syntactic contexts than can be predicated with statives, are very rare. The only example I can think of immediately is fairly marginal, since it's a third person plural kkagha=bi 'they're crows' from the usual noun kkaghe. Apart from that, one interesting difference between Dakotan and Omaha-Ponca is that adding an article in OP precludes plural marking in the predicate. Since the articles agree with the subject in predications (rendered continuative by the addition of the article) and in subject-headed relatives, they indicate singularity/plurality themselves to the degree that they can. In non-subject headed relatives they indicate the singularity/plurality of the non-subject head. The equivalent of Dakotan he..c^ha would be formally something like ?s^e=g=..aN in OP, with he 'that ~ s^e 'that' and the =c^ha 'be such' being equivalent to (but not cognate with) =g=..aN 'be like (something)'. But I think that e=g=..aN 'be like that' (the form usually encountered) would in a predication be more or less 'be like, be similar to', not 'be one such as, be an instance of'. The OP stem is also inflected actively (e-gi=maN, e-gi=z^aN, e-g=aN). The usual verb for predications is dhiN 'be', which is inflected bdhiN, (s^)niN, ?dhiN. In fact, the third person is normally omitted, or, rather, replaced with e. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 22:13:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 15:13:42 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." (fwd) Message-ID: Maybe a bit long ... :-). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 00:19:41 +0300 From: Constantine Chmielnicki To: John E Koontz Subject: RE: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." If you find this fit for the Siouan list, forward it there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I haven't yet got this number of IJAL Vol. 67, but some materials from the article were published elsewhere (as in Ingham, Bruce. 1998. Nominal or verbal status in Lakhota: A Lexographical Study. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 8:125-140. http://www.soas.ac.uk/Linguistics/papers/8ingham.pdf ) I have questions on the Class 3: > 3. Mixed Active Verbal/Nominal, with active inflection, can be predicated > with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject > phrase. > > e.g., wauNspe=wakhiye 'I teach, am a teacher' > wauNspe=khiya hemac^ha 'I teach, am a teacher' > wauNspe=khiye kiN c^haNzeke 'the teacher got angry' > I tend to think that this class encompasses the group of active verbs that have some forms "frozen" or moving to a distinct and separate "frozen" nominal state, differing both semantically and grammatically. Semantically verbs turn into nouns when a shift from "temporary occupation" to "permanent state" in meaning occurs (in terms of Boas and Deloria, see below) Grammatically the zero-derived nouns stop to be conjugated as active verbs, no ablaut alternation occurs, no continuative -hAN enclitic added, and perhaps something else. So I would say that perhaps wauNspe-ya-khiyapi is "you teach him/her", and wauNspekhiye he-ni-chapi is "you are teachers". (-e ending in Buechel), with this "temp. occupation" vs. "perm. state" opposition being clearly salient. wauNspekhiye (n.) seems to be derived from wauNspekhiyA (v.t.) by -A -> -e ablaut change. Perhaps some other pairs can be arranged into "temp. vs. perm." pairs: (xtalehaN) yalowaN s?a - (yesterday) you sang regularly lowaNs?a (kiN) henicha - you are a (professional) singer. wama-ya-nuN s?a - you steal habitually wamanuNs?a henicha - you are a (professional) thief. For x?okxa, "to be a traditional drum singer; to sing traditional Indian music", the separation of a nominal form from the verbal one has yielded perhaps all possible paradigms: wa-x?okxa (Buechel) x?o-wa-kxa (Lakhota Project) ma-x?okxa x?okxa hemacha, and x?okxa wimachas^a (p.s.) I don't know whether these sentences are idiomatic or not, but just to exemplify the differences I'd say: waunspekhiye ki henicha shni eyash, waunspe-ya-khiye. teacher the you-such not but him-you-teach waunspekhiye ki hemacha eyash, wowashi bluha shni cha wana tuweni waunspewakhiye shni. teacher the I-such but, job I-have not and.so now nobody I-teach not. Best wishes, Connie. P.S. In addition I paste the stuff from Boas & Deloria's "Dakota Grammar" that can be relevant: � 157. Nouns derived from verbs Page 125 Nouns formed by the prefix wa- have been discussed on pages 52 et seq. Most of these forms are still felt as verbs and function as nouns only with the following article kiN. This is particularly true of the nomina actoris. The following are felt as nouns and express permanent qualities: waya'ka captive; waphi'ya he makes people well, medicine man; wakiN'yaN thunder; wauN'chala the little one imitates (wauN'chala monkey, wauN'chapi mockery) The following are verbs, nominalized by the article and express temporary occupations: wakhu'wa he hunts buffaloes (wakhu'wa kiN buffalo hunter); wayu'thaN he serves at a ceremonial, lit. he touches things; (wayu'thaN kiN server at a ceremonial); wo'ha he carries things; wao'ka he rather hits something, marksman � 97. Nouns Page 85 The following nouns insert the pronoun: ?IhaN'kthuNwaN a Yankton, ?Ima'haNkthuNwaN (also idiomatic: ?IhaN'kthuNwaN hema'cha, better still ?IhaN'kthuNwaN-wima`chas^a, -wiNma`yaN); ?ithaN'chaN chief, lord, leader, ?ima'thaNchaN; ?Ikto'mi, ?Ikto' the trickster, ?Ima'ktomi (also Ikto'mi-wiN`mayaN, etc. (woman), both forms used); was^i'cu guardian, medicine bundle, white man, wama's^icu (see was^i' to order one to work for); wakiN'yaN thunder, wama'kiNyaN (also wakiN'yaN-wicha`chas^a); wakhaN'hez^a child, wama'khaNhez^a (also wama'khaNyez^a); wicha's^a man, wima'chas^a; wicha'h^cala old man, wima'chah^cala; wichi'yela Dakotas not using l, wini'chiyela you are -; winuN'h^cala old woman, wima'nuNh^cala; wiN'yaN woman, wiNma'yaN; wichiN'cala girl, wiNma'chiNcala; ha'sapa Negro, black skin, ha'masapa (or ha'sapa-wiNma`yaN); hoks^i'la boy, homa'ks^ila; hoks^i'cala baby, homa'ks^icala; matho' bear, mani'tho (You're a shark at it!) or (you are fiercely angry); Lakho'ta a Dakota, lama'khota (also mala'khota); khos^ka'laka young man, khoma's^kalaka; wikho's^kalaka young woman, wima'khos^kalaka; Thi'thuNwaN a Teton, does not insert the pronoun, mathi'thuNwaN (or thi'thuNwaN-wima`chas^a) The following are verbal forms: ?aki'chita camp police, ?ama'kichita (from ?a(wa')khita (I) look around for); ?ouN'papila infant in cradle (little one wrapped tightly in it), ?oma'uNpapila Children playing might also use such terms as: ?ima'gmu I am a cat The feeling for such nouns may be understood from the following cases: ?ale'tka a twig, maa'letka I am a twig (a younger member) of a great family, ?ama'letka he is a twig on me (i. e., he is a young member of my famlly) heh^a'ka branched antlers, elk mahe'h^aka I am a member of the elk society (but better heh^a'ka ?o'wapha I joined the elks), hema'h^aka would be said by the animal elk, I am with branched antlers � 55. Indefinite object wa- Page 54 In a number of cases the noun requires the ending -ka. With neutral verb it expresses an object, with active verbs an actor. Examples of neutral verbs are: wasku'yeca something sweet, i. e., fruit; watho'keca something different, i. e., a delicacy; wag^u'g^eca something scaly, i. e., dandruff With active verbs words are formed which are still felt as verbs, but which function very commonly as nouns when followed by the article. wakte'ka one who kills animals easily; wao'ka a marksman; wao'kihika one who is efficient; wi'yeyeca one who is good at finding things; wi's^tes^tececa one who has fits of bashfulness; wawi'h^ah^ayeca an amusing person Without -ka we find: wauN'chala little imitator, i. e., monkey; wae'pazo the one who points thither, i. e., index finger; waki'chuNza the one who decrees his own, a leader From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 22:52:34 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 15:52:34 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Semantically verbs turn into nouns when a shift from "temporary > occupation" to "permanent state" in meaning occurs ... Grammatically > the zero-derived nouns stop to be conjugated as active verbs, no > ablaut alternation occurs, no continuative -hAN enclitic added, and > perhaps something else. > > So I would say that perhaps wauNspe-ya-khiyapi is "you teach him/her", > and wauNspekhiye he-ni-chapi is "you are teachers". (-e ending in > Buechel), with this "temp. occupation" vs. "perm. state" opposition > being clearly salient. I take it that we mean permanent in terms of permanence of the occupation for a particular person, and not permanent in terms of lexicalization? There's something about ablaut grading that I wondered about in connection with Bruce's analysis. I think that e-grades vs. a-grades in nouns can be predicted in terms of something like specificity of reference. The e-grade is especially used with possessed things, e.g., s^uN'ka, but thas^uN'ke (tha-possessed CVC nouns take the -e grade), or c^haNl' ~ chaNte' (body parts with CVC-stems take -e(') in independent form), and possessed things have a specific, even definite, reference with respect to the possessor. One could even perhaps make something of an argument that this matched singulars (-e, specific) vs. plurals (-a, generic), but it's not clear in general that this predicts use of e vs. a with verbs generally or even with nominalizations of verbs. For example, why would negatives and diminutives condition -e under this logic? I'm also not sure that this assessment would hold up under modern usage. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 23:04:33 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 16:04:33 -0700 Subject: Singers (was RE: Bruce Ingham's ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Wrote Constantine Chmielnicki : > For x?okxa, "to be a traditional drum singer; to sing traditional Indian > music", the separation of a nominal form from the verbal one has yielded > perhaps all possible paradigms: > wa-x?okxa (Buechel) > x?o-wa-kxa (Lakhota Project) > ma-x?okxa > x?okxa hemacha, and > x?okxa wimachas^a (p.s.) I noticed in reading Bruce's paper that this term was similar to Dhegiha xukka 'singer'. I hope I haven't gotten this confused with Osage s^okka 'prompter in ceremony' again, though I'm not sure they're not related. The u vs. o difference is just differences in treating *o. The match is exact, except for the differences in fricative sound symbolic grading (s^ vs. x), and the fact that Da x? should come out ? in OP and k? in Osage. Maybe it's a loan from Dakotan into Dhegiha (or at least OP). That might explain the loss of ?. JEK From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 25 23:54:05 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 18:54:05 EST Subject: Tribal ethnonyms Message-ID: I have been looking through the Smithsonian plains volume, and am finding it excellent. Congratulations to Doug, Ray, Bob, and everyone who contributed. Randy From Rgraczyk at aol.com Sat Jan 26 03:16:12 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 22:16:12 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: In a message dated 01/20/2002 11:29:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, John.Koontz at colorado.edu writes: > On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it > > is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any > > possible cognates? Randy > > > > Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk > taxonomy > > for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, > arachnids > > and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. > > Specifically it looks like Dakotan wablus^ka, implying *waprus^ka, albeit > with metathesis of s^k (and s^ > s). The *wakrus^ka and *waprus^ka > variants don't correspond regularly, but the match looks reasonable. I > wonder if the Crow form is regularly derived from *waprus^ka? Could it be > a loan? Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 26 17:51:15 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:51:15 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: <11d.b17bdc1.2983797c@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 25 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is > cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s > before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. But I think bulu isn't a very good match for uN, u after denasalization. And what usually happens to kt? Isn't the k reduced to preaspiration? On the other hand, wablus^ka has an extra wa over anything exhibited in bulukta'a, and I'm not sure that uNktehi is terribly canonical in form for Dakotan, either, though it falls within the general range of the trickster term variants. Of course, I guess we should really be wondering what happens in some of the connected languages, too. So far I haven't thought of anything that matches uNktehi in MV, and I don't know anything about Hidatsa or Mandan. You'd expect maybe *oNtte((h)i) in Dhegiha. The -hi might be analyzed off as 'leg' in OP, where *hu becomes hi. Looking around, I've found in LaFlesche for Osage a reference to a creek called Wagthushka iabi /walus^ka iapi/ 'where a strange animal was seen' - warriors were crossing a stream on a log and when all but two had crossed, it turned its head downstream and went away. Notice that when citing forms from a context LaFlesche uses the proper plural form. I'm not sure the form is to be translated 'where a walus^ka was seen'. It looks like iapi is 'he speaks', but I could be wrong. Anyway, it looks like Osage bases its term on the word for 'bug, lizzard, worm', in Osage walus^ka (< *wakrus^ka). It seems to me that this was pointed out already. For Ioway-Otoe I find isc^exi, is^c^eximi(N) (female) for 'water spirit, horned underwater panther (a malevolent spirit monster) in Good Tracks. This looks like it would be something like *is^texi, which doesn't seem helpful in this context. All I could find for Winnebago was nuNuNjake' 'water snake'. This would be from something like *ruNuNtaka, perhaps (irregularly, I think) *ruNuNtka, which is actually not a bad match. I've assumed *ka > ke, which is regular, but it might also be *ruNuNtke, which is a fairly good match for uNkt^ehi. One language or the other has metathesized the cluster, and the initial *r is lost in Dakota (it would be y, as in *yuNktehi). That r would actually help explain the Crow bulu-. Crow would have added an additional *wa-. However, I feel like I'm sort of herding the form in the direction I want it to go. I'd feel better looking a bit further at snake and insect terms closer at hand. The IO bug term is wagri'. Winnebago has wikiri'. Together these suggest *wakri', maybe *wikri', which is in the ballpark with Dhegiha *wakrus^ka and Dakota *waprus^ka, though none of these match regularly. The -ka are probably noun formants and the prefixal wa- could be either the indefinite object wa- or one of the old fossilized noun classifying prefixes that Rankin has discovered across Siouan-Caddoan and Yuchi. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 26 18:07:09 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 11:07:09 -0700 Subject: More on Monsters Message-ID: GoodTracks gives hompathroji 'spirits with long flat heads, sharp at top (live in buttes of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers)' in his English-to-Ioway-Otoe-Missouria side. In the IOM side he gives humpathroxje (old) 'dwarf'. It's possible that pa is pha 'head', but I can't make anything of the rest. Threje (rej^e), cf. OP snede, is 'long'. Homa or huma is 'elk'. This is basically the IO outcome of something like *huNpa, cf. OP aNpha 'elk', though the OP form is aspirated (without any *ph > h shift!), and the pre-IO form is evidently not. (A better example would be Te (wahu'w)apa 'ear of corn' : OP waha'ba 'corn (ear)' : IO waha'ma 'corn on the cob' : Wi woohaN'p 'ear of corn', though this stem *hap-/*haNp- is nasal only in IO and Wi.) I'm not sure any of these suggestions is relevant here, unless 'elk' is connected with 'antlered' or 'horned'. McCafferty's Mississippi bluff painting occurred to me in this connection. From Zylogy at aol.com Sat Jan 26 20:15:35 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 15:15:35 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: You know, something just occurred to me- forms such as buluk are pan-circum Pacific for "whale". I remember from someone who used to do proto-world type "etymologies". And if whales ain't water monsters, I don't know what are! Spouts from a distance might seem to be horns? Or dorsal fins as of Orcas? Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 27 17:44:54 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 11:44:54 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: > Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is > cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. >But I think bulu isn't a very good match for uN, u after denasalization. And what usually happens to kt? Isn't the k reduced to preaspiration? On the other hand, wablus^ka has an extra wa over anything exhibited in bulukta'a, and I'm not sure that uNktehi is terribly canonical in form for Dakotan, either, though it falls within the general range of the trickster term variants. Crow historical phonology is pretty hazy to me. Morphologically, I guess, in my naivete, I'd expect the prefix /bi-/ in Crow. Does this ever exhibit vowel harmony and come out /bu-/ ? Bob From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 27 17:57:55 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 11:57:55 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: >I haven't seen it in Dorsey either, but it is mentioned in a couple of spots at least in Fletcher and La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe". It does use /khe/. On page 94, it is listed near the end of several pages of stream names as Uha'i ke.....The river down which they Ohio river. came. That's interesting. It's hard to tell just from that whether it's a loan from English "Ohio" or derived from */uha-bi khe/ 'they followed it - the.horizontal.inanimate'. And if the latter, it's hard to know if it's connection to the Ohio R. is a folk reanalysis or if it dates back. > When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to > some particular document? >Fletcher and La Flesche, chapter II, has a series of anotated extracts from what they call the 'Sacred Legend'. I don't know where or if the full Legend exists written down today, but I suppose the Peabody Museum would be the place to start looking. Yeah, I suppose so. I'm familiar with the passages in F&LF, but of course would like to see the original if it exists somewhere. Thanks for the comments. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 27 22:38:02 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 15:38:02 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Crow historical phonology is pretty hazy to me. Morphologically, I guess, > in my naivete, I'd expect the prefix /bi-/ in Crow. Does this ever exhibit > vowel harmony and come out /bu-/ ? In the *r-stems (d/l stems in terms of Crow phonology and the practical orthography), the first person is bulu- and the second dilu- for du-instrumentals (cf. Dakotan yu-, OP dhi-), so it looks like the harmony is at least in part with the preceding consonant. But, there is probably some additional complication involved in the second person of the du-instrumentals, and I think harmony with the vowel following d is usual. My files remain chaotic and I can't quickly locate any of the summaries Randy has prepared on the subject! From Rgraczyk at aol.com Tue Jan 29 17:21:43 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 12:21:43 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Back to buluksa'a 'water monster': I am assuming that there is some additional material at the beginning of the Crow form, perhaps bilV or balV. Vowel assimilation does occur sporadically in Crow. The first person forms of the 'by hand' verbs look like an example: 1 bulu-, 2 dilu-, 3 du(u). Assimilation also occurs in verbs with the derivation prefix chi- ( Message-ID: On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > ... Vowel assimilation does occur sporadically in Crow. The first > person forms of the 'by hand' verbs look like an example: 1 bulu-, 2 > dilu-, 3 du(u). Assimilation also occurs in verbs with the derivation > prefix chi- ( 'set down', kulushi'i 'store, put back, put away' , as compared to > axshe'e win, chi-axshe'e 'win again'. ... Interesting! I knew about the personal inflection, but had overlooked the behavior of chi-. Of course, this is just what happens with *ki- and *r-stems (and other syncopating stems) in Mississippi Valley, to wit, *ki- is reduced to *k-. In the case of *r-stems and some others, there is an pleonastic *ki-, so, in Omaha-Ponca, a-gi-g-dhi-, dha-gi-g-dhi, gi-g-dhi-, with g- comparable to b- and s^- in the first and second persons, e.g., b-dhi-, (s^)-ni-, dhi-. Of course, the *ki- prefix is the reflexive possessive in Omaha-Ponca, though the vertitive has a similar morphology and means somethign like 'again' (home or back), and there are a few cases of *k(i)- as 'again', too. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 29 21:42:57 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 14:42:57 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: <11b.ac9eb11.29883427@aol.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > I am assuming that there is some additional material at the beginning of the > Crow form, perhaps bilV or balV. ... > If the beginning of the Crow form was bil-, it could be bili' 'water' . > Otherwise I don't have any good guesses right now. This, with the vowel assimilation to the initial u of hypothetical uksaa, as Randy suggests, might account for the form buluksaa fairly well. JEK From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 30 02:30:26 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 21:30:26 EST Subject: Omission from Woccon Article Message-ID: John Koontz brought to my attention that the sources for the Proto-Siouan forms in Appendix 4 of the article were not cited. Apparently, because of editorial revisions and emails back and forth, the journal editor used a version that did not contain the citations. Briefly, the reconstructions are from a paper by Giulia Oiviero and Bob Rankin on the classification of Southeastern Siouan that will appear in a volume I am editing with David Costa in memory of Frank Siebert. The others are either from Matthews' dissertation or from Richard Carter's Woccon article. I apologize, in particular to the authors of the omitted citations for the error, and will send the full citations for each form to everyone over the weekend. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 30 03:26:56 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:26:56 -0700 Subject: Water Monsters Message-ID: In regard to Crow buluksa'a 'water moster', cf. Teton uNktehi 'watermonster'. First, with apologies for not checking sooner, for *kt, cf. *-kta 'toward', Crow (ku)ssaa' 'toward (that)', Hidatsa (ku)htaa 'in (that) direction', Teton (e)kta 'to', Omaha-Ponca (e)tta 'to, toward (it)', etc. And, just in case, *tk, cf. *itka 'egg', Crow ihka', Hidatsa ihka', Teton (w)i'tka, itka', Omaha-Ponca (w)e'tta, Winnebago hiic^ge', etc. So *kt is problematic in a regular development, though *t and *s do fall together and then redivide into t ~ s ~ s^, if I recall correctly. (My source here is a draft version of the Comparative Siouan Dictionary, though these are standard comparison.) I've also noticed that Hidatsa 'snake' is waapu'ks^a (< CSD). W. Matthews says mapo'ks.a means 'any animal or animals offensive to the sight of these Indians, or unfit for food, as worms, insects, snakes, etc. He also lists mapo's.a (waapu's^a (?)) 'a term applied to flies and insects less offensive to the sight than mapo'ks.a'. Crow 'insect' is baapuxta (< CSD). The draft of the CSD suggests comparing the pus ~ pux root here (we have to assume metathesis in Hidatsa) with pu"s in Osage z^apu"ska 'ant' (actually, all Osage u are [u"]), and I might go further and compare Omaha-Ponca z^aNgdhis^ka 'ant', which suggests that the Osage form modifies z^aN 'wood' to z^a irregularly. The Osage form uses pu"ska as 'bug', while OP relies on gdhis^ka (Osage has the cognate -lu"s^ka, spelled -gthushka by LaFlesche, but not in this compound). Also, the CSD suggests that Te wablus^ka, Sa wamdus^ka, etc., are modified from *wakru^ka (as attested in the Dhegiha forms) under the unfluence of the *puska form. (In all these forms -ka is a noun former, common with names of creatures.) We can also add the CSD Mandan wa'akiruxka? < *waakruxka 'snake, worm, snail' (from the CSD), which is a sound-synbolism grade of *wakrus^ka. I'm not sure where this leaves Crow buluksa'a, which is clearly similar to Hidatsa waapu'ks^a 'snake, creepy crawly' in its latter parts, but not in its former ones. In fact, it's more similar at the -ksa'a end than Crow baapu'xta 'insect', though the CSD seems to assume Hidatsa -ks^a involves metathesis. But Hidatsa waapu'- doesn't match Crow bulu- at all well, even though both involve a labial and u (and Crow b is the proper match for Hidatsa w, which is [m] in initial position. (In other words, if we step beyond the phonetics of the languages the forms are something like waapu- and wuru- underlyingly.) Randy could easily be right that the bulu- is essentially 'water', though perhaps we need to consider some amount of reanalysis, mutual influence, and dialect borrowing in place of strict compounding. Watermonsters, snakes, bugs, and the likes are a complex matter in Siouan comparisons. JEK From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 30 21:56:11 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 15:56:11 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: This is about English rather than Siouan, but when I heard it I couldn't resist. This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. The interview can be heard at http://www.npr.org/ under the program heading "Morning Edition" for January 29, 2002. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 30 22:17:29 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:17:29 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: > This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at > Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker > pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had > taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. "might could/would" is good southern, but this must just be Disney! From Zylogy at aol.com Wed Jan 30 22:30:47 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:30:47 EST Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? This here fellow would like to know. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 30 23:24:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:24:36 -0700 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. In-Reply-To: <24.201a9248.2989ce17@aol.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? Well, I can't say I have any idea how to do a conditional potential in Omaha-Ponca. And I can't do it in English. I'm surprised it wasn't "might would've if management would've" since most speakers (of English) I run into have the modal in the hypothesis and conclusion (apodosis?) both. I'd have to say "would perhaps have if management had" (or "maybe it would-a if management had-a"). I see he has perfect marking on both modals. As far as Omaha-Ponca, I don't understand the modal particles very well, but post-verbal (e=)iN=the 'perhaps' is probably relevant here. I'm still recovering from discovering that there's no direct way to say 'can'. From cqcq at compuserve.com Wed Jan 30 23:39:56 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn Quintero) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 18:39:56 -0500 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at > Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker > pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had > taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. "might could/would" is good southern, but this must just be Disney! < Actually it doesn't sound so bad to me.... ;-> In fact, I believe I might could easily hear that around Oklahoma. Carolyn From jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu Thu Jan 31 00:01:25 2002 From: jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu (John Boyle) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 18:01:25 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. In-Reply-To: <24.201a9248.2989ce17@aol.com> Message-ID: >Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? This here >fellow would like to know. > >Jess Tauber >zylogy at aol.com Marianna Di Paolo did a nice article for American Speech (64.3 1989) on double modals called "Double Modals as Single Lexical Items" In it she says that 'might could' is the most common form of double modals (which is fine in my Utahan speech). She doesn't treat this type of double perfect marking, however. When I heard this on NPR I though it was great! John Boyle From BARudes at aol.com Thu Jan 31 00:34:52 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 19:34:52 EST Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Bob, You MIGHT'VE SHOULD'VE talked to some of us up here in the Carolinas. We could've explained the usage to you right quick. Blair From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 31 19:14:00 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 13:14:00 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: >You MIGHT'VE SHOULD'VE talked to some of us up here in the Carolinas. We could've explained the usage to you right quick. I grew up in South Georgia, and "might could", Ken's "usta could" along with "might oughta" are second nature to me in casual English. But putting <'ve> on BOTH elements is out of the question for me and everyone I know. "Might would've" and "might should've" or "might oughta've" would be OK, but not with *might've. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 4 00:52:17 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 17:52:17 -0700 Subject: Cheyenne Proverb Example Message-ID: I happened to note on Wayne Leman's Cheyenne site at http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language/index.htm. I assume from the context that this is a fixed form, though it may be thematic instead. It is definitely metaphorical. A Cheyenne Proverb Nv'novhe'tanme mshnstva, onset'ha'eta nethoestovevoo'o, onshestxvtno mshnstva! Don't race in craziness, try to stop your mounts, try to come in last in terms of craziness! This proverb was frequently quoted by the late Cheyenne historian, John Stands In Timber. Its essential meaning is "Don't live a hurried life!" From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 6 22:48:17 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 15:48:17 -0700 Subject: APS Online Catalog Message-ID: (This arises out of a discussion with Eric Nichol. We were wondering if the Winnebago versions of the myths that Radin so extensively published were available. I was able to determine from a comment in Marino's dissertation that the materials were in the APS and Eric told me that the APS catalogs were available online. I'll leave it to Eric as to whether he'd like to say something about the myths themselves!) Members of the Siouan list may be interested to know that it is possible to search the American Philosophical Society catalogs on-line at http://www.amphilsoc.org. You can use the site search facility, or go to the library and consult the online guide. Some overview materials (like one of the shorter descriptions of the Radin collection) are only available in the library's online guide. Examples: >>From the APS On-Line Guide Radin, Paul (1883-1959). American anthropologist. Papers, ca. 1912-1959. 12.5 lin. ft. There are notes, transcriptions, essays, etc., on the language and customs of several Indian tribes. There are numerous vocabularies, dictionaries, and grammatical notes on the Winnebago, Patwin, and Huave tribes, and some items on the Fox, Tukudh, Pomo, Wappo, and Wintu; 79 notebooks, in English and Winnebago, on myths, legends, stories, customs, dances, religious observances, costume, etc., of the Winnebago, with some on the Ottawa and Ojibwa; notes on Winnebago history; 2 boxes of Winnebago phonetic texts; and significant material on Mexican Indians (Zapotec). Some of the items are typed copies of Radin's published studies. Table of contents (ca. 40 pp.). Presented by Mrs. Doris Radin, 1960, 1972-1984 (497.3/R114) ==== Here's the longer version from Van Keuren Guide to Manuscript Collections Radin, Paul. 1883-1959. Anthropologist. Ethnologist, Bureau ofAmerican Ethnology, 1910-12; field ethnol., Canadian Dept. of Mines, 1912-17; asst. prof., ethn., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1918-20; lect., ethn., Cambridge Univ., 1920-24; Canadian fieldwork, 1925-26; Fisk Univ., 1927-31; Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1931-40; Black Mountain Coll., North Carolina, 1941-45; foundation supported lecturing and research, 1945-57; Samuel Rubin prof, and head of dept., anthr., Brandeis Univ., 1957-59. Correspondence, Mss. Boas, Franz. Professional Correspondence (B/B61). 28 May 1908 to 18 Feb. 1942. 124 Ls. (69 to Boas, 55 to Radin) + 3 Ls. to H.A. Andrews fr. Radin. Bureau of Amer. Ethn.; fieldwork; Indian ling., esp. Winnebago, Huave, Zapotecan; Mexican and Winnebago folklore; prof. positions; research support. 4-7/10-11 Mason, J. Alden. Papers (B/M3 84). 10 ~an. 1941 to 22 March 1960. 3 Ls. (1 to Mason, 2 to Radin) + 1 L. to Doris Radin. Mexican and South Amer. linguistics. Radin Festschrift. 7/10/12 Radin, Paul. Papers (497.3/R114). ca.1910 to 1959. 13.5 in, ft. (21 boxes, 79 notebooks). Linguistic and ethnographic manuscripts, notebooks, cards dealing with Mexican and American Indians. Linguistic materials on Patwin, Poma, Otomi, Wappo, Winnebago, Huave, Zapotec, and other langs. Folklore notes and manuscripts on Mandan, Winnebago, Ojibwa-Ottawa, and others. 6/7 ... Papers (497.3/B63c). ca.600 lvs. and 300 cards. Materials on Indian linguistics and ethnography. Includes manuscript material on Otomi, Huave, Mixtec, Chinantec, Patwin. 6/7 ==== You can also see the itemized list in the APS Indian Guides: WINNEBAGO (Siouan) Ethnography 3549. BARRETT, S. A. Correspondence with Franz Boas [1908-1928]. L. 23 items. Concerns his field work among Rio Cayapa Iodians and purchase of Winnebago specimens collected by Paul Radin for the Milwauliee Public Museum. Sauk and Fox rawhide boxes collected by Alanson Skinner mentioned. [31] 3850. RADIN, PAUL. Folklore texts, Winnebago [1908-1912]. D. 34 notebooks. 34 Winnebago texts in English; original field notebooks. ... This list includes materials from sources other than Radin, of course, and omits Radin's work on groups other than the Winnebago. === If anyone's interested, I can mail them the 30 screen version of this. I guess I'd better not actually post it here ... JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 6 23:01:43 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 16:01:43 -0700 Subject: National Anthropological Archives Message-ID: Incidentally, with respect to the National Anthropological Archive, see the index of BAE publications at: http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/BAE/Bulletin200/200conts.htm Also, the NAA generally: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/index.htm >>From there you can consult the Guide to the Collections of the National Anthropological Archives or search the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Oddly enough, the first has no useful entries for Dorsey and using Dorsey as a keyword in the second produces the message: A Problem with WebPAC has Occured: Database unavailable -- siarchives7 Z39.50 Host: 109 Unknown error I don't know if this means that the Dorsey materials aren't indexed on line, or if some part of the database isn't working at the moment. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 7 00:27:06 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 19:27:06 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Hi, folks. Happy 2002. Just bubbling up from lurker status to ask whether anyone has any ideas about the historical origins of the Siouan instrument and location affixes. I'm researching the phenomenon of bipartite structure generally. Most languages which exhibit such constructions have the lexical root interposed between the instrument/bodypart and location/pathway terms. In Native American languages generally the instr. comes first, while in the Old World those languages which show fossilized remnants (such as Kartvelian, even PIE) the instr. is suffixal after the main lexical root. I'm wondering whether Siouan represents some sort of transitional phase, given that the instr. is prefixing and the loc. terms are so broad and few in number and also come immediately before the lexical root (so perhaps are the last gasps of an older system). Has anyone on the list given any thoughts to the origins of the current state of affairs in Siouan? I'm hoping to find out as much as I can before I start setting my crosslinguistic findings to paper. Thanks in advance. Best wishes for a happy and peaceful new year, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 01:58:50 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 18:58:50 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <169.6c40f82.296a455a@aol.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Hi, folks. Happy 2002. Just bubbling up from lurker status to ask whether > anyone has any ideas about the historical origins of the Siouan instrument > and location affixes. ... > I'm wondering whether Siouan represents some sort of transitional phase, > given that the instr. is prefixing and the loc. terms are so broad and few in > number and also come immediately before the lexical root (so perhaps are the > last gasps of an older system). ... The structures I'm aware of are: nominals PRO1-LOC-PRO2-LLS nominals OuterInstrumental-PRO3-LLS nominals PRO4-InnerInstrumental-LLS where LLS is "lower level stem" (in derivational terms), and PRO is pronominal with the numbers appended for convenience below. LOC is locative (which includes the concept 'by means of; using'). PRO1 is generally the inclusive and any third personal plural or detransitivizer, though the Dakotan third person plural follows the LOC slot, and the inclusive follows some of the LOC forms in Dhegiha. For that matter, all pronominals of the form V precede wa in Dhegiha, if a wa (third person plural or detransitivizer) occurs, except, e.g., with causatives. PRO2 is the first person and second person. I usually imagine the zero-form third person being here, too, but ... well, it's a zero form! PRO3 and PRO4 are all pronominals in the patterns in question. Outer and inner instrumentals are defined in terms of the location of the pronominals. Outer instrumentals behave as proclitics, or, rather, the inflected stem behaves as an enclitic (postclitic) of the outer instrumental. Some outer instrumental stems behave as a single chunk OuterInstrumental-LLS when further derived (e.g., with a reflexive) in at least Omaha-Ponca in Dhegiha. I'd guess that locatives are historically a case of nominal postposition stem being handled in word formation as nominal postposition-stem instead of nominal-postposition stem I think this is probably a general tendency in head-marking languages. Rankin argues that the inclusive and some third person plurals remain before the locative because they originate in incorporated nominals ("man", "person") at a date subsequent to the fossilization of the locative construction. I'd guess that most of the outer instrumental stems are cases of generic-nominal stem being reformulated as NOM-stem That is, of noun incorporation. The inflectional slot remains where it was, following the stem. The outer instrumentals usually have the semantic domains 'heat', 'spontaneous' (derived from 'heat'?), 'by shooting', and 'with a blade/by cutting'. The explanation that has been offered with the inner instrumentals, based on evidence from Catawba (I'm blanking the name of the author of the paper) is that they are old verb stems, implying that the constructions were originally something like: nominals instrumental-verb resulting-state-verb Both verbs were inflected, or perhaps the first was a sort of participle. However, the modern constructions have the inflection only on the instrumental component, or, putting it another way, preceding the stem composed of the instrumental prefix and lower level root. The semantic domains of the inner instrumentals are 'pushing', 'pressing', 'with the hand/pulling', 'with the mouth', 'with the foot', 'by striking'. The latter is usually identical to 'by wind or water' in Mississippi Valley Siouan. Dakotan converts 'by foot' into an outer instrumental, apparently because it became homophonous with 'by heat/spontaneously'. I should say that the set of instrumentals is essentially fixed across Siouan. There is a particular set that seems to exist in all the languages. Extensions to it are vanishingly rare, as are omissions. I seem to recall one extension in Crow, ha-, but I forget what it does. Ioway-Otoe seems to have split *ru- 'by hand' into ru- and ri-, which, are, I think - but check - 'by hand' and 'by pulling'. What does happen commonly is that instrumentals may be more or less productive, and they may extend their meanings in subtle ways. The stems that can take instrumentals are generally roots. Locatives can precede stems of more general form, or, putting it another way, locatives stay outside the lower level stem, or can't be submerged in lower level stems. There are some compound locatives, cf. Dakotan iyo- and iya-, which have parallels throughout Mississippi Valley Siouan. Winnebago seems to have variants roo- and hiro- for the first. The inflection of these can be rather complex. Dhegiha seems to have -iu- and udhu- variants of the first, depending on the person. The developments of *i-r-a- are even odder. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 7 15:25:47 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:25:47 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Thank you, John. Just looking at what you wrote about the semantic ranges of the outer and inner instrumental sets (though a rather short list, so hard to prove in any statistical sense) leads me, impressionistically, to posit that perhaps the inner set is more "about" direct actions of body versus the mediated or body-external actions encoded prototypically by the outer set (except where historically shifted- but I wonder about "foot" in that I've found that different zones of the body in various language families are more external than others- specifically the feet and lower body versus the upper body- the upper body prototypically dealing with incoming events, the lower outgoing). In Yahgan, the general trend is for instrument prefixes to be themselves breakable into a generic initial (gross force source name- strike, squeeze, pull, tread, weight, blow, throw, etc.) followed by a specifier (a spatial distributive- into multiple bits, short or long lengths, slabs, spheres, etc.). I suppose one might call these latter incorporated shape classifiers or some such- they are apparently state-naming. Following is another assembly consisting of a main verb root followed by a pathway/location affix. Any one, two, or three of the four elements can be absent, and in addition the specifier slot can contain at least two items for even more specificity. I don't get any direct sense that there is anything like an inner/outer instrumental split -is there some relation having to do with control?? Outer instruments in Siouan seem inanimate (biologically) though animated energywise (impersonal). Iconic?- outer force source versus inner (egocentrically) placed similarly relative to the verb, and nominal versus verbals precursors relevant iconically too? Reanalysis of nom-postp stem to nom postp-stem feels right- does this possibly mean that the parent language was originally dep-marked? Most of the bipartite languages with richer affixation are dep-marking to some extent (and those with apparent ancient fossil bipartitism, such as can be seen in Salishan, for instance, have gone heavily head-marking). Constituent order link too- think about it. Anyway, please forgive whatever above may sound like babble- still trying to work out all the possibilities. Having inflection anciently on both inner instrument and main verb sounds promising, since I've been promoting the notion (yet to be proven) that these constructions originate in something like serialization. More, please! Thanks, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 16:58:48 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 09:58:48 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Thank you, John. Just looking at what you wrote about the semantic ranges of > the outer and inner instrumental sets (though a rather short list, so hard to > prove in any statistical sense) leads me, impressionistically, to posit that > perhaps the inner set is more "about" direct actions of body versus the > mediated or body-external actions encoded prototypically by the outer set > ... Yes, there does seem to be a semantic difference, but I think this arises naturally from the probable syntax of the morphologized constructions. Of course, this is one of those situations in which in deductive terms there is a circularity in the reasoning. I think, however, that the reasoning involved is inductive, or, putting it another way, that a model can be proposed based on the whole situation and validated by repeated successful application here and elsewhere. It would also help, of course, if cognates of the outer instrumentals were available. My recollection is that this is not the case as yet. Note that the basis of the terminology inner vs. outer instrumentals (my own coinage) is simply whether the instrumental morpheme is inside or outside the pronominal slot(s) relative to the underlying stem. The outer instrumentals behave (morpho)syntactically like various other strictly "outer" preverbal morphemes in Siouan. These can also be termed preverbs, though that also covers the locatives, which are movable preverbs (movable relative to the pronominal slot) as opposed to fixed preverbs. Another possible term would be proclitics, or, as I said, the main verb stem and its inflection can be seen as enclitic to the preverbal "base." Other fixed preverbs or proclitics are various incorporated nouns and demonstratives, and also the governed verb in causatives. There are also preverbs that are simply fixed parts of certain stems and don't have any clear etymology, though many of these must be old incorporated nouns. We probably want to call the syntactic (in the primitive sense of ordering, etc.) behavior of preverbs morphosyntactic, but I think that the description of Mississippi Valley Siouan morphosyntaxes can be considerably simplified if one treats preverbs, incorporation, compounding, causatives and other dependent verbal constructions, enclitics, etc., at a higher level than matters like the relative ordering of pronominals, locatives, reflexives, reciprocals, datives, reflexive possessives, and inner instrumentals. These latter are all much simpler to deal with, in terms of mutual ordering and pronominalization (pronoun placement), if we consider them only within the component units of the compositions produced by compounding, adding preverbs, etc. So, essentially, there are two levels of morphosyntax: a fairly simple one that accounts for the insides of inflected verb stems and noun stems, and manipulates pronominals, locatives, inner instrumentals, reflexives, etc., and a more elaborate one that manipulates preverbs, compounding, enclitics, etc. This latter system generates words, but not all of these words are lexical entities, though some are. In addition this latter system generates trees that ramify on both the right and left, i.e., they have a constituent structure of sorts, whereas the inner level structure ramifies only to the left - it simply adds new morphemes to the front of the whole, if we overlook the issue of the locatives. Looking at things this way does mean considering that the two classes of instrumental cannot be regarded as a single kind of thing, at least morphosyntactically. One other thing to note is that inner istrumentals typically have complex morphophonemic interactions with preceding pronominals, whereas outer instrumentals do not. > In Yahgan, the general trend is for instrument prefixes to be themselves > breakable into a generic initial (gross force source name- strike, squeeze, > pull, tread, weight, blow, throw, etc.) followed by a specifier (a spatial > distributive- into multiple bits, short or long lengths, slabs, spheres, > etc.). I suppose one might call these latter incorporated shape classifiers > or some such- they are apparently state-naming. The closest thing to this in Siouan that I can think of are the Mississippi Valley aorist/inceptive/iterative auxiliaries (moribund in Dakotan) - the "suddenly and repeatedly" auxiliaries - which are compounds of motion verbs (path elements) and positional verbs (shape elements). There are large sets of these in Omaha-Ponca, Ioway-Otoe, and Winnebago, it appears. They carry the overall notion that the action occurs suddenly or starts to occur, but the path and shape elements have to harmonize appropriately with the action and its patient. > I don't get any direct sense that there is anything like an inner/outer > instrumental split -is there some relation having to do with control?? I hope I've clarified the basis of the distinction. > Reanalysis of nom-postp stem to nom postp-stem feels right- does this > possibly mean that the parent language was originally dep-marked? Maybe not. I may have overstated this if I called it reanalysis. Maybe it would be more appropriate to simply call it analysis. Think of the element that we've called the postposition as a directional adverb. If it fused to the noun, it can be characterized as an adposition. If it fuses to the verb, it can be characterized as a locative. Probably it will be closer to the verb than the nominal argument, and on the same side, depending on whether the language tends to place sattelites before or after the verb. > ... since I've been promoting the notion (yet to be proven) that these > constructions originate in something like serialization. More, please! I suspect everyone is off at the SSILA/LSA meetings, or somebody with a better memory would have cited the paper that provides Catawba verbal cognates for the Siouan (inner) instrumentals. At a previous SSILA/LSA I provided a serial verb explanation of the Mississippi Valley reciprocal/in the middle prefixes in terms of a commitative coverb. Several of the MV languages still have cognate or non-cognate commitative coverbs. Crow, Hidatsa, and Mandan all have benefactive coverbs based on 'give'. All of the MV languages have extensive compounding of verbs of motions. JEK From BARudes at aol.com Mon Jan 7 18:26:00 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 13:26:00 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: The paper on the Catawba cognates for Siouan instrumentals is Frank T. Siebert, Jr. 1945. The Linguistic Classification of Catawba. IJAL 11:100-104, 211-218. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 7 18:29:39 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 11:29:39 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I believe the reference on Catawba cognates of Siouan instrumentals that I've been trying to recall (the article contains various other things, too) is: Siebert, F. T. (1945). Linguistic classification of Catawba: I. IJAL 11: 100-4. Siebert, F. T. (1945). Linguistic classification of Catawba: II. IJAL 11: 211-8. I obtained the citations from John Boyle's enormously helpful on-Web Siouan bibliography at http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html, but the recollections of their content are my own responsibility. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 9 03:15:26 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 20:15:26 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I'd like to briefly mention the availability of a couple of reprints of potential interest to Siouanists, from Evolution Publishing (http://www.evolpub.com). I've seen: Lawson, John. 1998 (1709). A Vocabulary of Woccon. 33 pp. Hale, Horatio. 2001 (1883). The Tutelo Language. 109 pp. These are a bit expensive, compared to the cost of xeroxing, say, the Hale article from the fairly accessible serial publications, but there are advantages to having a nicely bound copy of a reference. The printing of Lawson contains convenient references to recent work, including Richard Carter's essential analysis of the Woccon materials. Unfortunately, the printing of Hale overlooks the less accessible, but equally important work that has been done recently on Tutelo, including Mithun's work with a semi-speaker of Tutelo, and Oliverio's extremely important dissertation on Tutelo (A Grammar and Dictionary of Tutelo), and various papers by Rankin and Oliverio. For these, see http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html. From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 9 11:44:48 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 05:44:48 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Images of a manuscript vocabulary of Tutelo taken by Hale and held in the National Anthropological Archives are available online through the Occaneechi-Saponi website at: http://www.occaneechi-saponi.org/tutelo-saponi/LRDP/index.shtml There is also a link from that page to the Early Canadiana Online edition of Hale's The Tutelo Language : http://www.canadiana.org/cgi-bin/ECO/mtq?id=f1d901e4ba&doc=04399 The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for yet. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 9:15 PM Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > I'd like to briefly mention the availability of a couple of reprints of > potential interest to Siouanists, from Evolution Publishing > (http://www.evolpub.com). I've seen: > > Lawson, John. 1998 (1709). A Vocabulary of Woccon. 33 pp. > > Hale, Horatio. 2001 (1883). The Tutelo Language. 109 pp. > > These are a bit expensive, compared to the cost of xeroxing, say, the Hale > article from the fairly accessible serial publications, but there are > advantages to having a nicely bound copy of a reference. The printing of > Lawson contains convenient references to recent work, including Richard > Carter's essential analysis of the Woccon materials. Unfortunately, the > printing of Hale overlooks the less accessible, but equally important work > that has been done recently on Tutelo, including Mithun's work with a > semi-speaker of Tutelo, and Oliverio's extremely important dissertation on > Tutelo (A Grammar and Dictionary of Tutelo), and various papers by Rankin > and Oliverio. For these, see > > http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/siouan_language.html. > > From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 15:10:29 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:10:29 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 9 16:12:58 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 09:12:58 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) In-Reply-To: <001b01c19903$0d4baf20$a096fb0c@attbi.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Eric wrote: > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for > yet. I'd have to agree on a basis of sheer volume. Of course, I have no idea how useful the numerous Algonquian items are. For Siouan contributions I'd recommend maybe Lipkind's Winnebago grammar. Among things that I think are essentially unpublished (manuscripts or dissertations) there's Sussman's Winnebago grammar, Hollow's Mandan dictionary, Hahn's (Omaha-)Ponca grammar, and Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago ethnobotany. (I think his Oneida ditto is also unpublished.) A really heroic effort might be Dorsey's Omaha-Ponca grammar or slip file. However, these last from Smith on are longhand or heavily long-hand, and I think more like some projects that HRAF has undertaken in the past than the typical EP project. From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 9 17:10:10 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:10:10 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: > Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a > more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. > Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of > Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal > of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of > UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair, Yes please: I'd very much like a copy. Thanks, Alan -- Alan H. Hartley 119 West Kent Road Duluth MN 55812-1152 U.S.A. 218/724-5095 http://www.d.umn.edu/~ahartley/ From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 9 17:07:53 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:07:53 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 10:12 AM Subject: Re: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > > ,,,,,,,,,,,, Among things that I > think are essentially unpublished (manuscripts or dissertations) there's > Sussman's Winnebago grammar, Hollow's Mandan dictionary, Hahn's > (Omaha-)Ponca grammar, and Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago > ethnobotany............... > The Smith Winnebago material has been published in : Kindscher, Kelly. Hurlburt, Dana P. Huron Smith's ethnobotany of the Hocak (Winnebago). [Article. Feature article] Economic Botany. v. 52 no4, Oct./Dec. 1998, p. 352-72. I can't speak to the quality of the edition or how it compares to the manuscript. From bcoon at montana.edu Wed Jan 9 17:14:57 2002 From: bcoon at montana.edu (Coon, Brad) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:14:57 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I would very much like to have a copy as well, thank you, Brad Coon The Libraries P.O. Box 173320 Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717-3320 bcoon at montana.edu (406) 994-6026 -----Original Message----- From: Alan H. Hartley [mailto:ahartley at d.umn.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 10:10 AM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a > more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. > Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of > Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal > of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of > UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 17:45:07 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 12:45:07 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Alan, I will put one in the mail. Blair From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 9 17:45:59 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 12:45:59 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: I will send one to you. Blair From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 9 19:15:52 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 13:15:52 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the Siouan > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for > yet. There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in most instances. >Huron K. Smith's manuscript Winnebago ethnobotany. (I think his Oneida ditto is also unpublished.) This (the Winnebago) has been published now -- by Kelly Kindscher and some others in botany at the U. of KS. I don't have the biblio handy at the moment, but they worked on it with the Winnebago Tribe. Ultimately they didn't bother with vowel length, but the rest looks OK. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 9 19:27:37 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 13:27:37 -0600 Subject: Winnebago ethnobotany. Message-ID: The Smith Winnebago material has been published in : Kindscher, Kelly. Hurlburt, Dana P. Huron Smith's ethnobotany of the Hocak (Winnebago). [Article. Feature article] Economic Botany. v. 52 no4, Oct./Dec. 1998, p. 352-72. I can't speak to the quality of the edition or how it compares to the manuscript. Ah, thanks Eric. You anticipated me. That's it. Kindscher has published two book-length treatments of Indian medicinal and food plants and is in an excellent position to do this sort of thing. His stuff's pretty good. They tried to be very politically-correct and work with the Winnebago on the MS, and they got good cooperation, but, as I said, no vowel length was noted in their updated forms. Smith's original didn't have it either as I recall though. I had sent them to Ken Miner, but apparently Ken wasn't interested. Bob From enichol4 at attbi.com Thu Jan 10 08:05:52 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 02:05:52 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rankin, Robert L" To: "'Koontz John E '" ; Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 1:15 PM Subject: RE: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) > > The ECO collection has a lot of nice stuff for Algonquianists but the > Siouan > > pickings seem a little slim. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking > for > > yet. > > There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices > they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in > most instances. > ......... I trust that the "reprints for the outrageous prices" comment referred to the Evolution Publishing series and not to the Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection referenced in my preposed quote. I should have known there'd be no economy in acronymy! From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:06:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:06:41 -0600 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: >I trust that the "reprints for the outrageous prices" comment referred to the Evolution Publishing series and not to the Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection referenced in my preposed quote. I should have known there'd be no economy in acronymy! Aaaaaaaah, OK, sorry. I'm only familiar with one of these reprint series for "little bitty" articles from the distant past. And it's far more expensive than a trip to the library and a few nickles in the photocopier. 8-) Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:14:09 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:14:09 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: NPR's Morning Edition this a.m. (Thurs) carried a piece from a Hopi writer in Flagstaff about story-telling in the Winter month(s). He mentioned that they believe that in the coldest (lunar) month of Winter, spirits are wandering about after dark so they don't whistle, make loud noises or beat drums. There's the belief about whistling attracting spirits again, this time from the SW. It seems to be widespread enough. If you're in the MST or CST zones, you still may be able to hear it. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 15:15:03 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:15:03 -0600 Subject: PST Message-ID: Oops. I meant PST, not CST. Bob From claudiap at ccppcrafts.com Thu Jan 10 08:24:00 2002 From: claudiap at ccppcrafts.com (claudiap at ccppcrafts.com) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 08:24:00 +0000 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: The Catawba traditionally were not supposed to tell stories in the summer time or a black snake would lay across their path. Telling stories was a winter time activity when all the harvest was in. Mothers and young children were also told not to leave the children's tracks in the ground at night or the "yeN hasuri" (the little wild people) would find them and not let them sleep. The mother would always sweep away all the tracks before retiring at night. It's also a good way to keep the children out of the woods where the yeN hasuri dwell. Claudia Y.Heinemann-Priest Catawba Cultural Preservation Project ------------------- - From simpsond at email.arizona.edu Thu Jan 10 17:39:15 2002 From: simpsond at email.arizona.edu (Erik) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 10:39:15 -0700 Subject: publication on the Woccon language Message-ID: Blair A. Rudes, I would also like to have one if possible. Erik Simpson 3145 E. Terra Alta blvd. Tucson, AZ 85716 From BARudes at aol.com Thu Jan 10 18:29:22 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:29:22 EST Subject: publication on the Woccon language Message-ID: O.k. I'll put one in the mail. Blair From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Jan 10 18:48:27 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:48:27 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Re the discussion on Siouan instrumentals: In Crow and Hidatsa, there is no inner/outer opposition--all the instrumentals are 'inner'. As far as I can tell, the same is true in Mandan and in Southeastern Siouan. Biloxi appears to have lost the instrumentals that would be outer in other languages, but there is evidence from Tutelo in Oliverio's grammar that indicates that all the instrumentals are inner. Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in Mississippi Valley languages? Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Jan 10 18:49:13 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 11:49:13 -0700 Subject: Suggestion on Communications About Paper Distribution Message-ID: My apologies in advance for this post on list mechanics. I'd suggest that communications responding to offers to distribute a copy of a paper and similar matters should be handled off-list if possible. This isn't any strict requirement, but I recommend it. It reduces traffic that might not interest others, and also reduces clutter in the permanent archives of the list at www.linguistlist.org. I don't have any way to delete material from the archives easily, unfortunately, or I wouldn't worry about the latter. Incidentally, the managers of LinguistList have kindly deleted some embarassing misposts for us by hand in the past. Anyway, by default, letters from the list should cause simple replies that you formulate to go to the list, though some mail client programs manage to undo this scheme one way or another. I've set things up this way to encourage discourse. Otherwise all replies would tend to go to the original sender instead of to the subscribers at large, and that is a recipe for a very quiet list indeed. If you do actually want to conduct a side conversation (and handling the mechanics of sending a copy of a peper would be a reasonable situation for this), you'll need to make sure explicitly that your response is going to the address of the original poster of the offer, rather than to the list. It's always a good idea to look at the to-field of a letter anyway, as that can save a lot of grief. From Rgraczyk at aol.com Thu Jan 10 19:09:56 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:09:56 EST Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Blair: I would like a copy of this article. Randy Graczyk Address: Fr. Randolph Graczyk St. Charles Mission P.O. Box 29 Pryor, MT 59066 From Zylogy at aol.com Thu Jan 10 19:12:09 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:12:09 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Re Randy's post (and by the way, thanks!)- this is interesting. A spread of construction types might provide a better base for musings about the grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. It would be interesting to see whether such a spread of types has any relation to the patterning of constituent order in North America. Instrument-left bipartitism has its greatest flowering near the verb-initial zone in the Northwest- the farther you go away the fewer prefixes there tend to be. What's left tends to be quite lexicalized. Those interesting spatial-distributive suffixes in Muskogean are possibly the remnants of a suffixal location/pathway system (and the prefixes- what is the relation to bodypart systems?). More please! And thanks! Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From shanwest at uvic.ca Thu Jan 10 20:03:26 2002 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 12:03:26 -0800 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: <200201101624.g0AGOY622281@raq10.dnssys.com> Message-ID: Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. Shannon > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of > claudiap at ccppcrafts.com > Sent: January 10, 2002 12:24 AM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: Re: Proverbs/superstitions. > > > The Catawba traditionally were not supposed to tell stories in > the summer time or a black snake would lay across their path. > Telling stories was a winter time activity when all the harvest was in. > Mothers and young children were also told not to leave the > children's tracks in the ground at night or the "yeN hasuri" (the > little wild people) would find them and not let them sleep. The > mother would always sweep away all the tracks before retiring at > night. It's also a good way to keep the children out of the > woods where the yeN hasuri dwell. > Claudia Y.Heinemann-Priest > Catawba Cultural Preservation Project > ------------------- > - > > > From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 20:11:27 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:11:27 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: >Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. The Hopi fellow didn't mention this consequence though. Bob From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Thu Jan 10 20:38:43 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 12:38:43 -0800 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is very widespread. Iroquoians think you'll get a snake in your bed. > Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. Wally Chafe From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 21:04:10 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:04:10 -0600 Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: >Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in Mississippi Valley languages? The evidence is messy. My analysis is still that the outer instrumentals were indeed grammaticalized later than their inner counterparts. Then, the languages in which they're all "inner" placed them with the main inner set by analogy. BUT there is no complete uniformity in the outer set. Ordinarily in Mississippi Valley languages they are *Wo- 'by shooting', *WaN- 'by blade' and *aRa:- 'by extreme temperature (hot or cold)'. (Dakotan includes na- 'by foot' in the outer set, probably from confusion with homophonous 'by extreme temp.', but that's an anomaly.) *Wo- 'by shooting' is found only in Mississippi Valley languages. Personally, I would derive it from older *wa-?o: 'to shoot at and hit something' that was in serial construction with another verb. Ordinary phonology would then give us the "funny W+o" we need here. *WaN- 'by bladed instrument' is found in the same MVS languages plus Mandan. I can't suggest quite as good an etymology for this one, but perhaps it is again *wa- 'indef. obj.' used with the same root that we reconstruct for 'chert, flint, knife', namely *waN-. *waN would have to occur as a verb root in order to be used with this prefix however. Nevertheless, phonology would again give us the "funny W" we want here. *aRa:- 'by extreme temp.' is found in all the Siouan languages as far as I can tell, but it has other idiosyncracies, at least in the languages I know about. It causes the verb to be conjugated with the stative pronoun set. And in Dhegiha languages, it often has fused with the following verb stem in such a way that other, inner instrumentals can be added in front of it. Thus it is the only instrumental that appears to be compounded with additional instrumentals (sometimes). In sum, I think Randy is mostly right in that the outer set tends to be more transparent etymologically and probably arose from more recent serial constructions. AS I recall, Giulia Oliverio has a conference paper she did on these that may go into greater detail. I don't know if she ever published it or not. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 10 21:21:42 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:21:42 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Ardis, Catherine, John, Rory, et al., I recently queried Kathy Shea about the reality of a construction that John discovered in Dorsey 1890. The only 2 sentences using it are copied below. I am sending this to all of you because Kathy's Ponca speakers didn't recognize these as legit Ponca sentences. No doubt the pattern was rather rare. I wonder if ANYone working with Omaha (or Osage) can get recognition of this pattern using a conjugated forms of /the/ (aspirated T + e) with the forms a-the, dha-the "I must have..."? Bob Here is my original note to Kathy: "Here is an excerpt from my ICHL paper in which I quoted JOhn Koontz. I hope the 'funny characters' came through OK. If they did not, please let me know if clarification is needed: (G) Conjugated evidentials. Koontz (2000 and personal communication) reports a few instances in which evidential classifiers are found in Omaha (Dorsey 1890:63) with person-number prefixes, i.e., they are conjugated as verbs just like the verbal classifiers discussed above, except that here it is the inanimate set of classifiers that is involved even if the subjects are animate. If we have analyzed these correctly, they represent yet another stage in the grammaticalization of the evidential-classificatory articles and the only instances in which inanimate classifiers are used with actual animate pronominal prefixes. Both are with the 'standing inanimate evidential'. (53) na! ag??the -- a-th? -- ?-ama EXCLAM SUUS-eat I-EVIDENTIAL say, they say. 'Why! I ate mine -- I must have -- he said, they say. (54) na! ag??-sn? kki a-zhaN a-th?, ?-ama EXCLAM SUUS-swallow when I-sleep I-EVIDENTIAL, say, say. 'Why! When I swallowed mine I must have been sleeping, he said, they say.' WHAT I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT IS WHETHER THIS IS REALLY A CONJUGATED "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLE" OR SOME OTHER, UNIDENTIFIED, PARTICLE. SO ONE WAY TO FIND OUT WOULD BE TO CITE THE SENTENCE TO PARRISH WILLIAMS AND TELL HIM WHAT DORSEY SAID IT MEANT. THEN SEE IF IT CAN BE SAID IN THE 2ND PERSON, E.G. (53') na! ?a-g??the -- ?a-th? -- ?-ama EXCLAM SUUS-eat YOU-EVIDENTIAL say, they say. 'Why! YOU ate YOURS -- YOU must have -- he said, they say. (54') na! ?a-g??-sn? kki ?a-zhaN ?a-th?, ?-ama EXCLAM SUUS-swallow when YOU-sleep YOU-EVIDENTIAL, say, say. 'Why! When YOU swallowed YOURS YOU must have been sleeping, he said, they say.' THE CRITICAL FORMS HERE OF COURSE ARE THE /DHA-THE/ IN EACH SENTENCE. IF THOSE WORK OUT, THEN YOU MIGHT TRY FOR A FEW OTHER ANALOGOUS CASES WITH /THE/ AND DIFFERENT SUBJECTS. YOU CAN TRY FOR OTHER 'YOU MUST HAVE...' OR 'I MUST HAVE...' OR 'WE MUST HAVE...' SENTENCES. THESE AREA ALL CASES IN WHICH THE SUBJECT DOES SOMETHING UNAWARES AND THEN REMARKS UPON IT. THERE IS ALSO THE QUESTION WHETHER OTHER "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLES" CAN APPEAR IN THE SAME SLOT. THIS SEEMS MORE DOUBTFUL, SINCE /THE/ WAS THE ORIGINAL 'RUMORED' EVIDENTIAL PARTICLE. IT IS WORTH EXPLORING THOUGH. I HOPE YOU HAVE GOOD LUCK ELICITING THESE. I SUSPECT THE CONSTRUCTION WASN'T USED MUCH SINCE IT ONLY OCCURS TWICE IN DORSEY'S TEXT COLLECTION. YOU NEVER KNOW THOUGH.... THAT LITTLE BOOKLET THAT KINKOS DID UP FOR MY WORKSHOP PAPER IN BOULDER CONTAINS FURTHER DISCUSSION." Bob Part of Kathy's reply: "I finally got around to asking Uncle Parrish about the sentences you sent when I went over to his house last Sunday to take him a Christmas present. Uncle Paul Little Voice happened to be there visiting, so I submitted the sentences to both of them. Both of the them said the sentences didn't make any sense, even though I read the them several times with the translation. They were pretty emphatic about their opinions." From jschudli at indiana.edu Thu Jan 10 23:20:37 2002 From: jschudli at indiana.edu (Joel David Schudlich) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 18:20:37 -0500 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <2d.1699eefb.296f4189@aol.com> Message-ID: Just an observation: re > grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in > genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. > I'm sure this is so besides the point that it might not even qualify as a tangent, but the direction of causality of the parallels between genetics and historical linguistics is not what most people assume: Indo-European philology is one of the models Darwin based his theories on (or at the very least, the "family trees" common to both theories predate Darwin, and I have been assured by those who have better reason than I to know that he was aware of them) so if the parallels persist, it may simply reflect the common origins of the models. Just an observation, feel free to ignore me. p.s. Hi Randy! Long time no see. ::::::::::::::::::::: "...in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all." -Edward Sapir, 1927 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Joel D Schudlich 2351 Worthington Lane Bloomington, IN 47401 (812) 336-2898 jschudli at indiana.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 05:40:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:40:42 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <2d.1699eefb.296f4189@aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Instrument-left bipartitism has its greatest flowering near the verb-initial > zone in the Northwest- the farther you go away the fewer prefixes there tend > to be. What's left tends to be quite lexicalized. Those interesting > spatial-distributive suffixes in Muskogean are possibly the remnants of a > suffixal location/pathway system (and the prefixes- what is the relation to > bodypart systems?). More please! And thanks! It may be somewhat misleading to consider the Siouan cases of prefixal instruments, bipartite or otherwise, as peripheral to the NW. Siouanists tend to feel that the present westerly extension of the family is relatively late. All of the Siouan parts of the Siouan-Catawban family have the instrumentals, including Southeastern/Ohio Valley. The shape/path components in Siouan tend to be suffixal, too, because they are embodied in NP and sentence/VP-final article and auxiliary systems. For example, in Dhegiha, the continuative or progressive auxiliaries are close to being homophonous with the definite articles. In Omaha-Ponca they are the same, though more frequently in inflected contexts (when inflectable) as auxiliaries. In Osage the paradigms have been filled out with additional forms drawn from the current positional verbs and the motion verbs in their uses as auxiliaries, so that the two systems are not the same in detail. In addition, there are some differences in the article system itself, between Omaha-Ponca and Osage and other more southerly Dhegiha langages. In addition, the Dhegiha "suddenly/frequently" (momentaneous / inceptive / iterative) auxiliaries, which contain path as well as shape elements, also follow the main verb and agree with it in transitive active inflection. There is a suffixal auxiliary in Crow which very much resembles a fragment of one of these stems. We've discussed these before, so I'll refer those interested to the archives. From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Jan 11 06:20:38 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 01:20:38 EST Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Interesting. Auxiliaries (including posturals sit, stand, lie) seem to be at the core of the Yahgan loc/path suffix system- it would be of use to know whether there is an implicational hierarchy of sorts detailing the relative order of entraining of such elements into the system. Perhaps, then, these items in Siouan are the beginnings of a refreshing of the system? I did get some sense that instr and path terms were on separate (and competing?) schedules in bipartite languages, in terms of openness and productivity of the sets. Any info about Yuchi relevant here? I've been trying to remember how things work in other families nearby- Tonkawa, for instance, various "Gulf" outside Muskogean, etc. And Caddoan? If I remember correctly, pretty much the entire SE of NAmerica is solidly verb-final in syntax preference. One would then expect aux-right. So perhaps, then, the growth of a suffixal path system is easiest in this type, even as one sees the withering of the instr-left system. But then what's the deal with Muskogean? Clearly the spatial-distributive system is on the wane, at least the lexicalized portion of it. Maybe the regrammaticalization of the system at the constructional level offsets this? That, at least, would make some sense. I've been told that Guaykuruan in S.Am. has a quite well developed path/loc suffix system, but no instr affixes- manner commonly simply being left out of discourse. Anyway, looks like I may have to keep an eye on the synthesis/analysis axis at all times in this endeavor. I've been focussing so much on the zipping up of structure at the lexical level I've probably too much ignored the extreme analysis end of things. It would be nice to know whether there was a manner/path alternation there too- assuming of course there is one at all in the first place. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 07:43:53 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:43:53 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: <97.2144928b.296f3bfb@aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re the discussion on Siouan instrumentals: In Crow and Hidatsa, there is no > inner/outer opposition--all the instrumentals are 'inner'. As far as I can > tell, the same is true in Mandan and in Southeastern Siouan. Biloxi appears > to have lost the instrumentals that would be outer in other languages, but > there is evidence from Tutelo in Oliverio's grammar that indicates that all > the instrumentals are inner. > Question: is it possible that the inner/outer opposition is an innovation in > Mississippi Valley languages? Bob's explanation of *Wo- 'by shooting' < *wa-?o# makes sense to me, and it the form is literally 'shoot(ing) something', that would explain its outer morphosyntax naturally, and suggest that it was original. Einaudi cites putcpi 'to miss in trying to hit' for Biloxi. However, this pu is has a u-breve, Dorsey's u-circumflex, representing schwa, or, apparently, an /a/, so this is probably /pa-/. It seems to be inflected the same way: First person aNk-, second person i-. I'm not sure that the *WaN- 'with a blade, by cutting' is actually nasalized. It's just ma= (not maN=) in OP, and pa= in Osage. It's just wa= in Teton. If this has the same structure as 'by shooting', the underlying stem formation would be something like *wa-?a#, but I don't know of an example of the root *?a, which would presumably be inflected *pa, *s^a, *(?)a or some regularized variant of that. Einaudi didn't notice the *aRa- 'by heat' instrumental in Biloxi, but I think the examples Bob has in mind are hidden under ade' 'to blaze or burn', e.g., ada'tctka=...ye 'to scorch any object', at.axni' 'to be burnt'. The inflection of this verb is interesting: 1st yaNk-ataxni..., 2nd a-yi-taxni... (or i-aNk-ataxni..., ay-itaxni...?). It's conceivable that the instrumental actually is related to the independent verb. === I've been meaning to provide the data to show that the 'spontaneous', 'by heat' and 'by foot' forms are divided three ways. Teton (cf. Buechel dictionary examples, also Boas & Deloria pp. 45, 82) 'by foot or leg', also 'by inner force' (including 'by boiling, by heating, etc.') 1 na=wa'- 2 na=ya'- 3 na=CV' ? 12 na=uN'- But, with the inner force reading, must be stative: 1 na=ma'- (however, I've noticed ma-nagnaNke 'I twitch') ? 2 na=ni'- 3 na=CV- ? 12 na=uN- Omaha-Ponca (cf. Boas & Santon, Dorsey texts) 'by foot' 1 a-naN'- 2 dha-naN- 3 naN-CV' 12 aN-naN'- 'by heat' (including various more spontaneous readings) 1 na'=aN- 2 na'=dhi- 3 na'= 12 na'=wa- Winnebago (Lipkind pp. 18, 20, 21, Miner) naNaN= 'by use of the foot' naNaN= 'An obsolescent prefix naN- is still sometimes used when the meaning is very forcibly "of its own accord."' 1 naNaN'= (naNaN=a'-) naN'aN=?V (naNaN=a'-?V) 2 naNaN=na'- naNnaN=s^-V'- 3 naNaN=CV' naNaN=?V' 12 ??? ??? daa= 'by fire, with heat' (d written t conventionally by Lipkind and Miner) 1 da'a= (daa=a'-) or da=i- (Active or stative depending on the stem) ? 2 daa=ra- or daa=ri'- 3 daa=CV' 12 ??? From cqcq at compuserve.com Fri Jan 11 14:10:44 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 09:10:44 -0500 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Bob, I don't believe I have seen any of these would-be conjugated evidentials in Osage. Carolyn From hu_matthews at sil.org Wed Jan 9 15:45:38 2002 From: hu_matthews at sil.org (Hu Matthews) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:45:38 -0500 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) Message-ID: Along the same vein and in an obviously self-promoting capacity, there is a more recent publication on the Woccon language: Blair A. Rudes. 2000. Resurrecting Coastal Catawban: The Reconstituted Phonology and Morphology of Woccon. Southern Journal of Linguistics 24.2:228-244. The Southern Journal of Linguistics is the new name for the SECOL Journal and is published out of UNC Charlotte. So, if anyone wants a copy of the article, let me know. Blair Could I please trouble you for a copy. Thanks Hu Matthews 710 Conway Billings MT 59105 hu_matthews at sil.org From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 15:23:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 08:23:42 -0700 Subject: Siouan References in Reprint (Woccon & Tutelo) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > There's very little substance to these reprints for the outrageous prices > they charge. Xeroxing the original will cost less than a tenth the price in > most instances. This is certainly true - I wouldn't recommend the series as an economy move - but I've been meaning to point out that xeroxing works better for the individual scholar than a library. I believe this series is primarily aimed at libraries. And I've actually worn out a few of my xeroxes over the years. Hale's Tutelo is tending toward that, which is why I was interested in the reprint copy. In fact, I've even worn out both a xerox and an original of LaFlesche's Osage Dictionary - the BAE paper binding, not the deluxe reprint of a few years back that I've seen at the CU library. Worn out doesn't mean unusable, but when it gets to where you need a bag or a folder to keep the pages collected, I'd call it worn out. A point in regard to Lawler's Woccon is that I'm not sure if it is readily available - I suppose in earlier reprints! - to be xeroxed. I believe Carter says he reproduces the whole list, but I was curious to see the original as a whole. From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 11 16:57:07 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:57:07 EST Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Re: wo- 'by shooting' < wa?o: Crow has a small set of verbs beginning in oo-: o'ottach 'break by shooting' oo'xeechi 'pierce through by shooting' o'oxexawi 'shot up' (stative) oo'xxaxxi 'shoot an arrow or bullet into a hole' oo'xpi 'wound, shoot at and hit' --also-- uu' 'hit target' Several of these stems also occur with other instrumental prefixes, e.g., alaxxaxxi' 'insert foot into', du'xxaxxi 'insert hand', pa'xxaxxi 'insert'. It looks to me like Crow has preserved the 'by shooting' instrumental without wa-. Randy From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 11 17:00:57 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 12:00:57 EST Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Re: WaN 'by bladed instrument': In Crow and Hidatsa this instrumental prefix is (h)a-. The h is preserved in Hidatsa, while most of the Crow reflexes have lost h. This also suggests that Crow and Hidatsa have preserved an instrumental without Wa-. Randy From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 18:19:47 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:19:47 -0700 Subject: Outer instrumentals. In-Reply-To: <25.2136a863.29707363@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re: wo- 'by shooting' < wa?o: > > Crow has a small set of verbs beginning in oo-: > > o'ottach 'break by shooting' > oo'xeechi 'pierce through by shooting' > o'oxexawi 'shot up' (stative) > oo'xxaxxi 'shoot an arrow or bullet into a hole' > oo'xpi 'wound, shoot at and hit' --also-- > uu' 'hit target' > > Several of these stems also occur with other instrumental prefixes, e.g., > alaxxaxxi' 'insert foot into', du'xxaxxi 'insert hand', pa'xxaxxi 'insert'. > > It looks to me like Crow has preserved the 'by shooting' instrumental without > wa-. In Omaha-Ponca, and, I think, Dhegiha generally, the equivalent of *wa-o- > *wo'- is accented u'- (or uu'-) as opposed to unaccented u- from just *o-. The development of *wa-?o > *Wo# > OP mu(u)'= is a bit different, because of timing (when in the history of Siouan) and/or the glottal stop. Is there any possibility that Crow oo' could be a case of wa-o-? I'm interested, because I'm not entirely convinced that the ?-initial of ?-stems is organic. It sometimes looks to me more like just the onset of V-initials combined with some reanalysis. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 18:23:22 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:23:22 -0700 Subject: Outer instrumentals. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Re: WaN 'by bladed instrument': > > In Crow and Hidatsa this instrumental prefix is (h)a-. The h is preserved in > Hidatsa, while most of the Crow reflexes have lost h. This also suggests > that Crow and Hidatsa have preserved an instrumental without Wa-. I think this is just the form that Bob needs to support his logical analysis. I suppose it couldn't include the hypothetical wa-, so probably oo- doesn't either. There is a difference in length, and the h- seems to require an explanation. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 19:19:21 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 13:19:21 -0600 Subject: Outer instrumentals. Message-ID: Many thanks to Randy for pointing out those truly interesting forms in Crow. So it looks like ALL the instrumentals are reconstructible in Proto Siouan now. But there is still some sort of relative chronology separating the "inner" ones from the "outer" ones. John Koontz writes: >In Omaha-Ponca, and, I think, Dhegiha generally, the equivalent of *wa-o- > *wo'- is accented u'- (or uu'-) as opposed to unaccented u- from just *o-. The development of *wa-?o > *Wo# > OP mu(u)'= is a bit different, because of timing (when in the history of Siouan) and/or the glottal stop. >Is there any possibility that Crow oo' could be a case of wa-o-? I'm interested, because I'm not entirely convinced that the ?-initial of ?-stems is organic. It sometimes looks to me more like just the onset of V-initials combined with some reanalysis. I tend to agree that vowel-initial stems do funny things. Some insert [?] in some languages, some seem to insert /r/ and some /w/ also, and Winnebago inserts /h/ before initial short V's. BUT I think we mustn't confuse these synchronic constraints/processes with the, clearly very old /?/ that occurs consistently with roots like ?iN 'wear', ?u:N 'do, be', ?o: 'wound', ?e: 'demonstrative' and others. These are quite different phenomena. It may be that these "organic" glottal stops were at some remote time epenthetic, but it is clear from the cognate sets we have that they were phonologized in pre-proto-Siouan. There's still a lot of comparative phonology yet to be done!! Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 19:42:27 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 13:42:27 -0600 Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: >I'm not sure that the *WaN- 'with a blade, by cutting' is actually nasalized. It's just ma= (not maN=) in OP, and pa= in Osage. It's just wa= in Teton. That's absolutely right. The evidence for any nasality would have to be semantic, not phonological. I was thinking about the various cutting instruments with [maNhin] or similar forms as a base. This may be the wrong way to go. Bob From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 11 20:01:25 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:01:25 -0600 Subject: Bipartite structure Message-ID: Yes, it often comes as a great surprise to biologists that this model is based to no small degree on Linguistics rather than the other way around. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Joel David Schudlich To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/10/02 5:20 PM Subject: Re: Bipartite structure Just an observation: re > grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in > genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype. > I'm sure this is so besides the point that it might not even qualify as a tangent, but the direction of causality of the parallels between genetics and historical linguistics is not what most people assume: Indo-European philology is one of the models Darwin based his theories on (or at the very least, the "family trees" common to both theories predate Darwin, and I have been assured by those who have better reason than I to know that he was aware of them) so if the parallels persist, it may simply reflect the common origins of the models. Just an observation, feel free to ignore me. p.s. Hi Randy! Long time no see. ::::::::::::::::::::: "...in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all." -Edward Sapir, 1927 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Joel D Schudlich 2351 Worthington Lane Bloomington, IN 47401 (812) 336-2898 jschudli at indiana.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 11 21:52:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:52:55 -0700 Subject: Bipartite structure In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: ...examples of foot/heat/spontaneous instrumentals ... I omitted to remind people that the initial da/la/na in da=...khota, etc., probably belongs in this set of forms, presumably as a fossilized old or just alternative version of 'by heat'. Notice that Winnebago combines 'spontaneously', but NOT 'by heat' with 'by foot'. I don't know, off hand, if Ioway-Otoe does it differently yet again. If I've questioned an inflectional form, it means I deduce it, but can't find a specific example or attestation of it at the moment. Siouanists tend historically to provide just first persons as examples of inflection, on the theory that anyone can easily deduce the rest from that. Hah! (Or maybe it's just some faded echo of Latin grammatical theory. Did it really work there?) It's always wise to give 1st, 2nd, 3rd (probably the stem, modulo a final vowel or so), and inclusive. You can omit them if you can supply an abbreviation keying into an ironclad table of paradigms. Never assume that anyone coming after you will know what you know about the paradigm. > Winnebago (Lipkind pp. 18, 20, 21, Miner) > > naNaN= 'by use of the foot' > naNaN= 'An obsolescent prefix naN- is still sometimes used when the > meaning is very forcibly "of its own accord."' Notice that 'by foot' is outer, even though different from 'by fire' (also outer)! > 1 naNaN'= (naNaN=a'-) naN'aN=?V (naNaN=a'-?V) > 2 naNaN=na'- naNnaN=s^-V'- This should be naNaN=s^-?V'- > 3 naNaN=CV' naNaN=?V' > 12 ??? ??? Miner shows the second pattern for an underlying ?-stem. Someplace I located the first pattern, which seems to be regular. I think the source may have been something by Hale & White Eagle. > daa= 'by fire, with heat' (d written t conventionally by Lipkind and > Miner) > > 1 da'a= (daa=a'-) or da=i- (Active or stative depending on the stem) > ? 2 daa=ra- or daa=ri'- > 3 daa=CV' > 12 ??? Miner gives apparently active and apparently stative first persons (only, no second persons). The instrumental precedes the pronouns. The d in daa is the unambiguous reflex of *R, as is the d/l/n in Dakotan da/la/na. (OK, it's not unambiguous in the case of n, and it could be s^ + r.) From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jan 11 22:23:10 2002 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:23:10 -0700 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I actually experienced this one. The very first Wichita text I ever recorded was a winter story told in the summer; the speaker laughed about the superstition at the time. But when the lady went home that very same day she discovered a giant bull snake behind her bread box in the kitchen. Needless to say, I never got another winter story in the summer. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado Campus Box 295 Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > >Some Nakota speakers still won't tell stories between the vernal equinox > and the autumnal equinox. I didn't ever hear why, just that they won't. > > Makes the snakes come in the Plains too. > > The Hopi fellow didn't mention this consequence though. > > Bob > From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 12 17:27:15 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 11:27:15 -0600 Subject: Proverbs/superstitions. Message-ID: That's a great field work story! Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is certainly the way those things stay alive. Bob >I actually experienced this one. The very first Wichita text I ever recorded was a winter story told in the summer; the speaker laughed about the superstition at the time. But when the lady went home that very same day she discovered a giant bull snake behind her bread box in the kitchen. Needless to say, I never got another winter story in the summer. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 12 21:21:06 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 14:21:06 -0700 Subject: Comment to Rankin from Chad Nilep Message-ID: Chad Nilep (chad.nilep at colorado.edu) asked me to post this letter for him: The Morning Edition segment is available through NPR's Real Audio archives at the following URL: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020110.me.18.ram You must have a Real Audio player to access the program. Descriptions for this morning's show are at: http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=01/10/2002&PrgID=3 Transcripts are available for purchase. Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > NPR's Morning Edition this a.m. (Thurs) carried a piece from a Hopi > writer in Flagstaff about story-telling in the Winter month(s). He > mentioned that they believe that in the coldest (lunar) month of > Winter, spirits are wandering about after dark so they don't whistle, > make loud noises or beat drums. > > There's the belief about whistling attracting spirits again, this time > from the SW. It seems to be widespread enough. > > If you're in the MST or CST zones, you still may be able to hear it. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 14 06:07:04 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 23:07:04 -0700 Subject: Hennepin & Dakota "Louis" = "Sun" Message-ID: I have confirmed the suggestion offered, that the source I recalled was Hennepin. I am not sure that this is the particular reference I recalled, but here is one: A Description of Louisiana by Louis Hennepin. Translated by John Gilmary Shea. Ann Arbor. University Microfilms, Inc. 1966. p. 45: Hennepin is certainly the first who gave Dakota words: and he gives them accurately as will be seen by the reference to Riggs' Dakota Dictionary. Parkman who lived for some weeks in a Sioux lodge says that a variety of trivial incidents mentioned by Hennepin are perfectly in accordance with usage. In regard to Hennepin's Dakota terms he says: "These words as far as my information reaches, are in every instance correct." Even the word Louis, which Hennepin says signifies the sun, is no invention. "The Yankton band of this people, however, call the sun oouee," which, it is evident, represents the French pronunciation of Louis, omitting the initial letter. p. 215-6 The father in a doleful voice, broken with sighs and sobs, with his whole body bathed in tears, sometimes addressed the warriors, sometimes came to me, and put his hands on my head, doing the same to our two Frenchmen, sometimes he raised his eyes to heaven and often uttered the word Louis, which means sun, complaining to that great luminary of the death of his son. JEK From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Tue Jan 15 00:33:08 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 18:33:08 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: Bob, I submitted your sentences to Emmaline Sanchez, one of our two Omaha speakers, in class today. She had no trouble at all accepting the two sentences from Dorsey as valid: Na! Agdha'the athe'! Well! I must have eaten it (my own)! Agdha'sni kki azhaN' athe'! When I swallowed it, I must have been asleep! When I tried to conjugate it, though, I got into trouble. Something like Dhagdha'the dhathe'! sounded redundant, as the last word also means 'eat'. In fact, at one point in there it seemed she was telling me that athe' itself could also mean 'eat', which it probably does if they elide the initial dh-. (I ruefully recall a moment last semester when I was all ready to rush onto the list with news of the discovery of a brand new article, iNkhe'.) I think I got acceptance when I tried athe' with 2nd and 3rd person forms, but I'm not quite sure, as we were possibly at the point of confusion by then. I'll try running these by them again later. In the first person, at least, I think we're clear that this form is valid and still used in Omaha. Emmaline explained the word athe' as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: AzhaN' athe'. I must have been sleeping. > WHAT I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT IS WHETHER THIS IS REALLY A CONJUGATED > "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLE" OR SOME OTHER, UNIDENTIFIED, PARTICLE. At present, the evidence here seems to be that athe' is an independent particle that does not conjugate. We'll need to do a little more work to be sure of this, however. Rory From CaRudin1 at wsc.edu Tue Jan 15 01:28:14 2002 From: CaRudin1 at wsc.edu (Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:28:14 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: >Emmaline explained the word athe' >as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example >of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of >you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: > > AzhaN' athe'. > I must have been sleeping. What a great example! This is really nice. The homophony of the predicted second person dhathe with the "eat" stem is unfortunate and likely a confusing factor. I wonder if you would have more luck with "we" forms (we must all have been sleeping -- aNzhaN aNthe?? -- when you knocked on our door this morning)? Or second person with a non-eating verb (dhazhaN dhathe??), though second person forms often seem hard to elicit. >I think I got acceptance when I tried athe' with 2nd and 3rd person >forms, but I'm not quite sure, as we were possibly at the point of >confusion by then. Hmm... this does look like it might be a simple particle of some kind. Alas -- much less interesting than a conjugated evidential, though still kind of cool... Do try Mrs. Sanchez again, with a different verb, when she's feeling fresh. I haven't had a chance to ask any speakers any of these myself yet, but hope to before too long. Catherine From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Tue Jan 15 01:32:51 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 19:32:51 -0600 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. Message-ID: While we're on the subject, I'm wondering if I could get a little discussion of the OP article/positional { the }. It's been referred to repeatedly on the list as an EVIDENTIAL particle. For { athe' }, at least, this is clearly the case. But for { the } itself, I'm not seeing it. After a noun, { the } means "standing" or "ordered, in a bundle". After a verb, it seems to me to make the action perfective. It can wrap up an entire preceding sentence into a nominal package that we might translate with a "that"-clause, as in the classic greeting: Dha-thi' the u'daN. It is good that you have come. In the letters section of Dorsey, { the } is used almost incessantly when the writer is describing the actions that have been done by a local person: [Subject] [Verb] i the. is the standard form for completed actions where we would probably use the simple past tense in English. In the myths, where the account is hearsay and statements about characters' actions generally close with -bi-ama', the standard way of saying that something had been done prior to the current point in the story is to change the closing sequence to -bi-the'-ama', [s/he] had done it, they say. In all of these cases, { the } seems to signal the prior completion or accomplishment of the verb's action. It is as if the implication were: "This action STANDS", which would connect the verbal use to the standard nominal use. I have seldom, if ever, seen any cases where { the } seems to signal EVIDENTLY. Is it possible that the EVIDENTIAL use of { the } could be a reduction or confusion of a different morpheme { athe' }, which certainly does seem to be EVIDENTIAL? Comments, anybody?? Rory From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Tue Jan 15 08:24:31 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:24:31 -0000 Subject: Siouan Caddoan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Is it to early for me to ask about the next Siouan-Caddoan conference. I believe it was planned to be in Spearfish. I would very much like to attend and hope to stay over there for about a week, but am planning to be away from the 8 -15 of June. Any information available yet? Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 15 15:25:39 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:25:39 -0700 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is really great, Rory! On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > When I tried to conjugate it, though, I got into trouble. Something > like > > Dhagdha'the dhathe'! > > sounded redundant, as the last word also means 'eat'. In fact, at > one point in there it seemed she was telling me that athe' itself > could also mean 'eat', which it probably does if they elide the > initial dh-. (I ruefully recall a moment last semester when I was > all ready to rush onto the list with news of the discovery of a > brand new article, iNkhe'.) I remember that iNkhe' (and the plural aNkha) in my own limited field work, I think I also got ege for egidhe once. Intervocalic dh tends to disappear in fast speech. I think Carolyn has found iNkshe in Osage, too, for that matter, if I don't misremember. I've noticed that Omaha speakers feel comfortable with second persons that seem to be flat assertions about the hearer. You notice this as soon as you start to try to elicit paradigms. They prefer a question in many cases. This discomfort is, I would say, much stronger than the discomfort with immodest self-assessments in the first person, e.g., 'I am strong'. I tend to put it down to pragmatic factors, but perhaps, given the use of assertionals, it's appropriate to think of the unmarked sentence as a term in the system and treat "unmarked" assertions regarding the hearer as ungrammatical under some circumstances. I have never tried to work this out systematically, however, and this is an area of confusion and unsupported hypotheses for me. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there's a possibility that the difficulty with second persons of -the 'must' falls under this heading. It may actually be that -the lacks a second person. It may not be possible (or maybe it's just not "polite?") to say things like "you must have tripped" or "you must be a complete idiot" or even more neutral things like "you must be very happy/tired." This would produce what amounts to a defective paradigm, like Dakota epc^e 'I think', which can only be first person. (Perhaps this is related to the fact that OP edhe 'to think', can only occur in a sort of mitigated for using egaN 'it's like, to be like': ebdh=egaN, etc., though it does have all four persons.) In general, this might be a situation where it would be safest to start by seeing what speakers produce as translations of various "you just have" sentences in English. The closest things to this sort of context that I can recall from the texts involve 'I suspect' as a superordinate verb. I remember a sentence 'I suspect you're asleep' for a case where 'you must be asleep' would have worked. > In the first person, at least, I think we're clear that this form > is valid and still used in Omaha. Emmaline explained the word athe' > as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example > of her own. If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of > you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them: > > AzhaN' athe'. > I must have been sleeping. I agree that 'you must have been sleeping' or 'you must be asleep' would be good examples, especially, as you know Ms. Sanchez liked the first person. It's also interesting that this is something that Omaha speakers liked, but Ponca speakers didn't. I should check the examples in the Dorsey collection to see who produced them. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 15 15:56:28 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 08:56:28 -0700 Subject: Attn: Dhegiholics. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > While we're on the subject, I'm wondering if I could get a little > discussion of the OP article/positional { the }. It's been referred > to repeatedly on the list as an EVIDENTIAL particle. For { athe' }, > at least, this is clearly the case. But for { the } itself, I'm not > seeing it. First of all, I'm responsible for suggesting that the (and analogous uses of khe, dhaN, and ge, in sharply decreasing order of frequency, could be regarded as as "evidential" in the literal sense of "evidently" or "it seems that" ot "must have." This may be one of those ideas I've had that turn out not to work in practice, or, at least, as in the case of the obviative stuff, to have dimensions I never thought of. I compared this with the similar "evidential" use of the perfect tense in Turkish (and other Turkic languages), as well as various Caucasian and Iranian languages. I think it's something of an areal feature of Central Asia. I apologize for using the word "evidential" as that is also used in a generic sense for all particals expressing some evaluation of the evidence for a statement. I'm not sure "evidential" is the term used for the Turkish, etc., cases, either, as it's been a while since I read anything on the subject. As in the case of the obviative, I don't want to claim that this works exactly like it's namesake, so it's perhaps not too essential to know exactly how this works in Turkish, but it is interesting that the general idea is that use of the perfect tense in Turkish means that the speaker deduces that a given action has occurred or that a given situation has arisen from some evidence other actually witnessing it. In other words, "the trash has been picked up" (or rather, the Turkish perfect tense equivalent) implies not that I saw it being picked up and not that this happened immediately before now, but that I have some evidence like seeing the empty cans or having heard the noises of the truck and crew making the pickup. Note that this is obviously not too different in practical terms from situations like the English perfect indicating that some occurred relevant to some stated time, e.g., the present for the present perfect. I think this would account for the ease with which Rory sees perfect interpretations. It might be rather difficult in practice to distinguish the two senses. I have argued that the athe 'I must have' examples tend to show that an evidential sense is paramount, just because of that "must," but there may be reasons for disregarding this and treating it as a special case. In the end, the real argument is that OP has lots of evidential marking (in the more general sense), and seeing the as a kind of evidential marking (of the kind indicating "true by deduction") seems more plausible than treating it as a kind of tense in a language that generally lacks other tenses per se. On the other hand, perfect is a very peculiar kind of tense, by any lights, and the difference between the two concepts seems to me to be almost a matter of a continuum, in spite of the apparent difference in descriptions. > After a noun, { the } means "standing" or "ordered, in a bundle". > After a verb, it seems to me to make the action perfective. It > can wrap up an entire preceding sentence into a nominal package > that we might translate with a "that"-clause, as in the classic > greeting: > > Dha-thi' the u'daN. > It is good that you have come. Or: It's good that you're here. This is a syntactical context in which Dorsey often translates the (sometimes khe and dhaN) as 'when', though one can see why he didn't with this particular example! The evidential sense is very bleached here, and I think this is true generally of motion verb examples, but the idea is that the presence/arrival of the hearer indicates their coming. > In all of these cases, { the } seems to signal the prior > completion or accomplishment of the verb's action. It is > as if the implication were: "This action STANDS", which > would connect the verbal use to the standard nominal use. > I have seldom, if ever, seen any cases where { the } seems > to signal EVIDENTLY. "Evidently" and the other expedients for indicating this sense in English are all rather marked. The trouble is that English has no grammaticalized structure for marking this, so a very marked circumlocution has to be used to draw attention to it, just as a very marked circumlocition involving 'woman' has to be used to translate precisely the sense of 'she' into Omaha-Ponca. From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jan 15 19:12:38 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 13:12:38 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: Rory, Thanks very much for checking this. It's good news! I agree with John's comment also, that people shy away from flat 2nd person attribution, so it will be really interesting to see if you can get oN-the or just the or tha-i for 'we must have' and 's/he must have' respectively. >I submitted your sentences to Emmaline Sanchez, one of our two Omaha speakers, in class today. She had no trouble at all accepting the two sentences from Dorsey as valid: On your other question, John has a very nice paper on the topic of evidential use of the articles. All I can add is that there is an etymologically distinct particle, /the/ that exists in all Dhegiha dialects with a cognate, /rahe/ in Hidatsa. In Dhegiha, the older writers tended to gloss it 'narrative', a usage I followed for awhile myself. It is a homonym of the 'standing inanimate' /the/, but i think the syntax is different. Speakers may even confuse it with the positional, but it comes from a different source ('to say that'). My analysis is that numbers of speakers DID in fact confuse it with the positional and then, by analogy, introduced the other positionals that John has found good evidence of into the same syntactic slot over time. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 16 03:08:55 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 21:08:55 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: Bob, John, Catherine and Mark, Thank you all for your constructive comments and good advice! I concur that second person is a little dicey. We've had trouble with this, too. > On your other question, John has a very nice paper on the topic of > evidential use of the articles. All I can add is that there is an > etymologically distinct particle, /the/ that exists in all Dhegiha dialects > with a cognate, /rahe/ in Hidatsa. In Dhegiha, the older writers tended to > gloss it 'narrative', a usage I followed for awhile myself. It is a homonym > of the 'standing inanimate' /the/, but i think the syntax is different. > Speakers may even confuse it with the positional, but it comes from a > different source ('to say that'). > My analysis is that numbers of speakers DID in fact confuse it with the > positional and then, by analogy, introduced the other positionals that John > has found good evidence of into the same syntactic slot over time. So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this a valid re-statement of what you're saying? For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of aNzhaN' aNthe' vs. aNzhaN' athe' If one of those forms is preferred, that should just about decide it. After that, I should try Seth zhaN the vs. Seth zhaN athe' If the former of these two sentences is accepted, and neither of the first two were, then I should try Bob's suggested aNzhaN' the and aNzhaN' tha-i On the other hand, if it is rejected as ungrammatical, then I will want to try Seth zhaN i the and Seth zhaN the pi'azhi If these are accepted, then I will try to elicit their English translation, which I would predict to be Seth slept and It is bad that Seth has slept We'll see what we can find out next week! Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 16 04:36:01 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 21:36:01 -0700 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come > out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', > (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, > which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The > latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the > verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been > introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL > meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, > the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this > a valid re-statement of what you're saying? This is my understanding of Bob's position. I had left things at the point where rahe didn't exist to provide a cognate the for the narrative/evidential usage. I wasn't sure whether at what point the full set of inanimate articles got to be used evidentially. I wasn't aware of any examples of this outside Omaha-Ponca, except for /the/. I think Bob and Carolyn have said they have some Kaw and Osage examples of *the (c^he, che), but nothing else. Textual materials for all of the Dhegiha languages aside from Omaha-Ponca are scarce. > For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: > > 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. > > 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. One might want to distinguish two cases of (1), (1a), where other forms exist, at least in principle if perhaps unobtainable today, and (1b), where only the first person exists. There is another particle that can be rendered 'must' - I think with an obligational sense - which is as^e. It contracts with =tta irrealis and =bi plural and proximate as =tt=as^e, =b=as^e. The two examples of 'I must have' are both in Is^tiniNkhe, the Turkeys, Turtle, and Elk, from PpadhiNnaNppaz^i, an Omaha speaker. They are: agdha'the athe' 'I must have eaten my own' (1890:63.5) az^aN' athe' 'I must have slept' (1890:63.6) I looked for other persons with various plausible glosses and found only: s^aN me'ha= the=atta kkaN'=bdha yet winter hides the beyond I want s^aN Kansas e'=di= ge= s^te=aN yet K. (they are) there must be so-ever 1891:19.2-3 And I desire winter hides "beyond all." And (in) Kansas "they must be in some places." I want winter hides above all. There must be some here and there in Kansas. The quoted bits of the glossing are from Dorsey's interlinear. I've rephrased it somewhat in the next verison. The second example is glossed with "must" but is third person. Note that there is no =bi or =i. I didn't expect one with an article. Here, even though =the 'the upright' is the article with "(stack of) hides" in the preceding sentence, =ge is used in the evidential slot, because the hides are conceived of as being available in small lots here and there in Kansas. Perhaps corresponding to a second person there is: dhaz^aN' e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect you sleep' (90:227.3) aN's^panaN i'dhibdhaN=zti e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect you have had your fill of looking at me' (90:230.16) wac^hi'gaghe i'dhahida=i e'z^aNmiN 'I supect they are tired of waiting to dance' (90:268.1) we'dhaz^iNga=i e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect they speak slightingly of (belittle) us' (90:441.1) edhi'giga=i e'z^aNmiN 'I suspect they say that about you' (90:441.3) [Notice the apparent case of eigige (?) 'to say something to some about someone' (?) < eg(i)e 'to say to', apparently a hapax legomenon in the texts.] Note that the slots in which the/khe/dhaN/ge occur, other than as articles per se, are: - sentence finally with perfect/past/evidential readings sequence =(i)=EVID sequence =(bi)=EVID sequence =bi=EVID=ama (only the and khe) - sentence finally after =ttE irrealis with the reading 'shall surely' =tta=(i)=the (the only) - subordinate clause finally with 'when' readings - in indefinite/interrogative compounds with 'where/when' readings - in 'suddenly'/'frequently'/'begin to' auxiliaries (the/he/naN and gdhe/khe/gdhaN) From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 16 15:02:20 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 09:02:20 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: >So we have (pre-)historically two different words that come out as /the/ in OP. One is the positional, 'standing inanimate', (or 'plural, bundled'). The other is a cognate of Hidatsa /rahe/, which means 'to say that'. The former modifies nouns. The latter works with verbs to convey the sense that evidently the verb took place. By analogy, other positionals have also been introduced into the post-verbal slot with the same EVIDENTIAL meaning. So any time we find a positional after a verb in OP, the implication is that the verb 'evidently' happened. Is this a valid re-statement of what you're saying? Yep, exactly! >For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of aNzhaN' aNthe' My only caveat here has to do with the fact that the verb 'sleep' here has a final nasal vowel. Since the beginning of the putative 'we must have slept' contains the same vowel, there is some possibility of confusion on the part of speakers. Maybe some verb that ends in an oral V would improve chances. Bob From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 16 17:32:30 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 11:32:30 -0600 Subject: Omaha athe, etc. Message-ID: >> For /athe'/, it looks like we have two hypotheses: >> 1) It is the 1st-person inflected form of /the/. >> 2) It is a separate, uninflected particle. >> I think I'll start by trying Catherine's excellent suggestion of >> aNzhaN' aNthe' > My only caveat here has to do with the fact that the verb 'sleep' here has a > final nasal vowel. Since the beginning of the putative 'we must have slept' > contains the same vowel, there is some possibility of confusion on the part > of speakers. Maybe some verb that ends in an oral V would improve chances. That's a good point, although 'sleep' is advantageous semantically in the first person because it is something one does unawares. I'll try to vary the verb to cover different possible vowel endings though. Rory From shanwest at uvic.ca Wed Jan 16 22:31:13 2002 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 14:31:13 -0800 Subject: Linguistic theory in the NY Times Message-ID: Well, damn. I'm out of a job. :) Shannon ============================================================ 'Hard-Wired' Grammar Rules Found for All Languages January 15, 2002 By BRENDA FOWLER In 1981 the linguist Noam Chomsky, who had already proposed that language was not learned but innate, made an even bolder claim. The grammars of all languages, he said, can be described by a set of universal rules or principles, and the differences among those grammars are due to a finite set of options that are also innate. If grammar were bread, then flour and liquid would be the universal rules; the options - parameters, Dr. Chomsky called them - would be things like yeast, eggs, sugar and jalape?os, any of which yield a substantially different product when added to the universals. The theory would explain why grammars vary only within a narrow range, despite the tremendous number and diversity of languages. While most linguists would now agree that language is innate, Dr. Chomsky's ideas about principles and parameters have remained bitterly controversial. Even his supporters could not claim to have tested his theory with the really tough cases, the languages considered most different from those the linguists typically know well. But in a new book, Dr. Mark C. Baker, a linguist at Rutgers University whose dissertation was supervised by Dr. Chomsky, says he has discerned the parameters for a remarkably diverse set of languages, especially American-Indian and African tongues. In the book, "The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar" (Basic Books, 2001), Dr. Baker sets forth a hierarchy of parameters that sorts them according to their power to affect and potentially nullify one another. Just as the periodic table of elements illustrates the discrete units of the physical world, Dr. Baker's hierarchy charts the finite set of discrete factors that create differences in grammars. That these parameters can be organized in a logical and systematic way, Dr. Baker says, suggests that there may be some deeper theory underlying them, and that the hierarchy may even guide language acquisition in children. The hierarchy is not the same as a family tree, which illustrates the historical relations among languages - for example, Italian, French, Spanish and their mother tongue, Latin. Nor does it have anything to do with the way words vary from language to language. Instead, Dr. Baker analyzes grammar - the set of principles that describe the order in which words and phrases are strung together, tenses added and questions formed. Dr. Baker, like Dr. Chomsky, believes these instructions are hard-wired into humans' brains. His most spectacular discovery is that the grammars of English and Mohawk, which appear radically different, are distinguished by just a single powerful parameter whose position at the top of the hierarchy creates an enormous effect. Mohawk is a polysynthetic language: its verbs may be long and complicated, made up of many different parts. It can express in one word what English must express in many words. For example, "Washakotya'tawitsherahetkvhta'se' " means, "He made the thing that one puts on one's body ugly for her" - meaning, he uglified her dress. In that statement, "hetkv" is the root of the verb "to be ugly." Many of the other bits are prefixes that specify the pronouns of the subject and object. Every verb includes "each of the main participants in the event described by the verb," Dr. Baker writes. In all, Mohawk has 58 prefixes, one for each possible combination of subject, object and indirect object. Dr. Baker says the polysynthesis parameter is the most fundamental difference that languages can have, and it cleaves off Mohawk and a few other languages - for example, Mayali, spoken in northern Australia - from all others. That two such far- flung languages operate in the same way is more evidence for the idea that languages do not simply evolve in a gradual or unconstrained fashion, Dr. Baker says. At the next junction in the hierarchy, two parameters are at work: "optional polysynthesis" (in which polysynthetic prefixes are possible, but not required) and "head directionality," which dictates whether modifiers and other new words are added before or after existing phrases. In English, new words are at the front. For example, to make a prepositional phrase "with her sister," the preposition goes before the noun. In Lakota, a Sioux language, the reverse is true. The English sentence "I will put the book on the table" reads like this in Lakota: "I table the on book the put will." Japanese, Turkish and Greenlandic are other languages that opt for new words at the end of phrases, while Khmer and Welsh have the same setting as English. In all, Dr. Baker and others have identified about 14 parameters, and he believes that there may be 16 more. Dr. Baker's work is by no means universally accepted. Dr. Robert Van Valin, a professor of linguistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says the findings rest on a questionable assumption: that there is a universal grammar. "What they're doing in that whole program is taking English-like structures and putting the words or parts of words of other languages in those structures and then discovering that they're just like English," he said. Dr. Karin E. Michelson, an associate professor of linguistics at SUNY Buffalo, who also disagrees with the Chomskyan approach, said after reviewing Dr. Baker's Mohawk work that some of the sentences he selected seemed artificial. Dr. Baker acknowledged that some of the longer words in his study were "carefully engineered," but he said the parameter still held up using more common examples of Mohawk. He said using only examples from real discourse restricted the kind of analysis that linguists could do. "It would be like constraining a physicist to learn about gravity without ever building a vacuum tube," Dr. Baker said. Other linguists, however, say they are excited by Dr. Baker's work. "He's a very influential linguist, and my guess is that this will provide insights and will spawn research for the next few years," said Dr. Stephen Crain, a professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland. If Dr. Baker's theory is correct, a further question is how the parameters of grammar are set as a child learns language. Does a child in an English-speaking environment start at the top of the hierarchy, somehow grasp that polysynthesis is not at work, and then move on to the next level in the hierarchy? Dr. Baker also wonders why, if the brain is hard-wired for grammar, it leaves the parameter settings unspecified. Why aren't they hard- wired, too? Humans are assumed to have language in the first place because it allows them to communicate useful information to others. But perhaps, Dr. Baker speculates, language is also a tool of cryptography - a way of concealing information from competitors. In that case, he went on, "the parameters would be the scrambling procedures." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/health/anatomy/15LANG.html?ex=1012055275&e i=1&en=3575888daaf8dd03 Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company From Zylogy at aol.com Fri Jan 18 10:36:43 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 05:36:43 EST Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: Here I am to pick your brains again- I'm learning a lot and thanks to everyone who responded to my last query about instruments and locational terms. Bernd Heine has asked me to assemble (finally) my scattered notes on various structured closed class lexical sets which demonstrate how they interact- one set often feeding another (such as pronouns and distance demonstratives, numerals, etc.) and apparently creating some sort of "field" effect whereby consistency of point-of-view or vantage is maintained. Anyway, I wanted to get some more info to facilitate this. I have access to a number of materials on hand, as well as more at my local university library (though its an 80 mile trip in each direction). Boas, in one of his papers on Dakota lists yuNka 'lie" and yaNka "sit". Now just from what I know about postural verbs in various languages these would seem to be constructs, with input from u- and a- locational affixes. Does this sound plausible? One would expect a further *yiNka "stand" if this were the case to at least be theoretically possible. I'm no Greenbergian, but close examination of these sets of terms in related and familially unrelated languages does show clearly that something is going on, and may well point to something along macro-lumper lines, assuming we're not talking about universal sound symbolic templates or something like that, which I sincerely doubt work for nonexpressive forms anyway. Noncognition between groups appears to some extent to be conditioned by having choices from which to draw from when creating smaller sets of terms- for instance, the term for generic "lie" has to choose from lying with various more detailed postural information- prone, supine, extended or curled up, in a lump, etc. Similarly for sitting and standing. When you start to take these more extensive choice sets into account, inter-family cognition starts to look much better. Perhaps there is a hierarchy to it all. One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. In Yahgan "other" also means "self". Nice economy- would be very interesting theoretically to find out how universal it might be and what the choices of alignment are- are they symmetrical? Do they also include non-1/2 persons, numerals, more diverse sets of distance demonstratives, etc.? What I've got so far seems to hint that bits and pieces can be missing from any given set- that you need to expand out to see the big picture. Unfortunately that also smacks of mass comparison- maybe though there is something to it (there are chess programs that assume a bigger underlying board than just the playing field of the particular game- something also in physics with symmetry breaking, etc.). So does anyone have any data on "other/another" in Siouan? Yuchi would be good too (Wagner doesn't have it that I could see). Thanks. Best, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 16:45:29 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:45:29 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: <33.20f7ea43.297954bb@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Boas, in one of his papers on Dakota lists yuNka 'lie" and yaNka > "sit". Now just from what I know about postural verbs in various > languages these would seem to be constructs, with input from u- and a- > locational affixes. Does this sound plausible? One would expect a > further *yiNka "stand" if this were the case to at least be > theoretically possible. Sorry, Jess, these are primitive (meaning not morphologically complex) roots. Although cognates sometimes appear without the -k(V), I think the ablauting status of the final vowel is usually considered to imply that the last syllable is not the verb stem formant *ka, though it might be some other formant. In any event, there is no evident connection of the first syllables with the locative prefixes, which are not nasalized. The locative u- occurs only in Omaha-Ponca, where *o- > u-. There is no *yiNka 'stand'. The standing stems are *the ~ *thaN in positionals, or *naN=yiN as a full verb. > One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I > own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are > transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. I'm not aware of such a pattern. As far as I can recall OP 'other' is aNma(N), which I think I have also seen used for both terms in 'the one' : 'the other' oppositions. I suppose you can use 'this one' and 'that one' forms, too. I also seem to recall a case where 'another person' in a free translation was rendered 'a atranger' in the actual text. I suppose this reflects a cultural situation in which the only potential 'other' people are those who are both (a) not actually related to the main characters and (b) not yet formally or at least operationally co-opted into the kinship system anyway. As far as feeding relations among closed lexical sets, the examples are PS *(w)uNk inclusive and Da wic^ha- 'them'. Rankin has argued that the former reflects an old term for 'man' and that the process here is somewhat analogous to Lat hominus > French on. He has a paper which I think can be obtained from him or John Boyle. The wic^ha- form for 'them' (animate) is related to indendent forms wic^has^a ~ wic^hasta 'man', depending on the dialect. Wic^ha- is also used a first term in bodypart compounds in the sense of human. This noun is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Other Mississippi Valley Siouan languages use wa-, presumably from wa- 'indefinite object' where Dakotan has wic^ha-. As usual 'one' seems to be the source of indefinite articles. Definite articles are either obscure in origin (ki(N)), possibly inherited, or derived from positional verbs. Positional verbs contribute widely to progressive, future, and "suddenly" auxiliaries, not to mention positional/postural "classifier" markers with things like demonstratives. Numerals are sometimes derived from other numerals (of course), like two-sixes = 'twelve' (in a decimal system). Ordinals are sometimes derived from non-numeric sources like 'head-leading' = 'first', e.g., in Dhegiha. There are various patterns of verbal derivation or auxiliary formation that rely on serial use of helper verbs like 'give' or 'do' or 'be with'. From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 18 17:08:19 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:08:19 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: >There is no*yiNka 'stand'. But there is a yiNka doublet for 'sit' that is found in Assiniboine (fide Parks) and throughout Dhegiha. And, as John may have mentioned, 'lie' really goes back to *?uN-ke. The w or y that sometimes appears is an inserted glide as far as we can tell. Bob From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Jan 18 18:32:42 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:32:42 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: > This noun > is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', > say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but > this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Okay, here's a truly ignorant question or two. An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," but I can't be sure of where I even came across it. The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). I can see that thought more plainly in the second of the two above constructions, if only because I immediately recognize 'ni,' although I thought 'middle' was something more like 'oketsa.' Does anyone have any information about this? It's no biggee; I am just curious... and truly unaware of the facts of the matter! Jm From rankin at ku.edu Fri Jan 18 19:21:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:21:41 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do with snakes in some way. >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. >The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). Chungguo 'middle kingdom' That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better idea. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 19:33:07 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:33:07 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: <008301c1a04e$8483adc0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > Okay, here's a truly ignorant question or two. An Osage friend of mine once > told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this > before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I haven't heard that before. I'd tend to be skeptical, because the name occurs in several of the Dhegiha groups as a clan or subclan name. It's one of the standard pan-Dhegiha clan names, in fact: Honga, Ponca, Osage, and Kansa. There are some others less well known, but equally well-distributed, e.g., Washabe (Hunt Police Standard), Light-colored Buffalo Bull, Stiff-Legs, etc. Anyway, the Omaha-Ponca instance of the Osage clan is among the Ponca. The closest equivalent outside Dhegiha is waz^az^a as a band name among some Dakotan groups. This would be more or less regular as a correspondence, if *z^V'z^E were an expected root pattern, but it's not. There are some *z and *z^ sets within Mississippi Valley, but, as Matthews pointed out, they're anomalous. It looks like the normal pattern is post-accentual voicing for essentially voiceless fricatives. The exceptions are few and hence interesting, or result (in Dhegiha) from some perturbation like *y > z^, which converts all *y-initials to z^-initials. Because of this, I tend to think that the waz^az^a band name might be a loan from Dhegiha. There is a Dhegiha stative verb *was^o's^e 'brave, generous' - one of those interesting wa-initial statives - that sometimes gets confused with waz^a'z^e, but it's probably unrelated. I seem to recall - but I'd have to confirm - that Miner gives the Winnebago version of Osage as woras^, which is consistant with *yas^- as the root, but offers yet another vowel in the prefix. > Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," but > I can't be sure of where I even came across it. Dhegiha terms for 'man' (in the sense of 'human') are based on nikka-, e.g., OP nikkas^iNga ~ nias^iNga. The root nikka- - I don't know that it occurs indendent of various compounds - is sort of a parallel of Dakotan wic^ha-, but not cognate with it (by any regular processes). It would come from *nihka- or *riNhka-, whereas Dakotan wic^ha- looks like *wihka- (or possibly *wiya-. Obviously there's a potential for an irregular connection. I assume s^iNga is some how connected with OP s^iNgaz^iNga 'baby', in which z^iNga 'little' matches Dakotan c^hiNc^a < *yiNka. I don't know if s^iNga is a doublet of z^iNga, but I suspect it might be. (I've seen somewhere that the Osage call themselves 'the little ones', but I don't know the actual Osage of that.) I'm not sure how to account for OP nias^iNga, but I suspect it might be a backformation from nikkas^iNga, perhaps on the assumption that kk is from kki- , the reflexive. I think that nias^iNga does tend to be applied to 'other people' as opposed to nikkas^iNga 'related people'. I'm not sure the semantics work for that and I may be off target on the meaning. It's not easy to figure this out from the texts what distinction, if any, exists between the two terms. It's not a regular phonological reduction, say, for fast speech. I have the impression that Omahas and Poncas aren't precisely sure when they use one term or the other, though I suspect some regular principle is involved. It's certainly an interesting question from a lexicographical point of view. The word nialus^ka that you cite isn't familiar to me. There is Os iloNs^ka : OP hedhus^ka for the Hethushka (or Omaha or Grass or Hot) Dance. > The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption > of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for > China?). ?Jung Gwo 'middle country' I'm blanking 'middle' in OP! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 19:50:14 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:50:14 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do > with snakes in some way. Possibly in the same way Kansa has to do with wind or (OP) Wez^iNs^te has to do with elk, i.e., by association of the clan name with some separate aspect of the clan's symboism. . In the Kansa case the connection is also just plain obscure to me, but Wez^iNs^te, which looks like it must mean 'means of anger/moodiness' is always rendered 'Elk' as a clan name because the elk is the clan symbolic animal. INkhe'sabe 'black-shoulder(ed)' as 'Buffalo (Clan)' is a bit clearer, because it's just a trope for 'buffalo'. Ttappa 'deer-head' is usually rendered 'Deer', I think, though the term is supposed to be the Omaha name for the Pleiades. > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. WakkaNdagi 'watermonster' in Omaha. (Which I think is 'wizard' in Kaw.) But OP wagdhishka (it would probably be walus^ka in Osage) is the cover term for the creature classification including bugs, snakes, lizzards, worms. etc. What Bob calls 'the creepy-crawlies'. Dakotan wablus^ka, wamdus^ka, etc., doesn't correspond regularly. OP suggests *wakrus^ka, while Dakotan suggests *waprus^ka. WakkaNdagi is interesting because it seems to be connected to WakkaNda 'god', which leaves over the element gi, which strikes me as a good match for Dakotan ki(N) 'the', though whether as a loan word or a fossil I couldn't say. We need all the help we can get with the articles, however. For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, though I don't recall such a stream. From tleonard at prodigy.net Fri Jan 18 19:52:36 2002 From: tleonard at prodigy.net (TOM LEONARD) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:52:36 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Thought I might chime in here regarding 'waz^az^e'. Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or "Snake"). Regards, Tom Leonard ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rankin, Robert L" To: Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 1:21 PM Subject: RE: Osage > >An Osage friend of mine > once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had >never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or >anything like it? > I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do > with snakes in some way. > > >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," > > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. > > >The popular story around these parts is that > 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar > to the word for China?). > > Chungguo 'middle kingdom' > > That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is > right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't > know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better > idea. > > Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 20:01:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:01:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <001801c1a059$af34ef60$07e3fc3f@Busprod.Com> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, TOM LEONARD wrote: > Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, > the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over > the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. > > It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the > Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, > generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or > "Snake"). We's?a 'snake' as a source of waz^az^e strikes me as a folk etymology. It's not phonologically very plausible, since we's?a has s?, not z^, etc., but the observation that many Waz^a'z^e clan personal names involve snake is very supportive of the sort of indirect association that connects We'z^iNs^te and 'elk', and so on. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 18 20:07:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:07:55 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > The wic^ha- form for 'them' (animate) is related to indendent forms > wic^has^a ~ wic^hasta 'man', depending on the dialect. Wic^ha- is also > used a first term in bodypart compounds in the sense of human. This noun > is unique to Dakotan, unless it's irregularly related to waz^az^e 'Osage', > say from *wi/ayas^-. I'd guess the root there might be *yas^- 'name', but > this etymology has never pleased anyone but myself. Other Mississippi > Valley Siouan languages use wa-, presumably from wa- 'indefinite object' > where Dakotan has wic^ha-. I omitted to say that this association only makes sense if the the -s^a of wic^has^a and the -s- of wic^hasta are taken as part of the root, i.e., the stem is something like wic^has^- ~ wic^has- matching (albeit irregularly) waz^a'z^(e) to suggest w(a/i)yas^-. Another problem with this is then accounting for the -ta in wic^hasta, though, as far as I can tell, we're not a whole lot ahead trying to account for -s^a vs. -sta. From jmcbride at kayserv.net Fri Jan 18 20:50:15 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:50:15 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or > something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having > difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," > > A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. > > >The popular story around these parts is that > 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" Well, I must have pulled that word out of the wrong corner of my brain. I just went to the Osage Nation website (http://www.osagetribe.com/ if you are interested) to see what they had. The word I was searching for is in fact 'NiuKonska,' at least according to the website. Their orthography is seemingly inconsistent, so I am not exactly certain what it is supposed to mean. I catch 'ni' for water and the 'u' locative, but other than that, I am at a loss--I assume 'ska' is not clear or white, but I have no special reason for believing this. They translate it as "the little ones from the middle waters." Perhaps this is a romantic sort of title, or perhaps invocative of another, more primary term for the tribe. However, it does build on John's recollection of the Osages term of identification as "the little ones." Interesting, to say the least. Jm From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Sat Jan 19 02:26:15 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 20:26:15 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John wrote: > For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, though > I don't recall such a stream. Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' might not be an ancient name for the Dhegihans before they broke up into separate tribes, with only the Osage retaining the original name. According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in Fletcher and La Flesche, the original home of the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. On one particular day, they made a poorly planned and probably urgent crossing of the Mississippi. Some got across, while others were swept downstream. Those who went downstream eventually made it across into Arkansas, where they became the Quapaw. Those that made it across in the first attempt became the Omaha (including the Ponca, who had not yet split off). The two groups apparently made no serious effort to get back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest across Iowa. (The Ioway themselves had been with the Dhegihans at the time, and were among those who crossed successfully.) This event must have been crucial in Omaha history. Prior to the crossing, the Sacred Legend consists mainly of culture history mythology. After the crossing, the Legend seems to be a fairly solid account of their wanderings and adventures. The Osage and Kaw are not mentioned in this story. I've read in some popular English accounts that they share this tradition, but I don't know the details. If we suppose that they were part of this event, then we have a reasonable explanation of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream People', the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the Osage, who stayed in the middle, were the 'People of the Middle Water'. If the Osage and Kaw were not part of the crossing, however, as the Omaha Sacred Legend seems to imply, then a more interesting possibility becomes obvious. In that case, they were presumably already on the west side of the Mississippi before the Omahas and Quapaws came across, and likely settled in the lower Missouri valley where they were found later on. If so, then Dhegihan territory prior to the crossing would have included both the lower Ohio valley and the lower Missouri valley, together with the stretch of the Mississippi that connects the mouths of these two rivers. At this point, one has only to look at a map of North America to appreciate the implication of the name 'People of the Middle Waters'. In an era when waterways were the easiest avenues of transportation, these people were living at the very crossroads of the continent. In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake and as the central god of their daily existence. There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete collapse of MVS *u into *i. More generally, it would tend to imply that Dhegihan must have been an unusually cosmopolitan language. As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble making sense of them. Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan languages in MVS reminds me of nothing so much as comparing modern English with Icelandic in the Germanic languages. Rory From ioway at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 03:56:05 2002 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:56:05 -0900 Subject: Osage Message-ID: There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). I wonder if washunshun (etc.) is related to wazhazhe? It seems so, and that would help tie 'snake' and 'water' together, as the undulation, the back and forth looping of both a river and a snake. Lance rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > John wrote: > > For what it's worth 'middle water' could be a stream or river name, > though > > I don't recall such a stream. > > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in > Osage? In OP, there are actually several words > we can gloss as 'middle' in English, varying > according to whether we are talking about being in > the middle of a crowd, the center of a village, or > the middle of a lake, etc. > > I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' > might not be an ancient name for the Dhegihans > before they broke up into separate tribes, with > only the Osage retaining the original name. > > According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in > Fletcher and La Flesche, the original home of > the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. On one > particular day, they made a poorly planned and > probably urgent crossing of the Mississippi. > Some got across, while others were swept > downstream. Those who went downstream eventually > made it across into Arkansas, where they became > the Quapaw. Those that made it across in the > first attempt became the Omaha (including the > Ponca, who had not yet split off). The two > groups apparently made no serious effort to get > back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest > across Iowa. (The Ioway themselves had been with > the Dhegihans at the time, and were among those > who crossed successfully.) > > This event must have been crucial in Omaha history. > Prior to the crossing, the Sacred Legend consists > mainly of culture history mythology. After the > crossing, the Legend seems to be a fairly solid > account of their wanderings and adventures. > > The Osage and Kaw are not mentioned in this story. > I've read in some popular English accounts that > they share this tradition, but I don't know the > details. If we suppose that they were part of > this event, then we have a reasonable explanation > of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream People', > the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the > Osage, who stayed in the middle, were the 'People > of the Middle Water'. > > If the Osage and Kaw were not part of the crossing, > however, as the Omaha Sacred Legend seems to imply, > then a more interesting possibility becomes obvious. > In that case, they were presumably already on the > west side of the Mississippi before the Omahas and > Quapaws came across, and likely settled in the > lower Missouri valley where they were found later > on. If so, then Dhegihan territory prior to the > crossing would have included both the lower Ohio > valley and the lower Missouri valley, together with > the stretch of the Mississippi that connects the > mouths of these two rivers. At this point, one has > only to look at a map of North America to appreciate > the implication of the name 'People of the Middle > Waters'. In an era when waterways were the easiest > avenues of transportation, these people were living > at the very crossroads of the continent. > > In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very > much centered on the big rivers, which might explain > how a 'water-monster' would come to be so important > in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' > might very well represent the River itself, seen > both as a crawling snake and as the central god of > their daily existence. > > There are some advantages to this hypothesis > linguistically as well. For one thing, it would > give us good grounds for a dialect difference > between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and > 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw. The > latter are distinguished by the complete collapse > of MVS *u into *i. More generally, it would tend > to imply that Dhegihan must have been an unusually > cosmopolitan language. As a rule, languages that > have a high interface with speakers of foreign > languages tend to break down phonologically and > grammatically, becoming more word centered and > syntactically chaotic. This seems to be what we > are seeing in our respective Dhegihan languages, > and probably accounts for why we are having so > much trouble making sense of them. Comparing > Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular > Dakotan languages in MVS reminds me of nothing > so much as comparing modern English with > Icelandic in the Germanic languages. > > Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 09:47:03 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 02:47:03 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there > are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, > varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle > of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. The LaFlesche dictionary (of Osage), gives uskoNska 'directly in the center of', 'in the middle of' for 'middle' as in 'middle of a lake', 'middle of the heaven (zenith)', and one possibility for mid in 'midnight'. There are some other 'middle' terms, too. I suspect uKonska is a rendition of uskoNska, though skV => hkV sounds more like Ioway-Otoe. > I'm wondering if 'People of the Middle Water' might not be an ancient > name for the Dhegihans before they broke up into separate tribes, with > only the Osage retaining the original name. > > According to the 'Sacred Legend', recounted in Fletcher and La > Flesche, the original home of the Omaha was in the Ohio River Valley. > On one particular day, they made a poorly planned and probably urgent > crossing of the Mississippi. Some got across, while others were swept > downstream. Those who went downstream eventually made it across into > Arkansas, where they became the Quapaw. Those that made it across in > the first attempt became the Omaha (including the Ponca, who had not > yet split off). The two groups apparently made no serious effort to > get back together, and the Omaha wandered northwest across Iowa. > (The Ioway themselves had been with the Dhegihans at the time, and > were among those who crossed successfully.) I've always thought that this account, which is sometimes patched onto the Winnebago 'Redbanks' story, sounded like the sort of story that people develop over the years by a sort of deductive process to explain various patterns they notice and gradually come to believe and then to pass on as history. I don't know if there's a term for this process or any literature on it. You could call it a folk etiology or a folk provenance. As an example of the sort of process by which this thing develops, I think whoever it was who wrote Wars of the Iroquois adds its bit by asserting that the cause of the crossing was an Iroquois campaign. In essence a story like this is a model, offered to explain various facts known to the model builders, like the similarity of the languages and cultures of the tribes included in the account, or the coincidental similarity of the English name Ohio /ohaio/ to OP /uhai (h)au/ 'they followed it', the names of the tribes Omaha 'upstream' and Quapaw 'downstream', etc. Of course, model building is fine, as long as the model remains firmly labeled a model and doesn't slip from that to being a historical narrative ex post facto. If something is still a model, then it can be subjected to verification. But the difficulty of keeping models as models in the hands of humans, especially when they are not original written documents, accounts for the historians' insistence on careful attribution and analysis of sources and, in effect, of their practice of handling everything as if it might be a folk etiology anyway. There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to differentiation from a common source language. There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? While we might be inherently suspicious of an attempt to explain Omaha 'upstream' and Quapaw (Okaxpa) 'downstream' in such simple terms, we might be even more suspicious if we knew that the Quapaw name is just one of five Quapaw village names, another of which is IMaha(n) (imaNhaN), also meaning 'upstream'. The Imahan villagers later joined the Caddo, interestingly enough. It's not even clear, though it may be true, that the name Okaxpa ~ Quapaw originally applied to all the Quapaw people, as opposed to just the residents of Okaxpa village proper. It certainly did after the remaining three villages merged with the Quapaw village proper. This story is repeated quite a bit in ethnohistorical accounts, especially various tribal histories prepared in the last century. (Hey! That was fun to say!) While there are schools of archaeological thought that accept it, they are usually careful to buttress it with references from early historical sources to a Kansa River south of the Ohio, or perhaps the mouth of the Ohio? The real difficulty is showing any archaeological connections between the various Dhegiha groups and the lower Ohio. There are some unassociated local cultures that last through the very early contact period, but I think nothing to tie any of the existing Dhegiha groups to them. Unfortunately, the Dhegiha groups seem to be very chameleon-like. They look pretty much like their contemporary neighbors, to the extent that their early villages have been securely identified. Some of them, at least the Osage for certain, maybe the Omaha (with the Ponca) and Kaw seem to be Oneota associated, but the connections are tenuous, and the overlap of territory with the more securely Oneota-affiliated Ioway, Otoe, and Missouria makes it difficult to be sure which village sites belonged to whom. It's probably fair to say that archaeologists are more or less split between adopting the Ohio Valley analysis, origin in situ, and some sort of Oneota connection. Origin in situ only makes sense if the similarities in language and details of social organization are assumed to be due to a separate group that merged with a set of unconnected in situ populations. Naturally, this is more or less always true, but we can safely apply the term Dhegiha to the former, and neglect the in situ populations. Beyond that it should be noted that Oneota and Ohio Valley explanations are not entirely incompatible, though the Ohio Valley explanations do not usually appeal to Oneota manifestations in Illinois (and I think they tend to be more northerly). Personally, my model is Oneota, but with a more northerly source, maybe southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa. This would make the Omaha and Ponca relative stay-at-homes, and the Kansa, Osage, and Quapaw progressively more ambitious parts of the diaspora. Presumably the Kansa name in the south is actually a generic reference to Dhegiha speakers presence there at some point in this diaspora, perhaps the Quapaw. > ... If we suppose that they were part of this event, then we have a > reasonable explanation of the term: the UmaNhaN were the 'Upstream > People', the Ugaxpa were the 'Downstream People', and the Osage, who > stayed in the middle, were the 'People of the Middle Water'. In spite of my comments on the risks of trying to connect Omaha and Okaxpa, the existence of the Osage name might actually support such a scheme. Of course, it would only establish relative locations at some unspecified point in time, perhaps not the situation at contact, and it wouldn't support one point of origin over another. Now if the Kaw were 'the people of the original water', that would certainly help! > In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the > big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be > so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might > very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake > and as the central god of their daily existence. On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. > There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. > For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference > between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, > Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete > collapse of MVS *u into *i. On the other hand, this is a relatively simple change, and in other ways Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw are not very much alike. For example, Quapaw has k? and x? for *k? and *x?, while Osage and Kaw have k? for both, and Omaha has ? for both. I think the first three also have the *niNke 'round' article where OP has dhaN. But then OP agrees with IO and Wi in having h for *ph in 'I say'. I think Quapaw does, too, but Osage and Kaw have ph - [ps^] in Osage. In general, I think we're not yet sure how or if we can subgroup Dhegiha, apart from Omaha + Ponca and Osage + Kaw. > More generally, it would tend to imply that Dhegihan must have been an > unusually cosmopolitan language. Certainly true, since there are loans in and out of at least Algonquian and Muskogean, but perhaps not exceptionally so for a Siouan language. > As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of > foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, > becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. I'm not sure if I agree with this concept of breakdown, though of course there would be traces of the contact. Maybe you're thinking of pidginization? > This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan > languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble > making sense of them. I don't consider any of the Dhegiha languages to be notably chaotic. I admit to having trouble understanding all kinds of things, but I think it is just me and my neophyte status with the language. > Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan > languages ... Dakota is also at an interesting crossroads, geopolitically speaking, and, personally, over the years I've come to think that it looks like someone who wasn't familiar with some of the finer nuances of proper Siouan morphology has been at work simplifying it. It's not as devoid of irregular inflection as Mandan, but they've been working on it. And what's with those second datives and reflexives! JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:07:29 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:07:29 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C48EE55.E53EDD9E@earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Lance Foster wrote: > There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something > like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a > river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). > > I wonder if washunshun (etc.) is related to wazhazhe? It seems so, and > that would help tie 'snake' and 'water' together, as the undulation, the > back and forth looping of both a river and a snake. Relying on Jimm Good Tracks's recension, I find wa^sansan 'zigzag', wasunna ~ washunna 'soft, pliant', wasun'sun ~ washun'shun 'bends (River)', wasun'sun ma'n~yi 'crawl (Snake)' (ma'n~yi 'to walk'), wasun'sunna ~ washun'shunna 'to shake back and forth'. Jimm's ^ is usually a glottal stop. I'm not sure what wa^sansan indicates. This suggests was^uN 'to bend, change course', reduplicated often to was^uN's^uN, and with s^ > s over time in the historical period as is normal. I don't think this is likely to be connected to waz^a'z^e or we's?a either one. Note that I also see waso'se 'brave', cf. OP was^u's^e 'brave'. I also looked up 'Osage' and found wa'sasi, wa'shashi (< *was^as^e ?) and wara^iye. The first two are probably borrowings. Miner gives wara's^ for Winnebago (< waraz^- ?), which may suggest that the last (wara'-language) is a folk revision of *wara'ye (< *waraz^e). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:14:11 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:14:11 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > Can anyone can come up with the actual word in Osage? In OP, there > are actually several words we can gloss as 'middle' in English, > varying according to whether we are talking about being in the middle > of a crowd, the center of a village, or the middle of a lake, etc. Actually, I also notice that LaFlesche lists Ni'-u-k.oN-c,ka (Wa-zha-zhe) [i.e., NiukkoNska Waz^az^e JEK] the ancient name of the Wa-zha'-zhe and signifies they of the mid-waters. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 19 10:24:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 03:24:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <00cb01c1a061$be08bc80$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > ... John's recollection of the Osages term of identification as "the > little ones." This term is in Matthews, I think, as Bob recalls it. It may relate to the use of z^iNka 'child' in the traditional ritual chants. From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:14:55 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:14:55 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >There is a Chiwere word I recall, washunshun, was'uns'un, or something like it, which means 'the movement of a snake,' or the undulating of a river as the movement of a snake (think it was in Dorsey). I think the related words in more phonologically conservative languages like Dakota have a /ks^/ cluster in this morpheme. It is the "bend" root. Bob From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sat Jan 19 18:16:41 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:16:41 -0800 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Siouanists, This is irrelevant to the Siouan discussion, but I have to throw it in anyway. Seneca ohi:yo? (with a Y) actually refers to what is conceived of as a single river from its source in Pennsylvania to its confluence with the Mississippi. In English we conceive of this as two rivers, the Allegheny (in NY spelled Allegany) and the Ohio, changing its identity in Pittsburgh. The -h- means "river", but the -iyo- part is a little harder to translate. Perhaps "nice river" comes closer. "Beautiful" as an aesthetic judgment doesn't quite do it. The cognate in Tuscarora means "big", but the other languages seem to have moved away from the size meaning alone. It's interesting to compare English "grand", with both the size and value judgments. Seneca, at least nowadays, has moved toward the value end of it. Wi:yo:h (without any incorporation) means "it's good" or "nice". The Osage name has been borrowed into Seneca as wasa:se?, which is the name for the war dance. Wally Chafe > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:22:18 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:22:18 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >Several elderly Poncas have told me the word 'waz^az^e' comes from we'sa, the Ponca word for snake. I've recorded this several different times over the last 25 years from several different Ponca sources. >It's interesting to note most of the individual and family names in the Ponca Waz^az^e Clan, both in Ponca and translated into English surnames, generally have something to do with 'snake' (e.g. "Little Snake" or "Snake"). Although wazhazhe can't really be derived phonetically from wes'a 'snake', it is certainly true that most, if not all, of the groups that have a wazhazhe clan or sub-clan associate it with snakes. I think all those separate attestations must mean something. Snake seems to be one of those words that has undergone periodic taboo replacement in Siouan. I don't recall that there is any word for it reconstructible to Proto-Siouan. Dhegiha languages all use wes'a (in local pronunciations), Chiwere speakers have coopted the wakhaN 'sacred' word for 'snake'. There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the languages around Iowa. Bob From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 18:22:46 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:22:46 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > languages around Iowa. From rankin at ku.edu Sat Jan 19 18:48:59 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:48:59 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Thanks. I didn't remember the Shawnee part. And I should acknowledge that my original information came from Paul Voorhis. Interesting that Shawnee would be included but not Illinois. Bob -----Original Message----- From: David Costa To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/19/02 12:22 PM Subject: Re: Osage In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > languages around Iowa. From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 19:03:59 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 11:03:59 -0800 Subject: manitous Message-ID: Well, there's good reason to believe that the (genetically) closest relative of Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo is Shawnee, so it might be an inherited innovation rather than something areal. There appear to be many other little bits of evocative vocab shared between SFK and Shawnee as well, though the grammars have many striking differences. David ---------- >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >Subject: RE: Osage >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:48 am > > Thanks. I didn't remember the Shawnee part. And I should acknowledge that > my original information came from Paul Voorhis. Interesting that Shawnee > would be included but not Illinois. > > Bob > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Costa > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Sent: 1/19/02 12:22 PM > Subject: Re: Osage > > In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. > > David > > ---------- >>From: "Rankin, Robert L" >>To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >>Subject: RE: Osage >>Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am >> > >> There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the >> languages around Iowa. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Sat Jan 19 22:16:19 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 16:16:19 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John, Thanks for your thoughtful reply! Let me briefly restate the two hypotheses I raised in my last post, and your own view as I understand it. 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) 2) By the Sacred Legend, the Omahas and Quapaws were living as one people in the Ohio Valley, together with the Ioways. The Osage and Kaw were already settled in the lower Missouri. This situation (minus the Ioways) was reflective of an earlier situation where common Dhegihan territory covered both the lower Ohio and the lower Missouri, together with a section of the Mississippi connecting these. At this time, the name NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Waters' applied to the Dhegihans in general, because they lived right at the point where the biggest river systems of temperate North America intersected. All commerce between the northern Rockies and the Appalachians, and between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, tended to pass through them. Then some catastrophe, presumably a military defeat, forced the eastern Dhegihans and associated Ioways to flee to the western side of the Mississippi. The crossing itself was disastrous, and the refugees split into two major groups temporarily lost from each other. On the west bank, the refugees had no recognized territory of their own for subsistence, and spent a few hard years bulling themselves into the margins of other peoples' territories as they gradually reorganized themselves into the UmaNhaN and Ugaxpa tribes. The tradition of being the 'People of the Middle Waters' was abandoned by the humiliated refugees, but retained by the undisturbed Osage. (This is Rory's pet hypothesis.) 3) The Sacred Legend is a nineteenth century concoction designed to explain how linguistically related tribes such as the Osage and Quapaw came about with respect to the Omaha. It's claims of an earlier homeland in the Ohio Valley are false, as is its account of the crossing. In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) First, I think John's view has much to recommend it in terms of geographical parsimony. If we can place the Dhegihans here, with the Dakotans in south-central Minnesota, the Winnebago in eastern Wisconsin, and the Chiwere in eastern Iowa, then we have all four branches of MVS neatly wrapped up in a compact area. Within this area, dialect gradients can nicely explain features that link Dakotan with Dhegihan and Winnebago with Chiwere, and that link Dakotan with Winnebago and Dhegihan with Chiwere. Further, we might also be able to recognize a common MVS archaeological culture in the Effigy Mound culture, which covered a good section of that territory. Is this your thought too, John? On the other hand, I have to confess to being more credulous than John is regarding the value of early accounts based on a people's oral history. It's not that I believe in taking them at face value-- I recognize that a lot of 'history' can be invented by rationalizations. However, I think that a lot of the rationalizing has to do with trying, more or less honestly, to reconcile local oral traditions with the larger and better documented body of knowledge known to the literate community. Both traditions may be quite valid, but getting their reference points to connect is tricky. The fact that parts of the story as written may be untenable does not mean that the account is completely fabricated; more likely it just means that the author mistakenly attributed the traditional account of one event or place to another event or place known to the current literate community. That being said, let's discuss some of the specific arguments. > There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are > all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways > that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of > the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack > of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to > differentiation from a common source language. Why should it be a difficulty that these tribes should be together? (I assume you're referring to the Ioways being with the Dhegihans.) We don't know enough about the history of the tribes before contact even to be sure where they were, much less to rule out possible social relationships between them. Even if we assume that the Ioways were Oneota and based up in Iowa, just one group of Ioway visitors that made an impression at the time could easily have ended up in the Sacred Legend. And if the Sacred Legend is no more than a naive rationalization of language differentiation (which seems intrinsically unlikely to me), why should it include the geographically distant Quapaw and the linguistically rather distant Ioways while ignoring the Osage and Kaw, and the geographically proximate Dakotans and Winnebagoes? > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? Thanks to you and Wally for this information! This is definitely relevant, but not necessarily a counter-argument. So English got Ohio from the French, who got it from the Seneca, whose name for the entire Ohio River, including the Allegheny, was ohi:yo?, probably originally meaning something like 'Great River', or 'Rio Grande'. Now, am I understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? If so, then the question is where the Dhegihans came up with their name for it. The Omaha form might easily have come from a rationalization of the English pronunciation, but the Osage version could never have arisen by that route. It could have come about by recasting the Omaha into Osage, but why should the Osage adopt a name for the Ohio River from the Omaha, who had never been near it, and at such a late date that the Omaha had learned it from the Anglo-Americans? This avenue seems improbable. If the resemblance of the Omaha term Uhai to the English form Ohio is not pure coincidence, then the name of the Ohio River must have been common to both Dhegihans and Iroquoians, with both rationalizing a single 'international' name into something plausible in their own respective languages. For the Iroquoians, it was rationalized as 'Great River', and for the Dhegihans it was rationalized as something like 'Roadway', or 'They Pass Through on It'. If we accept this, then there are two main possibilities: 1) The Dhegihan term is primary. It was reduced from something like Opha=p=a originally to something like *Oha=i in that wing of Dhegihan closest to the Seneca, who picked up the name from them and rationalized it to ohi:yo?. 2) The Dhegihan name is a loadword from Seneca or some other source. In that case, the wing of Dhegihan most closely involved with the Ohio River rationalized the term as Uha=i or whatever, and passed it back to the Osage, who recast it into their own dialect as Opha=p=a. Either way, we tend to place the Omaha on the Ohio River, and east of the Osage. > While we might be inherently suspicious of an attempt to explain Omaha > 'upstream' and Quapaw (Okaxpa) 'downstream' in such simple terms, we might > be even more suspicious if we knew that the Quapaw name is just one of > five Quapaw village names, another of which is IMaha(n) (imaNhaN), also > meaning 'upstream'. The Imahan villagers later joined the Caddo, > interestingly enough. It's not even clear, though it may be true, that > the name Okaxpa ~ Quapaw originally applied to all the Quapaw people, as > opposed to just the residents of Okaxpa village proper. It certainly did > after the remaining three villages merged with the Quapaw village proper. Of the Okaxpa and the ImahaN Quaxpa villages, which was upstream and which downstream of the other? If they are in the order expected, then all this means is that it was common to refer to any group of related people who lived upstream of you as the 'Upstream People', and any who lived downstream of you as the 'Downstream People'. This could be equally used to refer to closely grouped villages or far-flung ethnic kindred. I don't see anything here to arouse great suspicion. > Unfortunately, the Dhegiha groups seem to be very chameleon-like. They > look pretty much like their contemporary neighbors, to the extent that > their early villages have been securely identified. Some of them, at > least the Osage for certain, maybe the Omaha (with the Ponca) and Kaw seem > to be Oneota associated, but the connections are tenuous, and the overlap > of territory with the more securely Oneota-affiliated Ioway, Otoe, and > Missouria makes it difficult to be sure which village sites belonged to > whom. Why should the Dhegihans be more chameleon-like than the Chiwere? One possible answer to this question would be that they were refugees from another archaeological province who moved into Chiwere territory and had to adopt a Chiwere-like mode of life. >> In this view, the Dhegihans must have been very much centered on the >> big rivers, which might explain how a 'water-monster' would come to be >> so important in their mythology. In fact, this 'water-monster' might >> very well represent the River itself, seen both as a crawling snake >> and as the central god of their daily existence. > On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and > adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. I think these myths would have to be compared in more detail. But in general, why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? >> There are some advantages to this hypothesis linguistically as well. >> For one thing, it would give us good grounds for a dialect difference >> between 'West Dhegihan'-- Osage and Kaw-- and 'East Dhegihan'-- Omaha, >> Ponca and Quapaw. The latter are distinguished by the complete >> collapse of MVS *u into *i. > On the other hand, this is a relatively simple change, and in other ways > Omaha-Ponca and Quapaw are not very much alike. For example, Quapaw has > k? and x? for *k? and *x?, while Osage and Kaw have k? for both, and Omaha > has ? for both. I think the first three also have the *niNke 'round' > article where OP has dhaN. But then OP agrees with IO and Wi in having h > for *ph in 'I say'. I think Quapaw does, too, but Osage and Kaw have ph - > [ps^] in Osage. In general, I think we're not yet sure how or if we can > subgroup Dhegiha, apart from Omaha + Ponca and Osage + Kaw. The collapse of MVS *u into *i may technically be a relatively simple change, but its effects are catastrophic. It means that every morpheme in the language that was formerly distinguished from another only by [u] vs. [i] is now indestinguishable. If a couple of rare consonants like k? and x? collapse, it's fairly trivial, but for two vowels to collapse, especially ones so common as [u] and [i], is devastating. I agree though that this doesn't conclusively link Quapaw more closely to OP than to Osage and Kaw. >> As a rule, languages that have a high interface with speakers of >> foreign languages tend to break down phonologically and grammatically, >> becoming more word centered and syntactically chaotic. > I'm not sure if I agree with this concept of breakdown, though of course > there would be traces of the contact. Maybe you're thinking of > pidginization? I'm thinking of what's likely to happen to the phonology and the subtler aspects of grammar when a high proportion of the people speaking the language are non-native speakers who speak it poorly. I don't know if you would call that pidginization, but the effects would be in that direction. >> This seems to be what we are seeing in our respective Dhegihan >> languages, and probably accounts for why we are having so much trouble >> making sense of them. > I don't consider any of the Dhegiha languages to be notably chaotic. I > admit to having trouble understanding all kinds of things, but I think > it is just me and my neophyte status with the language. See our discussions of -i/-bi, proximate and obviative, the vs. athe. We do not really understand these things, and yet we cannot reliably produce a third-person indicative statement until we do. I've been immersing myself in the Dorsey texts for the past year and a half. You wrote a 3"-thick scholarly grammar of OP back in the 1980's. I have trouble understanding all kinds of things too, but we aren't strictly neophytes any more, and in this case I don't think the problem is just us. >> Comparing Omaha-Ponca to the (originally) more insular Dakotan >> languages ... > Dakota is also at an interesting crossroads, geopolitically speaking, and, What sort of geopolitical crossroads do you have in mind here? > personally, over the years I've come to think that it looks like someone > who wasn't familiar with some of the finer nuances of proper Siouan > morphology has been at work simplifying it. It's not as devoid of > irregular inflection as Mandan, but they've been working on it. And what's > with those second datives and reflexives! I'm not sure we're connecting on what I was trying to get across. I would predict that a language which, for a very long period of time, was spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, would be complex in the sense of having a highly developed reportoire of grammatical subtleties, but that this grammar would tend to be regular. A language that had been swallowing a lot of foreign speakers, or especially one that had seen expansion and then remixing of people speaking substantially different dialects, would be complex in the sense of having a great deal of irregularities resulting from fragmented and partially abandoned grammatical forms, yet reduced phonologically and grammatically simplified in the sense of becoming more dependent on crude word order. I don't know about Mandan, but Dakotan seems to me more like the former type, and Dhegihan more like the latter. Rory From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sat Jan 19 22:34:43 2002 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 14:34:43 -0800 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just for the record, the origin of the name Ohio in the Seneca language is quite clear, as is its passage from French into English, where of course it acquired a spelling pronunciation. The Senecas never "rationalized" it. The Omaha thing, which apparently resembles the later English spelling pronunciation, seems to me to be a coincidence, but there I'm outside my field. Wally > If the resemblance of the Omaha term Uhai to > the English form Ohio is not pure coincidence, > then the name of the Ohio River must have been > common to both Dhegihans and Iroquoians, with > both rationalizing a single 'international' > name into something plausible in their own > respective languages. For the Iroquoians, it > was rationalized as 'Great River', and for > the Dhegihans it was rationalized as something > like 'Roadway', or 'They Pass Through on It'. > If we accept this, then there are two main > possibilities: > > 1) The Dhegihan term is primary. It was > reduced from something like Opha=p=a > originally to something like *Oha=i in > that wing of Dhegihan closest to the > Seneca, who picked up the name from > them and rationalized it to ohi:yo?. > > 2) The Dhegihan name is a loadword from > Seneca or some other source. In that > case, the wing of Dhegihan most closely > involved with the Ohio River rationalized > the term as Uha=i or whatever, and passed > it back to the Osage, who recast it into > their own dialect as Opha=p=a. From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sat Jan 19 23:04:15 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 15:04:15 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the > Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed > the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or > 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who > went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in > between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular > assumption.) It may be of interest to people that the Shawnee and Miami names for the Ohio River essentially translate as the 'Kansa River'. That is, that it contains a root which is otherwise the same root as found in both languages' names for the Kaws. This might indicate that the presence of Dhegiha speakers on the lower Ohio extended into more recent times than we think. >> On the other hand, 'watermonsters' are standard fare in southeastern and >> adjacent mythology and are generally taken to represent alligators. > I think these myths would have to be compared in more detail. But in general, > why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > I would predict that a language which, for a very long period of time, was > spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, would be complex in the sense of > having a highly developed reportoire of grammatical subtleties, but that this > grammar would tend to be regular. Not necessarily -- Cheyenne probably has never been acquired by many second language speakers, yet it has a lot of highly irregular, unpredictable morphology. We know enough about Algonquian historical phonology to know that this is entirely the result of several waves of very severe sound changes sweeping over Cheyenne, creating a lot of surface opacity in the morphology, which, for whatever reason, the speakers never saw fit to regularize. Another example might be the Louisiana isolate Chitimacha, probably never learned by many 'new' people, which is characterized by surprisingly short words, and a lot of irregular and usually nonproductive morphology. I think we have to be extremely cautious about making generalizations on these typological grounds, at least where the pre-contact histories simply are not known. David From lcumberl at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 10:43:25 2002 From: lcumberl at indiana.edu (Linda A Cumberland) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 05:43:25 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? Linda > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:19:20 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:19:20 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I would like to add that an even earlier Iroquoian hydrological conception of the Ohio started at the headwaters of the Allegheny and flowed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Michael McCafferty On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Wallace Chafe wrote: > Dear Siouanists, > > This is irrelevant to the Siouan discussion, but I have to throw it in > anyway. Seneca ohi:yo? (with a Y) actually refers to what is conceived of > as a single river from its source in Pennsylvania to its confluence with > the Mississippi. In English we conceive of this as two rivers, the > Allegheny (in NY spelled Allegany) and the Ohio, changing its identity in > Pittsburgh. The -h- means "river", but the -iyo- part is a little harder > to translate. Perhaps "nice river" comes closer. "Beautiful" as an > aesthetic judgment doesn't quite do it. The cognate in Tuscarora means > "big", but the other languages seem to have moved away from the size > meaning alone. It's interesting to compare English "grand", with both the > size and value judgments. Seneca, at least nowadays, has moved toward the > value end of it. Wi:yo:h (without any incorporation) means "it's good" or > "nice". > > The Osage name has been borrowed into Seneca as wasa:se?, which is the > name for the war dance. > > Wally Chafe > > > There are also some etymological problems. For example, Ohio actually > > comes from something like Seneca ohi:o? 'Beautiful River' (the > > Allegheny), probably via French, because the English pronunciation acts > > like a spelling pronunciation of a fairly accurate rendition of the Seneca > > name in French orthography. If it did come from a name used by this > > wandering collection of Siouan tribes, what process would explain its > > transmission into English? For that matter, if a suitable process exists, > > why wouldn't it transmit the Osage equivalent Opha=p=a instead? > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:20:59 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:20:59 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Also Potawatomi historically. On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. > > David > > ---------- > >From: "Rankin, Robert L" > >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" > >Subject: RE: Osage > >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am > > > > > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the > > languages around Iowa. > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Sun Jan 20 14:44:32 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:44:32 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > > why would a people from Iowa and Minnesota have a mythology about alligators? > > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) No, we actually (Dave and I) discussed this a few years ago and with the help of biologists and archaeologists here at IU determined that alligators (at least not in the memory of any humans) lived in the lower Ohio. There was considerable trade up and down the Mississippi dating to the Archaic. I imagine this is where the alligator teeth, presumably skins, and the words came from. Michael McCafferty Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu From egooding at iupui.edu Sun Jan 20 16:02:34 2002 From: egooding at iupui.edu (Erik Gooding) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:02:34 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >>From Riggs (1893:142) concerning Unktehi, the water monster of the Dakota (Santee-Sisseton): "They say it was Unktehi. So when Unktehi had come to the shore, they filled both his eyes with the burnt stones, and on his many horns they piled the baggage, and their husbands they placed among the baggage." The horned-water monster is at least common throughout the Dakotan groups, from the lakes of Minnesota, to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, to the lakes of southern and central Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. I'm not sure if this is a Dakotan-only idea or not, it may have come from the east and the Great Lakes groups. There is a drawing of one of these somewhere, perhaps in Dorsey (1894) or something from that time period. Erik G. At 05:43 AM 1/20/02 -0500, Linda A Cumberland wrote: >For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the >lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine >consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were >picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she >didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she >sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out >again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was >huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the >other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" >would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the >existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does >anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? > >Linda > > >> The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the >> Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this >> water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an >> English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times >> apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the >> Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, >> Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) >> > From Zylogy at aol.com Sun Jan 20 16:53:10 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:53:10 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Just a question- how far north did sturgeon go off the main Mississippi, and how big do they get- they're pretty spikey, aren't they? Jess Tauber From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 20 17:46:41 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:46:41 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: I have not weighed in on the Dhegiha migration business for a couple of reasons. I have been busy with the first week of classes at KU, but, more importantly, it would involve retyping for about the 8th time my considered position on the question. John and I have gone back and forth on this for many years with several correspondents. Interestingly, neither of us seems to be able to marshal sufficient argument to really carry the day or, at least, convince the other. The evidence is interpretable within more than one hypothesis. For various linguistic reasons including the study of Siouan agri- cultural terms, the bow, hydronyms, ethnonyms, tribal accounts, etc., I am strongly sympathetic to an Ohio Valley origin. In this I agree with Dale Henning, one of the preeminent Dhegiha-oriented archae- ologists. Rather than try to recapitulate all my points, let me attach a copy of a lecture I gave at the Kaw Mission here in Kansas a year ago. It was a public lecture, not an academic treatise, but it covers the ground in an elementary way. Beyond that, I only have a couple of comments and questions here. Rory writes: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) And this probably comes fairly close to what I agree with, although I never connected 'people of the middle waters' with the up- and down-stream analyses. Although it fits. When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to some particular document? Sacred legends are like rolling stones. With the advent of modern scientific studies and literacy, they tend to gather moss. I discount 20th cent. versions much more than earlier ones. But they're important at least to consider. >2) By the Sacred Legend, the Omahas and Quapaws were living as one people in the Ohio Valley, together with the Ioways. Linguistically, there is little reason to include the Ioways. It has been noted in the literature that the Omahas and Ioways traveled/lived together up in what is probably now Iowa at some point, and this would presumably account for some loans, etc., but this would have been long after splitting from the Kaw-Osage and Quapaw groups. A couple of points responding to John. First, it is my under- standing from Kathy Shea, that Ponca (as opposed to Omaha) preserves the /ph/ 1st person forms in verbs like e-he 'say', i.e., Ponca has /ephe/ like Kaw-Osage, but unlike Quapaw. If that is the case, the isogloss is not diagnostic for subgrouping. I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret /uhai/ alone. As for the Quapaws, the village John refers to (Okaxpa -- spelled Kappa, Qappa, etc. by the French) only bore the single name in its French incarnation. In Quapaw it was called Okaxpa-xti 'real Quapaws', so it seems clear that other villages also claimed the Okaxpa monicker. Lastly, Le Bourgmont visited the Kaw settlement in NE Kansas very early and mentions prominently that their village was overrun by the Otoes, who then settled in it. This foreign occupation would provide the very little Oneota-like pottery that was discovered there. File hopefully attached. If you wish to read it, you will need the Siouan font set that may be obtained from John's web site. Bob -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: councilgrove.doc Type: application/octet-stream Size: 83456 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sun Jan 20 18:37:34 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:37:34 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: True. That very likely would be under Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo influence, tho, since it's not found for Ojibwe. ---------- >From: Michael Mccafferty >To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >Subject: Re: Osage >Date: Sun, Jan 20, 2002, 6:20 am > > Also Potawatomi historically. > > > On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > >> In Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo and Shawnee, to be exact. >> >> David >> >> ---------- >> >From: "Rankin, Robert L" >> >To: "'siouan at lists.colorado.edu '" >> >Subject: RE: Osage >> >Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2002, 10:22 am >> > >> >> > There are parallels in Algonquian where manitou is 'snake' in some of the >> > languages around Iowa. >> >> >> > > > Michael McCafferty > 307 Memorial Hall > Indiana University > Bloomington, Indiana > 47405 > mmccaffe at indiana.edu > > "Talking is often a torment for me, and I > need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. > C.G. Jung > > "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." > Rumi > > > From Rgraczyk at aol.com Sun Jan 20 21:28:15 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 16:28:15 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any possible cognates? Randy From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 20 23:26:03 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 17:26:03 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any possible cognates? Randy Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk taxonomy for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, arachnids and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. Bob From enichol4 at attbi.com Mon Jan 21 01:51:17 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 19:51:17 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Here's an address for a picture of the Cherokee water monster, Uk'tena: http://www.ahalenia.com/malm/paintings/wcg/detailed/ukten.html Some of what I read makes the Dakota Unktehi out to be "water oxen", and the Winnebago wak'tcexi (Radin) seems to be like a water panther. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Linda A Cumberland" To: Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 4:43 AM Subject: Water monsters > For what it's worth, I heard an animated account of a water monster in the > lake at Ft. Qu'Apelle (Saskatchewan) from one of my Assiniboine > consultants in the summer of 1998. Told in English as we were > picnicking by the lake, and having the quality of an urban legend (she > didn't see it herself, but a classmate from Lebret School did when she > sneaked out at night - scared her so badly she never sneaked out > again...), the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was > huge, snake-like, and had antlers! This appearance was affirmed by the > other Assiniboine listener (from accounts she had heard). The "sighting" > would have been in the 1960s. I haven't pursued the story, but the > existence of the monster seems to be generally accepted in the area. Does > anyone know of a tradition involving such an antlered monster? > > Linda > > > > The Great Lakes Algonquian tribes all have water monster legends. Even the > > Cheyennes have one. I think it's safe to say that any identification of this > > water monster with alligators is a later, post-contact attempt to assign an > > English name to the monster. (That said, tho, in the earliest contact times > > apparently there *did* used to be alligators in the lowest stretches of the > > Ohio river, and there are known specific words for 'alligator' in Miami, > > Shawnee, and Unami Delaware.) > > > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 07:28:07 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 00:28:07 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it > is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any > possible cognates? Randy > > Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk taxonomy > for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, arachnids > and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. Specifically it looks like Dakotan wablus^ka, implying *waprus^ka, albeit with metathesis of s^k (and s^ > s). The *wakrus^ka and *waprus^ka variants don't correspond regularly, but the match looks reasonable. I wonder if the Crow form is regularly derived from *waprus^ka? Could it be a loan? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 09:05:15 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 02:05:15 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, David Costa wrote: > It may be of interest to people that the Shawnee and Miami names for the > Ohio River essentially translate as the 'Kansa River'. That is, that it > contains a root which is otherwise the same root as found in both languages' > names for the Kaws. This might indicate that the presence of Dhegiha > speakers on the lower Ohio extended into more recent times than we think. This, of course, is a much more reliable sort of evidence than a "folk etiology." However, it's not clear what the name Akansea (> Arkansas), Kansea and other variants applied to the river implies. It's transparently Kansa (Kaw), of course, but seems to refer to the Quapaw (Arkansas) within the historical period. This could be a specialization from a more general use originally referring to all Dhegiha speakers, or at least more than the Quapaw alone. Costa, McCafferty, Rankin, and I and no doubt others have speculated as to what exactly it might have implied originally without being able to cite any ethnographic evidence that might clarify the linguistic similarity. We've also debated whether the name would imply that the Kansa (whoever they might be) originated somewhere up the river or simply lived on its lower reaches at one point. A lot depends on the way in which the namers were familiar with the river and the Kansa in question. Michael McCafferty points out that the Illinois were familiar with the Ohio along a fairly long stretch of the lower reaches, and the Shawnee were even further up stream. This makes it difficult for me if I want to claim that only certain elements, perhaps the Arkansas/Quapaw, lived there, and only near the mouth. It might suggest, for example, that these Algonquian groups found the Dhegiha speakers present along the river when they first encountered it. I find this not unnatural as a historical implication of the naming pattern, but really awkward linguistically. I keep wondering how the butler got to the pub in time for the Miami-Illinopis and Shawnee to see him sipping a pint in the Ohio room, when he was apparently diverging linguistically from the Dakota, Chiwere, and Winnebago in Upper Mississippi Manornot too long before. Unless, of course, they diverged in the pub, but then why don't the other have Ohio Valley mud on their shoes, too? No matter how you work it, somebody has an energetic itinerary and a tight time table. Or perhaps the butler has an identical twin? In regard to the interpretation of Kansa in this context, as far as I know the Kansa specifically are a separate group at contact, but linguistically they are very similiar to the Osage, albeit also with certain characteristic developments (e.g., voicing of the lax stops, a particular development of *s^R- in the second person of *r-stems, and so on). It seems like they must have been close neighbors of the Osage for a long time, or may even have diverged from them within the last few centuries. Since there are Kansa clans among the Omaha, Osage, and Kansa, it seems likely that Kansa (KkaNze) is primarily a clan name, and only secondarily a tribal name. The same is true of Osage (Waz^az^e) and Ponca (PpaNkka). During the historical period Dhegiha clans have served primarily as kinship units and residential subdivisions within the assembled tribe on the hunt. As far as I know they have not been the basis of villages or residential grouping within villages. So, it's hard to see names like Kansa arising among outsiders from a situation like encountering only the Kansa clan first, or from one like dealing primarily with a Kansa clan village. It's also not clear how a clan-based name could come to be applied to a whole tribe internally. One possible scenario would be that the three tribes with clan-based names were named for dominant clan-based factions within them. "Those who adhered to the Kansa faction" and so on. The only confirmatory evidence for this would be the absence of a Ponca clan among the Omaha, even though the Omaha and Ponca agree in general terms that they are fragments of an original whole. Seemingly after they divided no significant number of Ponca clansmen remained among the Omahas. For that matter, the Ponca lack a Kansa clan. So, if Algonquian groups call the Dhegiha or some portion of them Kansa, this would probably refer to a group with a prominent Kansa faction. The name may have been generalized from this to apply to all known groups with similar languages and cultures. The Kansa-prominent group might, of course, be the forebears of the modern Kansa, but they might equally be some entity no longer extant or known today under another name, perhaps the Quapaw. Incidentally, for what it is worth, the only uniquely Dhegiha clan name known among the Quapaw is Honga (HaNga). The other Quapaw clan names known are all based on natural phenomena like animals or stars. This is not terribly significant, because most Dhegiha clans have secondary associations of this sort, and the Quapaw clan structure seems to have been devastated during their demographic collapse and the successive mergers of the several villages. Still, we don't know of a Kansa clan among the Quapaw. One other possible reason for thinking of Dhegiha speakers as Kansa is that the Kansa clan in some cases is especially associated with pipes (perhaps the other association of wind is connected). Pipes are associated functionally with peace-making and so perhaps with foreign relations. Maybe the Kansa were the usual peaceful representatives of Dhegiha groups. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 09:22:22 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 02:22:22 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Linda A Cumberland wrote: > ... the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, > snake-like, and had antlers! ... Does anyone know of a tradition > involving such an antlered monster? Well, I think Chinese dragons are snake-like and have antlers. I should probably clarify that I believe the explanation of watermonsters in terms of alligators is not claimed to be direct in every case. I simply ran across the suggestion somewhere once. I didn't get the impression that alligators were supposed to have coincided at any point with the later distribution of watermonster stores. Lions and the like figure prominently in Old World stories far outside their natural range, even though those ranges were once greater than they are now. I think they idea is that such stories are popular even in the absence of the original creatures, and, of course, stories grow or at least vary with the telling and the distance from the original inspiration. Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North America. I think in the Omaha conception watermonsters are associated with whirlpools or eddies in the Missouri. In the Haxige stories they don't seem to be particularly described, but I think it's Orphan who kills one with seven heads. This sounds a bit like it may have been influenced by the Greek myth of Hercules and the Hydra. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 11:31:33 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 04:31:33 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > 1) By the Sacred Legend, the Dhegihans originally lived east of the > Mississippi, in the Ohio Valley. At some point before contact, they > crossed the Mississippi and differentiated into three subgroups: the > UmaNhaN, or 'Upstream People', who went north, the Ugaxpa, or > 'Downstream People', who went south, and the NiukaNska, or 'People of > the Middle Water', who lived in between, and became the Osage and Kaw. > (I think this is the standard popular assumption.) I agree, except that I think that the specifics of the Osage/Kaw as the Niu(s)kaNska are actually your interpretation, this term being specific to the Osage and, as far as I know, not previously attached to this story. In fact, I think you said the Osage and Kaw were missing in the Sacred Legend in your summary of the 18th. I mention this only because it shows how easily stories like this grow. Anything that makes sense becomes part of the canon. I may have misparsed the scope of "In the Sacred Legend, ..." failing to properly perceive your summary here as going intentionally beyond the legend to encompass your own hypothesis. I omit Rory's summarization and elaboration of his own version (# 2), which, if he will work it up, is certainly worth pursuing. > 3) The Sacred Legend is a nineteenth century concoction designed to > explain how linguistically related tribes such as the Osage and Quapaw > came about with respect to the Omaha. It's claims of an earlier > homeland in the Ohio Valley are false, as is its account of the > crossing. False as presented. If true in any sense, they would presumably apply only the the Dhegiha, and then a Dhegiha population that was linguistically undifferentiated. A systematic tripartite terminology like Omaha/Niu(s)kanska/Quapaw, if the system isn't a figment of our ex post facto analysis of the pieces, only makes sense after emplacement in the Transmississippi. It seems to be a fallacy to assume that any part of it existed before that, like assuming that the 13 colonies were founded by an immigration of 13 tribes named Hampshirites, Massachusettsians, etc. I'd say that a sure sign that a story is made up after the fact to explain an existing situation is an attempt to explain the whole cast of nations at the time the story is first known by importing them as a set from someplace else. If an immigration occurred, it would probably have been made by an undifferentiated ancestral nation. I might add that as soon as one starts thinking in terms of a story that recounts the immigration of undifferentiated Mississippi Valley Siouan people or even merely undifferentiated Dhegiha people, one is probably talking about something so long ago that it becomes rather difficult to credit there being a useful memory of it. Of course, if this story were available in independent versions from all or even several of the Dhegiha groups, e.g., not just the Omaha, Ponca, and Otoe (a local group in the historical period), but also the Osage, or, particularly, the Quapaw, it would have considerably more weight. But when the sources are all centered on the Omaha Agency area and differ rather widely in detail, I tend to see it as a local (and recent) tradition. > In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of > southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, > Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral > homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) I used to get much more specific about this, but as Oneota archaeology and my own understanding of Mississippi Valley Siouan get more complex, I've retreated to a sort of core of two things that I take to be facts: A) A linguistic entity like Mississippi Valley has to originate in a relatively restricted area. It cannot have come out of the ground over the entire territory attested for MVS languages at contact, let alone the more extended range that developed subsequently. B) Several MVS groups have been assigned by archaeologists to Oneota and "quasi-Oneota" entities (i.e., Psinomani for Dakota) in the Minnesota (Dakotan) - NE Iowa (Ioway) area. Others have been assigned to Oneota in Wisconsin (Winnebago) or the lower Missouri River area (Omaha, Kansa, Osage), though these assignments have been hotly disputed in various quarters. I suspect there is something in the general association. I'd go further, with a sort of syllogism: given A, either B is correct. including some of the disputed assignments (in general, if not in specific), or B is wrong. I should emphasize that this sort of argument is pretty fuzzy. I'm not sure how big the area involved would be. Maybe it could extend from Minnesota to the lower Ohio, though I'd be surprised if the cultures involved were as divergent as this would imply. And, perhaps B really is wrong. I've sometimes suggested that the southern influences Bob Rankin sees in Dhegiha could be explained in Minnesota in terms of the known Mississippian settlements in the area, contemporaneous with Oneota, Aztalan being the best known, though not the only one and not in what I'd assume to be Dhegiha territory. But maybe the influence I attribute to these settlements was more intense even than I've assumed, and included introduction of some of the more northerly of the Mississippi Valley Siouan languages, and not just some areal influence on them. Things are always a little bit slippery when we try to assign languages to pots. > First, I think John's view has much to recommend it in terms of > geographical parsimony. If we can place the Dhegihans here, with the > Dakotans in south-central Minnesota, the Winnebago in eastern > Wisconsin, and the Chiwere in eastern Iowa, then we have all four > branches of MVS neatly wrapped up in a compact area. Within this > area, dialect gradients can nicely explain features that link Dakotan > with Dhegihan and Winnebago with Chiwere, and that link Dakotan with > Winnebago and Dhegihan with Chiwere. Further, we might also be able > to recognize a common MVS archaeological culture in the Effigy Mound > culture, which covered a good section of that territory. Is this your > thought too, John? That's pretty much what I like about it, though I'm thinking in terms of Oneota and I'm not sure to what extent archaeologists are willing to identify Effigy Mound as the burial manifestation of Oneota or some of Oneota. It does seem that there is a historical tendency to perceive the settlements and the burial sites as separate, perhaps erroniously. > > There are difficulties here for a modern student. For example, why are > > all these tribes together, though already differentiated? There are ways > > that this might happen, but perhaps it represents a literary encoding of > > the recognition that they are lingusitically related, coupled with a lack > > of realization that such a relationship normally arises due to > > differentiation from a common source language. > > Why should it be a difficulty that these tribes should be together? > (I assume you're referring to the Ioways being with the Dhegihans.) Yes, and to the Dhegiha groups being together, too. I know of some limited cases of fragmentary groups associating with others or several fragments of larger groups coming together in larger settlements, but most of these associations seem to have been rather temporary. I think that seeing families of nations travelling together smacks of rationalization. Relatives may well travel together, and undifferentiated ancestral nations, but not usually entire fully differentiated related nations. Linguistic differentiation implies separation. Something else that may earmark this as a rationalization is that there are no specific individuals named. > We don't know enough about the history of the tribes before contact > even to be sure where they were, much less to rule out possible social > relationships between them. Even if we assume that the Ioways were > Oneota and based up in Iowa, just one group of Ioway visitors that > made an impression at the time could easily have ended up in the > Sacred Legend. I guess it just seems to me more plausible to see the presence of the Ioway as a flaw in the account than to take this line of reasoning. > And if the Sacred Legend is no more than a naive rationalization of > language differentiation (which seems intrinsically unlikely to me), > why should it include the geographically distant Quapaw and the > linguistically rather distant Ioways while ignoring the Osage and Kaw, > and the geographically proximate Dakotans and Winnebagoes? I've seen a version that includes the Winnebago, and, I think, the Osage and Kansa, but never one that includes the Dakota. I suspect some special knowledge is involved. For one thing, in the mid to late 19th century the Quapaw were largely resident with the Osage, if I recall. I've actually seen a proposal (from Ludwickson and/or Shea?) that Omaha familiarity with the Ohio Valley was acquired during steamboat and/or rail visits of chiefly delegations to Washington for treaty negotiations. I deduce that speculations on the etymology of "Ohio" might date to then, though such speculations might well occurred anytime and be secondary to the story. > Thanks to you and Wally for this information! This is definitely > relevant, but not necessarily a counter-argument. So English got Ohio > from the French, who got it from the Seneca, whose name for the entire > Ohio River, including the Allegheny, was ohi:yo?, probably originally > meaning something like 'Great River', or 'Rio Grande'. Now, am I > understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with > Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. In fact, the Omaha version is clearly a folk etymology of the English version. The Omaha name for the Ohio comes from English. If the Omaha ever had a name for the Ohio, I very much doubt it was uhaihau or anything like that. Before about 1880 or so, it would have been uhaiha. In Proto-Dhegiha it would have been ophapi, and it's getting progressively less like ohaio as it goes. Apart from this, English speakers did not learn the name of the Ohio from the Omaha in the 1890s, but from the French in the 1600s. > Of the Okaxpa and the ImahaN Quaxpa villages, which was upstream and > which downstream of the other? All I know is that they varied over time. My point is that if we have to see Okaxpa as opposed to some 'upstream' group, we can look a lot closer than Nebraska. In fact, you can easily be downstream of your neighbors without the neighbors being named upstream, and if you move at a later date to a location upstream of those neighbors you may be called downstreamers still. The English no longer dwell in the angle of the northern German coast, if that's the basis of the name, and there are Suffolks and Norfolks all over the landscape in the US, none of them south or north of anything in particular. > Why should the Dhegihans be more chameleon-like than the Chiwere? I don't know. Archaeologists are generally happy with the proposition of identifying all three Chiwere groups with Oneota focuses or phases (depending on the time of the attribution). But they have been unable to identify any consistent cultural pattern for Dhegiha. A number of Oneota suggestions have been made and some disputed, but otherwise they seem to be unable to distinguish the various groups among the local phenomena in the areas where they are first noted. I have actually overstated things a bit, since I think that a little hard looking will find Oneota antecedants for all five Dhegiha groups. The Chameleon effect actually only occurs with the replacement of most imperishable property with trade goods and the spread of various late cultural fashions. The more abstract aspects of Dhegiha culture are still present in the 1890s and even today and are quite distinctive. I'm thinking of things like the clan names and other aspects of their theories of their societies. Not to mention their languages ... > One possible answer to this question would be that they were refugees > from another archaeological province who moved into Chiwere territory > and had to adopt a Chiwere-like mode of life. Many aspects of the patterns attested in the Lower Ohio should have worked as well westward. In fact, Oneota transports rather well, too, and seems to spread progressively south, east and west along a broad front from Illinois through Missouri into Kansas and Nebraska over time. Archaeologists just don't have any idea who was living at most of these sites in most cases. Various Oneota sites in Illinois and elsewhere have been attributed to the Illinois. There are Oneota phases in Wisconsin that have never been attributed to the Winnebago. The Psinomani materials attributed to Dakotan look like Oneota pottery combined with a Woodland pattern of subsistance and a fair amount of less Oneota-like pottery, too, or, to put it another way, like Oneota influences spreading into new areas. The last layers in the American Bottom (OK - yuck!), the homeland of Cahokia Mississippian, are Oneota. There are more than enough Oneota phases around now to account for all attested Mississippi Valley Siouan groups. > The collapse of MVS *u into *i may technically be a relatively simple > change, but its effects are catastrophic. It means that every > morpheme in the language that was formerly distinguished from another > only by [u] vs. [i] is now indestinguishable. There aren't many grammatical distinctions that get lost this way, however. Actually, I can't think of any. Also, since both Kansa and Osage have *u > u" (umlauted u), both have already undergone a step very helpful in changing u > i. If this happened in Proto-Dhegiha, it wouldn't be surprising if two of the daughter languages independently changed u" > i. Actually, there are some cases in Kansa where *i appears as u" or *u as i, so I think that the merger is already in progress. > If a couple of rare consonants like k? and x? collapse, it's fairly > trivial, but for two vowels to collapse, especially ones so common as > [u] and [i], is devastating. I agree though that this doesn't > conclusively link Quapaw more closely to OP than to Osage and Kaw. The morphemes with k? and x? are realtively few, but they occur fairly frequently. For example compare Dakota k?u 'to give' with Omaha-Ponca ?i 'to give'. Which of the two changes involved is more of a problem? Anyway, we don't subgroup languages based on the consequences of a change to the structure of a language, but on the simple occurence of the change. We try to consider only changes that are connected, but in practice this is often a matter of judgement. It's very difficult to control for changes that occur in dialect continuums, especially complexly articulated ones. You do begin to get suspicious (or should) when your criteria lead to overlapping subgroups, or, as it usually happens, competing schemes of subgrouping. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 11:48:14 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 04:48:14 -0700 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'll leave the archaeology aside. It should be noted that Bob's analysis, besides being so well argued that it stretches me to the limits to dispute those that cause me difficulties with respect to my requirement for a plausible unity for Proto-Mississippi Valley, are, as far as I am aware, very much more in accord with the standard archaeological and ethnohistorical proposals. Rory's interesting observations on Niuskonska certainly don't help my case any, either. On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a > quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is > reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it > has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. > Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, > Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. > Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret > /uhai/ alone. Omaha uhe 'to follow something', udhuhe (< *irophe) to follow something by means of something'. The analysis of English Ohio as deriving from Omaha uhai (h)au 'they followed it' (usually without the h, which is supicious in itself, for those who know their folk etymologists) is an explicit part of the Omaha accounts of the story of the Dhegiha tribes (and various others) crossing the Mississippi from the Ohio and spreading "upstream" and "downstream." In fact, these three etynologies - one wildly incorrect, the other two obvious to any speaker of a Dhegiha language - are the essential basis of the story, along with the circumstance that the participants are all linguistically closely related. There are versions in Dorsey, Fletcher & LaFlesche, and other places, some, but not all, derived from these sources. Some good ethnohistorian with good linguistic consulting really should do something with this someday. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jan 21 19:25:10 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 13:25:10 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: I think that linguists often underestimate the time depths they are working with. This was true of American archaeology until the advent of technical dating systems too. There have been numerous statements over the years about Dhegiha languages that have posited a split in the years immediately preceding Columbus. If that were the case, there would indeed be a conflict between my views and those held by John, and there would be very little temporal wiggle-room. The Oneota archaeological complex in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa is roughly 1000 years old. I tend to believe the splits in Dhegiha are older however. There is no real way to prove this, although I've tried by showing that Omaha-Ponca, Kansa-Osage and Quapaw borrowed different Algonquian words for 'bow'. There are few such diagnostic words however, and there are even possible alternative explanations for 'bow'. Reduced to analogy, I'd look to languages like Spanish and Portuguese. These are often said to be mutually intelligible (although, outside of bare-bones communication, they are not). If you look at the earliest texts from Span./Port. dating conveniently from about 1000 years ago (like Oneota), you see that most of the features distinguishing these two languages were already in place. So the split between them is considerably earlier that 1K years ago, and really dates from the earliest Roman occupation. That is, the Span/Port time depth is nearly equal to the overall Romance time depth of 2000+ years. Now, if Dhegiha is similarly old, there would be plenty of time for them to have originated, as they must have, with the rest of Mississippi Valley Siouan and STILL have occupied the lower Ohio Valley at some more recent time. The Oneota similarities I still ascribe to contact and diffusion of the pottery style. I leave the question of geographical location for MVS as a whole open. At approx. 2000 years, I don't know where they were. The only real hint we have is the historical location of the other subgroups plus Yuchi and Catawba, and that doesn't tell us who did the moving. Bob From demallie at indiana.edu Mon Jan 21 20:33:22 2002 From: demallie at indiana.edu (Demallie, Raymond J.) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 15:33:22 -0500 Subject: Tribal ethnonyms Message-ID: Noting the interest in tribal ethnonyms in recent postings I thought it worthwhile to draw attention to the synonymies in the Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, Plains. This work was so long in preparation that many Siouanists may not be aware that it was actually published last October. Doug Parks and Bob Rankin also have a chapter on Siouan in the Plains volume. Ray DeMallie From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jan 21 21:11:05 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 14:11:05 -0700 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hey, that was pretty incomprehensible. I seem to have left it as a combination of two different ways to word things. Let me try again. Take two: I'll leave the archaeology aside, except to say that that Bob's arguments on the subject are always so well put that it stretches me to the limits to dispute those aspects of the hypothesis that cause me difficulties with respect to my requirement for a period of compact physical unity for Proto-Mississippi Valley. As I've said already, sometimes I wonder if maybe the Dakota and Chiwere aren't misassigned, instead. In addition, the Ohio Valley Dhegiha hypothesis is very much more in accord with the standard archaeological and ethnohistorical proposals. It amounts to the canonical version, whereas I have to admit that I am proposing a somewhat wild-eyed reanalysis of things. Rory's interesting observations on Niu(s)konska certainly don't help my case any, either, as they actually bolster the upstream/downstream aspect nicely. I hope that's clearer. From Zylogy at aol.com Mon Jan 21 21:25:25 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 16:25:25 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Pythons or anacondas are large water dwelling snakes who have two "horns" near the tail which are remnant toenails used to stimulate females during mating. So a story from far-afield? Some say these guys could grow to be 30 feet in length- archeological evidence shows in former days they indeed did (and not too long ago either- something to do with the old megafauna as prey- heck in Australia there were 28 foot long goannas that lived in caves until humans showed up, etc.). Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From BARudes at aol.com Mon Jan 21 22:13:10 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 17:13:10 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: In reply to Jess's comment, I cannot resist going speculative here. Is the water monster perhaps a legendary hold-over from an earlier abode of the people in question, or perhaps a legend that has been borrowed from people who have a link to the Amazon. There is SLOWLY growing evidence of migrations of peoples in pre-historic times out of the Amazon, across the Caribbean islands and onto the mainland of North America. (The evidence is archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic, but VERY speculative.) I am not saying here that the Proto-Siouan-speaking peoples and the related Proto-Catawban-speaking (and potentially related Yuchean-speaking [and perhaps related Iroquoian-speaking]) peoples personally arrived in North America from the Amazon, but there are some suspicious similarities with the Arawakan languages that I will hold for another day. In any event, if one reads through the texts that Douglas Taylor (1977) reported for Arawak and Island Carib, one finds remarkable parallels with Iroquois and Catawba legends. Blair From ioway at earthlink.net Tue Jan 22 03:49:02 2002 From: ioway at earthlink.net (Lance Foster) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 18:49:02 -0900 Subject: Absence Message-ID: I have decided to discontinue Internet for a time for personal spiritual reasons. I wish you all well. Please unsubscribe me or tell me how to unsubscribe. Lance From Zylogy at aol.com Tue Jan 22 04:36:32 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 23:36:32 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Interesting. That may be relatable to interesting coincidences in numeral terminology, pronominal systems, etc. The relations are: North to South on the west side of the Rockies, Andes, etc., but South to North on the east side. Big generalization. If one follows Nichols' speculations, people skirted the coastline from Asia in a maritime subsistance regime. Adapting inland in most places would have been troublesome because of mountains, deserts, or large-scale grasslands. Cutting across at Panama, etc. would have given migrants new coastlines to follow. And cultural advances appears to have generally gone South to North on the east side in latter times. People too? I've got solid numbers of parallel forms for Salishan and Yahgan (in Tierra del Fuego!) in both morphology and lexicon. I bet nobody has really looked closely for lexical parallels between Amazonian languages and Iroquoian or Siouan (though one should note that cursory examination of reconstructed Je and Macro-Je forms from Aryon Rodrigues made me instantly think of Iroquoian and Siouan. But I never looked further. One note: The postural auxiliaries of Yahgan looked an awful lot like those used in Tupi-Guarani. Jess Tauber From Zylogy at aol.com Tue Jan 22 10:25:17 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 05:25:17 EST Subject: north-south comparison: numbers Message-ID: Just thought I'd throw in a couple of bits and pieces. Make of it what you will. The following forms are from "Numbers in over 4500 languages" at http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml No time to double check for errors of transcription/phonetics, etc. Enjoy, throw raspberries, whatever. Lule 1 alapea 2 tamop 3 tamlip 4 locuep 5 moitle Chimu 1 onAk 2 aput 3 sopAt 4 nopAt 5 es'mAts 6 tsaitsa 9 tap 10 na-pong Zapotec 1 to 2 ChopE 3 ShoNE 4 tap 5 gueyE' 6 Xop 7 gazhE 8 Xon' 9 ga 10 shi N.Pame 1 santa 2 nuji 3 rnu? 4 giriui 5 gitsh'ai Yuchi 1 hit'e 2 noNwe 3 noNka 4 TaLa 5 tc'wahE 6 icdu 7 laXdju 8 bifa 9 tEka Keres 1 ?isga 2 dyuu(mi) 3 chami 4 dyaana 5 taama 6 sh'isa 10 k'azi Cherokee 1 saquui 2 ta?li 3 tso:i 4 nV:gu 4 hi:sgi 6 sudali 10 sgohi N.Iroquois (approx. common): 1 Nskat 2 tekni 3 ahseN 4 kayeriN (?) 5 wiskoN 10 washeN (experts feel free to correct) Wichita 1 chi?ass 2 wic 3 taw 4 ta:kwic 5 iskwi:c Chitimacha 1 hongo 2 hupau 3 kahitie 4 mechechant 5 hussa ProtoMayan 1 xu:n 2 ka?- 3 ?o:sh- 4 ka:ng- 5 ho?- 6 wahq- There are many other series I could throw into the mix, but really one would need a map to see the trends across continents. Note Pame, Iroquois, Mayan 1-5 Much larger scale comparison seems to indicate most numerals once ended or could end in something like -kwn which in some languages fronted, lost labialization, etc., and in others became labial, etc. The usual suspect sound changes. Meant "count"? Serialization and other process have taken their toll, but as one looks at variation, it appears far from random. Good thing I ain't claiming this is serious linguistics! Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From jmcbride at kayserv.net Tue Jan 22 14:51:49 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 08:51:49 -0600 Subject: Northward migration Message-ID: > There is SLOWLY growing evidence of migrations of peoples in > pre-historic times out of the Amazon, across the Caribbean islands and onto > the mainland of North America. (The evidence is archaeological, > ethnographic > and linguistic, but VERY speculative.) I was away from my computer all weekend, and look what I missed! Anyway, I did want to chime in a little on the particularly non-Siouan Cherokee issues touched on this weekend. I once heard an elder tell an interesting origin story--one of about thirty or more attibuted to the Cherokees--that lends some apocryphal credence to the "northward migration via the Caribbean" hypothesis. Way back, it seems we lived on an island that was sinking. We fled northward until it turned cold and "rained white." We stayed there only three days and then we moved slightly westward until we came to a place where people ate one another. And that's where we made our home. Definitely strange, but interesting from a speculative What-If point of view! As for the Ukten, this serpentine "water monster," it is mentioned by Mooney several times in his big three piece ethnographic work History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. If memory serves, it can fly and has a charm on its head. It seems to be suspiciously close to the Siouan Unktehi, perhaps coincidentally or perhaps through borrowing. A quick glossing of the name for the Cherokee beast indicates at the very least that "s/he looks/sees." I was wondering what the etymology of the Siouan might be. Does anyone know? Can it be traced, or does evidence support a borrowing (for all I know, it may have been borrowed into Cherokee and "matched" to the grammar)? -Jm From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 16:37:05 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:37:05 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My impression is that the watermonsters such as the one once painted on a cliff upriver from St. Louis included serpent morphology. On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Linda A Cumberland wrote: > > ... the "monster" bore no resemblance to an alligator - it was huge, > > snake-like, and had antlers! ... Does anyone know of a tradition > > involving such an antlered monster? > > Well, I think Chinese dragons are snake-like and have antlers. > > I should probably clarify that I believe the explanation of watermonsters > in terms of alligators is not claimed to be direct in every case. I > simply ran across the suggestion somewhere once. I didn't get the > impression that alligators were supposed to have coincided at any point > with the later distribution of watermonster stores. Lions and the like > figure prominently in Old World stories far outside their natural range, > even though those ranges were once greater than they are now. I think they > idea is that such stories are popular even in the absence of the original > creatures, and, of course, stories grow or at least vary with the telling > and the distance from the original inspiration. > > Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. > If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being > associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any > general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North > America. > > I think in the Omaha conception watermonsters are associated with > whirlpools or eddies in the Missouri. In the Haxige stories they don't > seem to be particularly described, but I think it's Orphan who kills one > with seven heads. This sounds a bit like it may have been influenced by > the Greek myth of Hercules and the Hydra. > > > > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu "Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. C.G. Jung "...as a dog howls at the moon, I talk." Rumi From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 16:43:15 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:43:15 -0500 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Koontz John E wrote: > > Watermonsters evidently vary a great deal with the particular tradition. > If they have any similarities other than dwelling in water and being > associated with similar stories, I'm not aware of it. I don't know of any > general studies of watermonsters and similar creatures of legend in North > America. > There is, in my estimation, a "must-read" chapter on the Iroquian underwater cat in _Feline Symbolism in the Americas_, by whoms and published when I forget. You'll get a good taste of snake in this. Michael McCafferty From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:00 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:00 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Carolyn's comments: I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. I also show accent on o- in the instance of in o'kxaNkxai which the speaker says means 'generation after generation'. As Osage is wont to do, this word lost the nasality of the second a. The Osage male declarative is no longer present in today's Osage (unfortunately) as near as I can tell. At least I've never heard it. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:02:47 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:02:47 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Hi Bob, Chiming in on Osage, I can tell you that ni 'water' + ohkaN'ska 'in the middle' explains the term popularly glossed as 'children of the middle waters'. Osages do not call themselves this, but rather waz^a'z^e. I've never gotten any solid explanation for waz^a'z^e from speakers. Minus the wa-, it's 'name' --the noun-- (z^a'z^e), but that doesn't tell us much. And I've never heard any speaker relate it to 'snake'. Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). Carolyn PS On my email (Compuserve), I cannot tell who has written comments on the Siouan list, unless they sign as you have below. Would you have any idea why this is? It's disconcerting to try to follow some of the discussions between anonymous participants never knowing who's commenting. Does anyone else have this problem? Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >>An Osage friend of mine once told me that 'waz^az^e' was an Otoe word originally. I had never heard this before. Has anyone else ever heard this or anything like it? I tend to doubt it. it seems to go back a long way. Some say it has to do with snakes in some way. >Also, I have seen in a couple of places a word like 'nialus^ka' or something to that effect (forgive me if I messed that up, I am having difficulty recalling the word) used as the "Osage word for Osage," A Nialus^ka (forMrs. Rowe Mialus^la) is a water monster in Kaw. >The popular story around these parts is that 'Osage' is a corruption of the words for "middle water" (isn't that similar to the word for China?). Chungguo 'middle kingdom' That Osage term wazhazhe is very old and unanalyzable unless John's idea is right. Middle waters occurs prominently in Matthews's book, but I don't know if it extendsto the OS language. Carolyn would probably have better idea. Bob < From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:11 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:11 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: In Osage, walu's^ka is 'bug' or any insect. WahkoN'taki is 'doctor', 'minister' (although there are alternative terms for both). What about a derivation--off the top of my head-- from 'talks to god' wahkoN'ta ki i'e, with the dative ki [god+dative+speak] This occured to me as I looked at another version of 'preacher' which is wahko'Nta i'e odha'ke 'god-speak-tell'. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > WakkaNdagi 'watermonster' in Omaha. (Which I think is 'wizard' in Kaw.) But OP wagdhishka (it would probably be walus^ka in Osage) is the cover term for the creature classification including bugs, snakes, lizzards, worms. etc. What Bob calls 'the creepy-crawlies'. Dakotan wablus^ka, wamdus^ka, etc., doesn't correspond regularly. OP suggests *wakrus^ka, while Dakotan suggests *waprus^ka. WakkaNdagi is interesting because it seems to be connected to WakkaNda 'god', which leaves over the element gi, which strikes me as a good match for Dakotan ki(N) 'the', though whether as a loan word or a fossil I couldn't say. We need all the help we can get with the articles, however. < From cqcq at compuserve.com Tue Jan 22 19:03:20 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:03:20 -0500 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: In Osage, 'another' is e'z^i wiN [this/that+not a]. I've also found s^i e'z^i wiN 'another one' in which s^i 'again' appears. wiN is the indefinite article, based on the numeral 'one' - wiN'xce. And 'others' as in ' ..the others who are sick' is e'z^is^ki hu'heka in which e'z^i 'other' s^ki 'also' and hu'heka 'sick' The expression 'the other way' is interesting in that it uses i'ma which is 'or'; 'which of two': i'mahtaha, where htaha is 'toward' or 'along a path toward' . i'mahtaha madhiN' = 'go the other way' Any other tribe is ohki'hce, an "off-tribe". (I'm a bit unsure of the aspiration in -hce here). Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > One of the things I haven't been able to track down in the several grammars I own are terms for "other/another". In many American languages these are transparently similar to terms for 1 or 2, 1st or 2nd person, etc. In Yahgan "other" also means "self". Nice economy- would be very interesting theoretically to find out how universal it might be and what the choices of alignment are- are they symmetrical? Do they also include non-1/2 persons, numerals, more diverse sets of distance demonstratives, etc.? What I've got so far seems to hint that bits and pieces can be missing from any given set- that you need to expand out to see the big picture. Unfortunately that also smacks of mass comparison- maybe though there is something to it (there are chess programs that assume a bigger underlying board than just the playing field of the particular game- something also in physics with symmetry breaking, etc.). So does anyone have any data on "other/another" in Siouan? Yuchi would be good too (Wagner doesn't have it that I could see). Thanks. Best, Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com< From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Jan 22 19:40:32 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 13:40:32 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: carolyn quintero wrote: > Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e > (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). Eng. Osage may be a result of Fr. orthographic confusion: Dhegiha inital wa- was probably originally transcribed as 8- (as in Marquette's map of 1673 where 8chage). But 8- was also used for native o- (and Fr. ou-), so O(u)sage may be a spelling pronunciation. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, from Chiwere wat?ta.) This orthog. problem (though not specif. in relation to Osage) is discussed by Mccafferty in his LINGUIST List posting on the etym. of Chicago, 21 Dec. 2001 (which is good reading). Alan From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Tue Jan 22 19:48:57 2002 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 14:48:57 -0500 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4DC030.E2D1BCE5@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > carolyn quintero wrote: > > > Of course it's easy to see the English 'Osage' as a corruption of waz^a'z^e > > (via French 'oisage' or some such--not sure of the French term--). > > Eng. Osage may be a result of Fr. orthographic confusion: Dhegiha inital > wa- was probably originally transcribed as 8- (as in Marquette's map of > 1673 where 8chage). Yes, Marquette and other early Jesuits in the Mississippi valley also used the digraph 8 to represent /wa(a)/. That is what Marquette indicates here. In fact, Marquette used 8 for /wa(a)/ in at least four terms on his 1673-4 map. But 8- was also used for native o- (and Fr. ou-), so > O(u)sage may be a spelling pronunciation. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, > from Chiwere wat?ta.) This orthog. problem (though not specif. in > relation to Osage) is discussed by Mccafferty in his LINGUIST List > posting on the etym. of Chicago, 21 Dec. 2001 (which is good reading). > Michael McCafferty From ahartley at d.umn.edu Tue Jan 22 21:28:22 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:28:22 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Excuse me: McCafferty (with capital C) From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jan 22 22:01:29 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 16:01:29 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Maybe he means /ophe/, = OS /op$e/ 'step, tread'. It would be ophape in the 3rd person. Bob -----Original Message----- From: carolyn quintero To: INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu Sent: 1/22/02 1:03 PM Subject: RE: Osage Carolyn's comments: I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. I also show accent on o- in the instance of in o'kxaNkxai which the speaker says means 'generation after generation'. As Osage is wont to do, this word lost the nasality of the second a. The Osage male declarative is no longer present in today's Osage (unfortunately) as near as I can tell. At least I've never heard it. Carolyn Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu >The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and presumably does not exist. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 01:30:32 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 19:30:32 -0600 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion Message-ID: > The expression 'the other way' is interesting in that it uses i'ma which is > 'or'; 'which of two': > i'mahtaha, where htaha is 'toward' or 'along a path toward' . > i'mahtaha madhiN' = 'go the other way' I think John mentioned aN'ma in OP, which seems to be used in the sense of 'the other person', or aN'ma ... aN'ma, the one ... the other. > In Osage, 'another' is e'z^i wiN [this/that+not a]. > I've also found s^i e'z^i wiN 'another one' in which s^i 'again' appears. > wiN is the indefinite article, based on the numeral 'one' - wiN'xce. > And 'others' as in ' ..the others who are sick' is > e'z^is^ki hu'heka > in which e'z^i 'other' s^ki 'also' and hu'heka 'sick' In OP (Dorsey at least), we have a'z^i, meaning 'other' in the sense of 'different' or 'foreign'. I'm puzzled by the OP a- / OS e- difference here. In other cases, OP uses e- to mean this/that. Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 02:01:34 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:01:34 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: >> Now, am I >> understanding correctly that Osage Opha=p=a is fully cognate with >> Omaha Uha=i, and is also the name for the Ohio River? > The Osage for 'to follow' is opha. This is one of the stems where > Omaha-Ponca have h for ph. The Omaha plural is =i. The Osage plural is > =pi. I believe the analog of the Omaha =hau (earlier =ha) male > declarative is =a, in Osage, and that this merges with =pi as =pa. The > older Omaha-Ponca female declarative is =he. Osage =e also merges with > the plural =pi, as =pe. From this I reconstruct *opha=p=e as the Osage > equivalent of uha=i=hau. This is not attested, as far as I know, and > presumably does not exist. > What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ > in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. [...] All right, John, you drew me out and got me square on that one! Well done!! I'll take it as established from here that Omaha Uhai is a morphologically rationalized adoption of the English name 'Ohio'. Now I'll leave it to you explain this unexpected addition to the Osage vocabulary set to Carolyn! ;-) By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 03:11:07 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 21:11:07 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: Bob writes: > I've never been clear on this Omaha term /uhai/. I would need a > quotation or exact context in order to interpret it. If there is > reference to /uhai khe/ as a putative hydronym, then I'd say it > has to be a river name, not a verb form, because of the article. > Bodies of water 'lie'. Travelers don't. If it is a river name, > Wally's contribution strongly suggests it is borrowed from English. > Without a citation, I don't think it is possible to interpret > /uhai/ alone. I haven't seen it in Dorsey either, but it is mentioned in a couple of spots at least in Fletcher and La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe". It does use /khe/. On page 94, it is listed near the end of several pages of stream names as Uha'i ke.....The river down which they Ohio river. came. > When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to > some particular document? Sacred legends are like rolling > stones. With the advent of modern scientific studies and > literacy, they tend to gather moss. I discount 20th cent. > versions much more than earlier ones. But they're important > at least to consider. Fletcher and La Flesche, chapter II, has a series of anotated extracts from what they call the 'Sacred Legend'. According to them, the Legend was in the custody of the person who had custody of the Sacred Pole. This was Shudenaci, who turned over the Pole and the Legend to the writers, who deposited them in the Peabody Museum. I don't know where or if the full Legend exists written down today, but I suppose the Peabody Museum would be the place to start looking. However, I was writing from memory last week, without the book. The part about the river crossing is listed earlier in the book, on page 36. It isn't clear here whether the accounts quoted are coming from the Sacred Legend or not. Following are the relevant paragraphs: The descriptive name Omaha (umoN'hoN, "against the current" or "upstream") had been fixed on the people prior to 1541. In that year De Soto's party met the Quapaw tribe; quapaw, or uga'xpa, means "with the current" or "downstream," and is the complement of umoN'hoN, or Omaha. Both names are said by the tribes to refer to their parting company, the one going up and the other going down the river. There are two versions of how this parting came about. One account says that-- The people were moving down the Uha'i ke river. When they came to a wide river they made skin boats in which to cross the river. As they were crossing, a storm came up. The Omaha and Iowa got safely across, but the Quapaw drifted down the stream and were never seen again until within the last century. When the Iowa made their landing, they camped in a sandy place. The strong wind blew the sand over the people and gave them a grayish appearance. From this circumstance they called themselves Pa'xude, "gray head," and the Omaha have known them by that name ever since. The Iowa accompanied the Omaha up the Mississippi to a stream spoken of as "Raccoon river"-- probably the Des Moines, and the people followed this river to its headwaters, which brought them into the region of the Pipestone quarry. The other version of the parting between the Omaha and the Quapaw is that-- When the wide river was reached the people made a rope of grape vines. They fastened one end on the eastern bank and the other end was taken by strong swimmers and carried across the river and fastened to the western bank. The people crossed the river by clinging to the grapevine. When about half their number were across, including the Iowa and Omaha, the rope broke, leaving the rest of the people behind. Those who were left were the Quapaw. This crossing was made on a foggy morning, and those left behind, believing that their companions who had crossed had followed the river downward on the western side, themselves turned downstream on the eastern side, and so the two groups lost sight of each other. At the bottom is a note reading: Uha'i ke, "the river down which they came;" the name is still applied by the Omaha to the Ohio Rory From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Wed Jan 23 04:38:31 2002 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 22:38:31 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: John writes: > I find this not unnatural as a historical implication of the naming > pattern, but really awkward linguistically. I keep wondering how the > butler got to the pub in time for the Miami-Illinopis and Shawnee to see > him sipping a pint in the Ohio room, when he was apparently diverging > linguistically from the Dakota, Chiwere, and Winnebago in Upper > Mississippi Manornot too long before. Unless, of course, they diverged in > the pub, but then why don't the other have Ohio Valley mud on their shoes, > too? No matter how you work it, somebody has an energetic itinerary and a > tight time table. Or perhaps the butler has an identical twin? >> In fact, the Dhegihans differentiated in about the area of >> southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. From here, the Osage, >> Kaw and Quapaw moved south, leaving the Omaha-Ponca in their ancestral >> homeland. (This is John's view, as I understand it.) > I used to get much more specific about this, but as Oneota archaeology and > my own understanding of Mississippi Valley Siouan get more complex, I've > retreated to a sort of core of two things that I take to be facts: > A) A linguistic entity like Mississippi Valley has to originate in a > relatively restricted area. It cannot have come out of the ground over > the entire territory attested for MVS languages at contact, let alone the > more extended range that developed subsequently. I agree that Mississippi Valley would have to have originated in a relatively restricted area, though it might have first spread from its point of origin over a rather wide area as a single language before diverging into its separate subgroups. Another question is how mobile the people speaking the language were. In an earlier time, with a smaller population and a less intensified mode of procuring a living, a single band of people might have ranged over hundreds or even thousands of miles in the course of their yearly itineraries. But suppose we just try relocating that butler a little to the east, and pushing him back farther in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say more like two thousand years ago than one. If we give him a range covering roughly the modern states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and southern Wisconsin and Michigan, we still have a fairly compact and reasonable territory for MVS to differentiate on. In time, one group intensifies to the south, along the Ohio River, and evolves into the Dhegihans. To the west, another group intensifies along the Mississippi, and becomes the Dakotans. To the north, another group focusses on the shores of Lake Michigan, and becomes the Winnebagoes. In the middle, yet another group adapts to an upland type of environment, and becomes the Chiweres, who remain rather intermediate to the rest. Later, the Dakotans move up the river to Minnesota, while the Dhegihans expand westward into the Bottom areas of southern Illinois and up the lower Missouri. The Winnebagoes become concentrated around the Green Bay area, and the Chiweres expand across the Mississippi into Iowa. Finally, we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the disaster, all players are where we want them at the time of contact, and nobody but the Omahas, Poncas, Quapaws, and perhaps a few of the Ioways has any Ohio Valley mud on his shoes. Would this scenario fit everybody's requirements? Rory From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Wed Jan 23 04:54:20 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:54:20 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio River Valley. :-) Dave > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > disaster, From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Wed Jan 23 04:56:30 2002 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:56:30 -0800 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio River Valley. :-) The Dhegihans probably just wanted out to get away from the alligators. Dave > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > disaster, From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 06:19:03 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 23:19:03 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <200201221403_MC3-EEF1-11F7@compuserve.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, carolyn quintero wrote: > Chiming in on Osage, I can tell you that ni 'water' + ohkaN'ska 'in the > middle' explains the term popularly glossed as 'children of the middle > waters'. Osages do not call themselves this, but rather waz^a'z^e. I've looked further at this 'middle' term. LaFlesche, in the his Osage dictionary, gives u-ckoN'[-]cka (p. 166b) or /uskoN'ska/ 'directly in the center of, in the middle'. However, he also gives u-k.oN'-cka (p. 172b) /ukkoN'ska/ 'the center'. Under this last he mentions /ni'uskoNska/ 'center of the waters (the earth)'. He goes on to add 'This was the name given to a subgens of the water division (Wa-zha-zhe gens) of the Osage tribal organization.' Under Ni'-u-k.oN-cka (Wa-zha-zhe) (p. 110b) he says 'the ancient name of the Wa-zha'-zhe and signifies they of the middle waters. Wa-t.se'-tsi, also of the Wa-zha'-zhe, signifies they who came from the stars; both belong to the same gens.' It's clear here that he's talking about the Waz^'az^e clan, not the Waz^a'z^e or Osage tribe. It also appears that the expression is a trope for 'earth'. I guess I don't know at this point if the term is attested elsewhere as applying to the whole of the Osage (and Kaw). Incidentally, I looked in Omaha-Ponca and found: JOD 1890:151.6 niN' ukkaN'ska i'daNbe ahi=bi=kki water in a straight line through the middle when they arrived The term occurs consistently as 'in a straight line', 'right in a line with', and 'just in a line with', sometimes paired with i'daNbe 'in the middle'. We also find uskaN'ska(=xti) 'in a (very) straight line with'. This term occurs in a question form, too, a'wath=uskaNska, though this is plainly a'wathe + uskaNska 'where in a place' + 'in a straight line with'. I also see that uskaNskaN 'in a straight line with' occurs. For the moment I'd have to characterize the three forms as irregular variants. I have the impression that 'in a line with' means aimed at or falling on an extension of a line from something or between two things. It looks like there is some shift in meaning between Omaha-Ponca and Osage. JE Koontz From enichol4 at attbi.com Wed Jan 23 06:42:35 2002 From: enichol4 at attbi.com (Eric) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:42:35 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 10:38 PM Subject: RE: Osage Rory wrote: > I agree that Mississippi Valley would have to have > originated in a relatively restricted area, though > it might have first spread from its point of origin > over a rather wide area as a single language before > diverging into its separate subgroups. > > Another question is how mobile the people speaking > the language were. In an earlier time, with a > smaller population and a less intensified mode of > procuring a living, a single band of people might > have ranged over hundreds or even thousands of > miles in the course of their yearly itineraries. > > But suppose we just try relocating that butler a > little to the east, and pushing him back farther > in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say > more like two thousand years ago than one. If > we give him a range covering roughly the modern > states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and southern > Wisconsin and Michigan, we still have a fairly > compact and reasonable territory for MVS to > differentiate on. Hopewell, as in George Hyde's pre-C14-ly anachronistic _Indians of the Woodlands_? > In time, one group intensifies > to the south, along the Ohio River, and evolves > into the Dhegihans. To the west, another group > intensifies along the Mississippi, and becomes > the Dakotans. To the north, another group > focusses on the shores of Lake Michigan, and > becomes the Winnebagoes. In the middle, yet > another group adapts to an upland type of > environment, and becomes the Chiweres, who > remain rather intermediate to the rest. Later, > the Dakotans move up the river to Minnesota, > while the Dhegihans expand westward into the > Bottom areas of southern Illinois and up the > lower Missouri. The Winnebagoes become > concentrated around the Green Bay area, and > the Chiweres expand across the Mississippi > into Iowa. Finally, we have an influx of > Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. > The Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are > defeated, and many are forced to flee for their > lives, down the Ohio River and across the > Mississippi. The crossing is a confused mess, > and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, > and the other wandering northwest to become the > Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the > Ohio as the River of the Dhegihans, this > specific historic event is remembered by the > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for > hundreds of years after the disaster, all players > are where we want them at the time of contact, > and nobody but the Omahas, Poncas, Quapaws, and > perhaps a few of the Ioways has any Ohio Valley > mud on his shoes. > > Would this scenario fit everybody's requirements? > > > Rory > > Well, there's that 900 lb. archaeological gorilla sitting on his American Bottom and at Angel and Kincaid. It always seemed to me that the "bones of animals and of men" that "lay scattered and bleaching around the village" of the strange people encountered by the Wa-zha'-zhe, HoN'-ga, and Tsi'-zhu in their wanderings after their descent from the sky, according to Francis La Flesche's "Rite of the Chiefs" in the 36th Annual Report to the BAE, (a strange people later incorporated into their tribal structure as the HoN'-ga U-ta-noN-dsi, "the Isolated HoN'-ga"), might actually have something to do with Middle Mississippian moruary practices. Just a thought. Eric Nicholson From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:00:19 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:00:19 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <200201221403_MC3-EEF1-11F9@compuserve.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, carolyn quintero wrote: > I can't tell who wrote the message below. I'm having trouble > following the Osage, since 'follow' in Osage is odha'ha when referring > to physically trailing after someone or something, or respecting > certain 'teachings' such as Christian precepts. The other 'follow' > that I know of is otxaN', often reduplicated otxaN'txaN, with its > variant okxaN' and okxaN'kxaN and even otkxaN. This one is found in > expressions such as 'next chief', 'the following one'. The Omaha-Ponca verb uhe' is glossed 'follow' in the sense of follwing a course (or an object delineating the course). I looked before I leaped in attributing the gloss to Osage, as Carolyn Quintero and Bob Rankin point point out. Moreover, as Bob Rankin also points out, I managed to cite the hypothetical ablauted stem opha, instead of the unablauted stem ophe (or ops^e). Actually, what I find in LaFlesche is not 'tread on', but op'-she 'that which is walked upon: a bridge' and op'-she 'passing from one group to another', both p. 123a, which could refer to 'treading on' but also perhaps to following a physical object (the bridge) or a route delineated by end points. But, as I've been forcibly reminded, it doesn't pay to rely to closely on Omaha-Ponca-based hints in elucidating Osage glosses. LaFlesche does list (p. 179b) u-thu'-pshe 'to follow a trail of an animal'. A homophone below this means 'cradle board', or perhaps the underlying sense is 'device by which the body is constrained to follow a course (shape) by means of a support'. To give a hint of how much fun it is to conjugate udhu- verbs, he gives the paradigm as: 1: udh- u'-wa- ps^e < *i(r)- o-(w)a- 2: udh- u'-dha-ps^e < *i(r)- o-ra- 3: udh- u'- ps^e < *i(r)- o- 12: oNdh-oN'g-u- ps^a=i < *i(r)-uNk-o- Morpheme divisions are my own. Proto-Siouan or at least Proto-Mississippi Valley Siouan contributes the epenthetic r between the *i and *o locatives, but the extensive assimilation of vowels across the epenthetic *r is Dhegiha. We know that LaFlesche always used OP =i, never Osage =pi ~ =pe in his dictionary, and we also know that he often also used the Omaha-Ponca treatment of the inflections, too, so this may be more OP than Osage! Notice that pha is still ps^a even though the vowel is a, not e. This may also be just LaFlesche. As far as Omaha-Ponca usage with the stem uhe and its derivatives ugi'he 'to follow again', and udhu'he 'to follow by means of', consider: wac^his^ka=khe uha' adha'=bi=ama creek the following he went JOD 1890:40.19 uz^aN'ge ugi'ha=bi=ama road she followed again JOD 1890:147.7 wi'uha=bi=ama, si'gdhe adha'=i=the he followed them trail (tracks) going (along) (participial approach) he followed them trail (tracks) he went (paired sentences) JOD 150.4/5 (I'd call this a pretty good evidential use of /the/, by the way, though only the context suggests what it's doing.) Note that wiuha < wa-i(dh)-u-ha. In other words, the *i resurfaces when preceded by wa-, and the epenthetic *r (dh) is lost. More fun with udhu-. Idha- from *i(r)-a- is also fun. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:28:44 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:28:44 -0700 Subject: postural verbs, verbs of motion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > In OP (Dorsey at least), we have a'z^i, meaning 'other' in the sense > of 'different' or 'foreign'. I'm puzzled by the OP a- / OS e- > difference here. In other cases, OP uses e- to mean this/that. Perhaps also relevan: OP e'z^aN=miN 'I suspect that', e'z^a=z^iN 'you ...', e'zh=iN 'he ...' Os a'z^iN=miN 'I think or suppose that', a'z^a=z^iN 'you ...', a'z^(a)=iN 'he ...' Here there's an alternation between e'z^a= and a'z^a= in the preverb, which is paralleled by Dakotan ec^h(a)=iN 'to think, to suppose', incidentally. (These verbs are all glottal-stop stems.) There's also an alternation of eaN 'how' and aN 'how' within Omaha-Ponca itself. I think the latter is really aaN, since we find examples like: e=a'thaN a'=maN wi' bdha'th e=the=daN how I do something (it is) I I eat apt What shall I do so that I am likely to get something to eat? JOD 1890:60.3 These last are just cases of e 'it, that, the aforesaid' vs. a 'something, the indefinite'. But this indefinite a- is ha- in Osage. Incidentally, e=the'=daN is a sort of modal particle with variants ethe (etha=i), ethedaN (contingent daN), ethegaN (subordinating gaN), and negatives of these (like ethegaNbaz^i 'they are not apt' or ethegaNmaz^i 'I am not apt'). JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 07:36:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:36:36 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > > What I meant was to poke a little fun at the possiblity that Ohio /ohaio/ > > in English could have come from anything in Dhegiha at all. [...] > > All right, John, you drew me out and got me square on that one! Well > done!! I'll take it as established from here that Omaha Uhai is a > morphologically rationalized adoption of the English name 'Ohio'. The fun is at this point mostly historical, and wasn't intended to be at Rory's expense, but (on past occasions) at the expense of a series of somewhat innocent ethnohistorians, who never seem to comment on the etymology. > By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? I don't know. I'm not sure there is one at present. I'm not sure that there's actually an unborrowed Omaha-Ponca name for it, either, though there's a good possibility that such terms existed in the past, even without the Ohio Valley connection. JEK From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:33:08 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:33:08 -0000 Subject: Monsters and the like In-Reply-To: Message-ID: There are cases of monsters or ghouls or the like originating in actual historical human characters. In Persian there is a word - landahour- used to refer to something big and frightening, which originates, I am told, in a bandit of that name who terrorized parts of south west Persia,though I don't know when exactly. The character is not generally known however in Persian folklore. Bruce On 22 Jan 2002, at 20:56, David Costa wrote: > Well. *I* don't consider it a disaster that we have Algonquians in the Ohio > River Valley. :-) > > The Dhegihans probably just wanted out to get away from the alligators. > > Dave > > > > we have an influx of Algonquians from the north into the Ohio Valley. The > > Dhegihans and Chiweres in this region are defeated, and many are forced to > > flee for their lives, down the Ohio River and across the Mississippi. The > > crossing is a confused mess, and the Dhegihan refugees break into two groups > > here, one moving south to become the Quapaws, and the other wandering > > northwest to become the Omahas. The immigrant Algonquians know the Ohio as > > the River of the Dhegihans, this specific historic event is remembered by the > > Omaha in a much attenuated and garbled form for hundreds of years after the > > disaster, Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:36:29 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:36:29 -0000 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4DC030.E2D1BCE5@d.umn.edu> Message-ID: On 22 Jan 2002, at 13:40, Alan H. Hartley wrote: > carolyn quintero wrote: > >. (Marquette also has 8tontanta, > from Chiwere wat?ta.) So that's where Lakota watoh^tah^ta 'Oto' comes from Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Wed Jan 23 15:42:12 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:42:12 -0000 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > But suppose we just try relocating that butler a > little to the east, and pushing him back farther > in time to some point earlier than Oneota, say > more like two thousand years ago than one. Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From jmcbride at kayserv.net Wed Jan 23 16:03:52 2002 From: jmcbride at kayserv.net (Justin McBride) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:03:52 -0600 Subject: Osage Message-ID: > Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? > Bruce I got this from http://www.angelfire.com/wi/oneota/ Oneota: an archaeological culture in upper central U.S., ca. AD 900- ca. AD 1700. Archaeologically Oneota refers to a number of post- woodland cultures in the Prairie Peninsula which date from ca. A.D. 1000 to Historic times. Shelltempered pottery typifies Oneota sites and serves as the diagnostic artifact for the Oneota tradition" (Tiffany 1982:1, in Gibbon). The pottery is often decorated with parallel wavy or zig-zag lines. On the prairie lands, bison and corn play a crucial role in subsitance. In the forests, wild rice, deer, corn and squash are also important. Geographically, Oneota extended over much of Iowa, into Missouri, Minnesota, much of Wisconsin (up to the Door Peninsula), western and perhaps north-eastern Illinois and perhaps Michigan. Hope this helps JM From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 17:45:55 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:45:55 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <004701c1a427$8da587c0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote: > > Sorry, what is Oneota. Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ? > > I got this from http://www.angelfire.com/wi/oneota/ > > Oneota: an archaeological culture in upper central U.S., ca. AD 900- > ca. AD 1700. ... Shelltempered pottery typifies Oneota sites and > serves as the diagnostic artifact for the Oneota tradition" (Tiffany > 1982:1, in Gibbon). The pottery is often decorated with parallel wavy > or zig-zag lines. And areas or lines of punctates or "dots." These are thought by some to represent, somewhat abstractly, the patterning on hawk tails, four of them, arranged around the pot. The pots are pretty much globular in shape, small, with rims and small handles. In some peripheral areas, the pottery is tempered with grit or other materials. Shell-tempered pottery is characteristic of several Mississippian cultures, including Cahokia(n). The lime helps to make corn cooked in the pots more nutricious. > On the prairie lands, bison and corn play a crucial role in > subsitance. In the forests, wild rice, deer, corn and squash are also > important. In general the subsistance patterns look a lot like those in the area at contact - horticulture, hunting of large herding animals, and systematic exploitation of the available small game and wild plants. House forms and sizes vary with locale and time. Both small camps and large settlements, sometimes with simple defensive works, are found. A few field systems have been located. Village sites were occupied for relatively short periods, and sites often show signs of reuse by similar groups over time. > Geographically, Oneota extended over much of Iowa, into > Missouri, Minnesota, much of Wisconsin (up to the Door Peninsula), > western and perhaps north-eastern Illinois and perhaps Michigan. Psinomani (should be PsiN-omani) is found in more the eastern Dakotas, too, and there are several Oneota sites in eastern Nebraska and Kansas. The number of known Oneota sites in western Illinois is now fairly extensive. The term Oneota is an old name for one the rivers in Iowa now imaginatively called "Iowa" (I think). I forget which - Iowa hydrography is not one of my strong points! Something in the North East. The name is supposed to be of Iroquois origin. The original form was Oneonta, but that variant has never been used by archaeologists. The name is supposed to have been collected from displaced Iroquoian-speakers and applied in English by Euroamericans unable to distinguish local and immigrant Indian populations. (I forget where I read this last - probaly somewhere in the Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society.) I think the original Oneota focus was Orr (named for Ellison Orr), in NE Iowa, identified by Mildred Mott, later Mildred Mott Wedel, and assigned by the direct historical method (ehtnographical equivalent of guilt by association) to the Ioway. To give this a linguistic twist - I think the Proto Mississippi Valley word for pot is something like *rex(e) ... Most of the MV Siouan groups seem to have stopped making pottery in the 1700s, so that by the time anyone thought to make any detailed notes on the subject the people they asked were quite vague about the whole process of making them, let alone specifics of form and decoration. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 17:49:25 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:49:25 -0700 Subject: Osage In-Reply-To: <3C4ED87D.20574.1A30CCB@localhost> Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 bi1 at soas.ac.uk wrote: > So that's where Lakota watoh^tah^ta 'Oto' comes from. Yes. Ethnonyms in the Plains/Prairie area are often loans, though it can be difficult to determine their origin and meaning. They seem to be visiting everywhere from nowhere. Ray DeMallie was quite correct to suggest we all hold our horses until we get to look over the synonymies in the Plains volume(s) of the HBNAI. Unfortunately I haven't bought a copy yet! JEK From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 23 22:35:43 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:35:43 -0600 Subject: Oneota Message-ID: The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. I don't have the url as the university just "fixed" my hard drive, ravaging my files and address book and bookmarks in the process. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 23 23:13:47 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 17:13:47 -0600 Subject: Oneota Message-ID: > The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice > Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the > phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. > > Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. > > I don't have the url http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/learn/prehistoric/oneota.htm From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 23 23:18:11 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:18:11 -0700 Subject: Oneota In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > The State Archaeologist's office in Iowa has a very nice > Oneota website with animation showing expansion of the > phenomenon plus a huge bibliography. > > Zimmerman is the name of one of the guys who runs it, I think. http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/ http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/oneota/ http://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/PastCultures/Oneota/oneota.htm Looks like Zimmerman might be at USD, but it's hard to say from this.. http://www.usd.edu/anth/sdbib.html JEK From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Jan 24 12:47:53 2002 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 12:47:53 -0000 Subject: Oneota In-Reply-To: <004701c1a427$8da587c0$3077f0c7@kayserv.net> Message-ID: Thanks for all the explanations of Oneota. Bruce > Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From cqcq at compuserve.com Thu Jan 24 15:00:40 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (carolyn quintero) Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 10:00:40 -0500 Subject: Osage Message-ID: Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > By the way, what is the Osage name for the Ohio River, really? Rory < I don't think the Osage language has a particular name (at least these days) for the Ohio River, sorry. If I find out differently in the next couple of weeks as I do more field work, I'll post it. Carolyn From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 07:02:02 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:02:02 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." Message-ID: I just got the current issue of IJAL (67.2, April 01) yesterday and discovered in it Bruce Ingham's new article "Nominal and Verbal Status in Lakhota: A Lexicographical Study." In it Bruce argues that Dakota stems can be divided into five classes: 1. Active Verbal, with active inflection, incapable of being head of subject phrase. e.g., lel wathi 'I live here' 2. Stative Verbal, with stative inflection, incapable ditto. e.g., mawas^te 'I am good' 3. Mixed Active Verbal/Nominal, with active inflection, can be predicated with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., wauNspe=wakhiye 'I teach, am a teacher' wauNspe=khiya hemac^ha 'I teach, am a teacher' wauNspe=khiye kiN c^haNzeke 'the teacher got angry' 4. Mixed Nominal/Stative verbal, with stative inflection, can be predicated with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., wimac^has^a 'I am a man' wic^has^a hemac^ha 'I am a man' wic^has^a kiN he Lakhota hec^ha ;that man is a Lakhota' 5. Nominal, uninflected, can be predicated with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject phrase. e.g., he s^uNka hec^ha 'that is a dog' s^uNka kiN xlo 'the dog barked' There is also what amounts to a sixth class, of perhaps several similar classes, which take =pi as an impersonal marker and are plural predicates, can be predicated with he..c^ha (stative), and can be heads of subject phrases. A classical example is thipi, which Bruce analyses as 'thing dwelt in by someone', though, interestinglyy, the Dakotan version of this stem lacks the locative *o- found in, say, Winnebago or Mandan (I think). e.g., ho he wic^hilowaNpi hec^ha olowaN Ho, that [song is one which] is a praise-song This classification deliberately omits transitives, which for purposes of discussion are essentially a sort of combination of 1 and 2. I'm not sure if there is an analogous transitive mix of classes 3 and 4. Members of class three are sometimes inflected for plural with =pi in nominal contexts, and sometimes not. Since members of class 1 can serve without explicit heads as relative or other nominal clauses, it might be possible to regard the plural-marked forms as cases of this, the stem serving in these cases (for whatever reasons) as the predicate of a relative without a separate head. Obviously I concede the point that this is nevertheless a sort of behavior intermediate between being a predicate and being a nominal. This general approach is somewhat similar to something I've been feeling driven to with Omaha-Ponca, to wit, identifying verbal vs. nominal stems based on their morphology, not their syntactic slot. If they have verb derivational prefixes and/or inflection, they're verbs, even though they may typically occur in a nominal slot. I believe, however, that for OP this still leaves us with verb stems that predicate and verb stems that denominate, with two subcases, those that denominate but are still inflected (?he teaches me = my teacher), and those that substitute alternative syntax for inflection - the analog of Dakotan internal inflection vs. he..c^ha. I think it would be very interesting to apply Bruce's approach in other Siouan languages. I certainly can't do it off the top of my head for Omaha-Ponca, where I've never quite escaped morphology, I'm afraid! I do know that analogs of type 4, or, at least, things commonly nominals in syntactic contexts than can be predicated with statives, are very rare. The only example I can think of immediately is fairly marginal, since it's a third person plural kkagha=bi 'they're crows' from the usual noun kkaghe. Apart from that, one interesting difference between Dakotan and Omaha-Ponca is that adding an article in OP precludes plural marking in the predicate. Since the articles agree with the subject in predications (rendered continuative by the addition of the article) and in subject-headed relatives, they indicate singularity/plurality themselves to the degree that they can. In non-subject headed relatives they indicate the singularity/plurality of the non-subject head. The equivalent of Dakotan he..c^ha would be formally something like ?s^e=g=..aN in OP, with he 'that ~ s^e 'that' and the =c^ha 'be such' being equivalent to (but not cognate with) =g=..aN 'be like (something)'. But I think that e=g=..aN 'be like that' (the form usually encountered) would in a predication be more or less 'be like, be similar to', not 'be one such as, be an instance of'. The OP stem is also inflected actively (e-gi=maN, e-gi=z^aN, e-g=aN). The usual verb for predications is dhiN 'be', which is inflected bdhiN, (s^)niN, ?dhiN. In fact, the third person is normally omitted, or, rather, replaced with e. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 22:13:42 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 15:13:42 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." (fwd) Message-ID: Maybe a bit long ... :-). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 00:19:41 +0300 From: Constantine Chmielnicki To: John E Koontz Subject: RE: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." If you find this fit for the Siouan list, forward it there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I haven't yet got this number of IJAL Vol. 67, but some materials from the article were published elsewhere (as in Ingham, Bruce. 1998. Nominal or verbal status in Lakhota: A Lexographical Study. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 8:125-140. http://www.soas.ac.uk/Linguistics/papers/8ingham.pdf ) I have questions on the Class 3: > 3. Mixed Active Verbal/Nominal, with active inflection, can be predicated > with inflection or with he..c^ha (stative), can be head of subject > phrase. > > e.g., wauNspe=wakhiye 'I teach, am a teacher' > wauNspe=khiya hemac^ha 'I teach, am a teacher' > wauNspe=khiye kiN c^haNzeke 'the teacher got angry' > I tend to think that this class encompasses the group of active verbs that have some forms "frozen" or moving to a distinct and separate "frozen" nominal state, differing both semantically and grammatically. Semantically verbs turn into nouns when a shift from "temporary occupation" to "permanent state" in meaning occurs (in terms of Boas and Deloria, see below) Grammatically the zero-derived nouns stop to be conjugated as active verbs, no ablaut alternation occurs, no continuative -hAN enclitic added, and perhaps something else. So I would say that perhaps wauNspe-ya-khiyapi is "you teach him/her", and wauNspekhiye he-ni-chapi is "you are teachers". (-e ending in Buechel), with this "temp. occupation" vs. "perm. state" opposition being clearly salient. wauNspekhiye (n.) seems to be derived from wauNspekhiyA (v.t.) by -A -> -e ablaut change. Perhaps some other pairs can be arranged into "temp. vs. perm." pairs: (xtalehaN) yalowaN s?a - (yesterday) you sang regularly lowaNs?a (kiN) henicha - you are a (professional) singer. wama-ya-nuN s?a - you steal habitually wamanuNs?a henicha - you are a (professional) thief. For x?okxa, "to be a traditional drum singer; to sing traditional Indian music", the separation of a nominal form from the verbal one has yielded perhaps all possible paradigms: wa-x?okxa (Buechel) x?o-wa-kxa (Lakhota Project) ma-x?okxa x?okxa hemacha, and x?okxa wimachas^a (p.s.) I don't know whether these sentences are idiomatic or not, but just to exemplify the differences I'd say: waunspekhiye ki henicha shni eyash, waunspe-ya-khiye. teacher the you-such not but him-you-teach waunspekhiye ki hemacha eyash, wowashi bluha shni cha wana tuweni waunspewakhiye shni. teacher the I-such but, job I-have not and.so now nobody I-teach not. Best wishes, Connie. P.S. In addition I paste the stuff from Boas & Deloria's "Dakota Grammar" that can be relevant: ? 157. Nouns derived from verbs Page 125 Nouns formed by the prefix wa- have been discussed on pages 52 et seq. Most of these forms are still felt as verbs and function as nouns only with the following article kiN. This is particularly true of the nomina actoris. The following are felt as nouns and express permanent qualities: waya'ka captive; waphi'ya he makes people well, medicine man; wakiN'yaN thunder; wauN'chala the little one imitates (wauN'chala monkey, wauN'chapi mockery) The following are verbs, nominalized by the article and express temporary occupations: wakhu'wa he hunts buffaloes (wakhu'wa kiN buffalo hunter); wayu'thaN he serves at a ceremonial, lit. he touches things; (wayu'thaN kiN server at a ceremonial); wo'ha he carries things; wao'ka he rather hits something, marksman ? 97. Nouns Page 85 The following nouns insert the pronoun: ?IhaN'kthuNwaN a Yankton, ?Ima'haNkthuNwaN (also idiomatic: ?IhaN'kthuNwaN hema'cha, better still ?IhaN'kthuNwaN-wima`chas^a, -wiNma`yaN); ?ithaN'chaN chief, lord, leader, ?ima'thaNchaN; ?Ikto'mi, ?Ikto' the trickster, ?Ima'ktomi (also Ikto'mi-wiN`mayaN, etc. (woman), both forms used); was^i'cu guardian, medicine bundle, white man, wama's^icu (see was^i' to order one to work for); wakiN'yaN thunder, wama'kiNyaN (also wakiN'yaN-wicha`chas^a); wakhaN'hez^a child, wama'khaNhez^a (also wama'khaNyez^a); wicha's^a man, wima'chas^a; wicha'h^cala old man, wima'chah^cala; wichi'yela Dakotas not using l, wini'chiyela you are -; winuN'h^cala old woman, wima'nuNh^cala; wiN'yaN woman, wiNma'yaN; wichiN'cala girl, wiNma'chiNcala; ha'sapa Negro, black skin, ha'masapa (or ha'sapa-wiNma`yaN); hoks^i'la boy, homa'ks^ila; hoks^i'cala baby, homa'ks^icala; matho' bear, mani'tho (You're a shark at it!) or (you are fiercely angry); Lakho'ta a Dakota, lama'khota (also mala'khota); khos^ka'laka young man, khoma's^kalaka; wikho's^kalaka young woman, wima'khos^kalaka; Thi'thuNwaN a Teton, does not insert the pronoun, mathi'thuNwaN (or thi'thuNwaN-wima`chas^a) The following are verbal forms: ?aki'chita camp police, ?ama'kichita (from ?a(wa')khita (I) look around for); ?ouN'papila infant in cradle (little one wrapped tightly in it), ?oma'uNpapila Children playing might also use such terms as: ?ima'gmu I am a cat The feeling for such nouns may be understood from the following cases: ?ale'tka a twig, maa'letka I am a twig (a younger member) of a great family, ?ama'letka he is a twig on me (i. e., he is a young member of my famlly) heh^a'ka branched antlers, elk mahe'h^aka I am a member of the elk society (but better heh^a'ka ?o'wapha I joined the elks), hema'h^aka would be said by the animal elk, I am with branched antlers ? 55. Indefinite object wa- Page 54 In a number of cases the noun requires the ending -ka. With neutral verb it expresses an object, with active verbs an actor. Examples of neutral verbs are: wasku'yeca something sweet, i. e., fruit; watho'keca something different, i. e., a delicacy; wag^u'g^eca something scaly, i. e., dandruff With active verbs words are formed which are still felt as verbs, but which function very commonly as nouns when followed by the article. wakte'ka one who kills animals easily; wao'ka a marksman; wao'kihika one who is efficient; wi'yeyeca one who is good at finding things; wi's^tes^tececa one who has fits of bashfulness; wawi'h^ah^ayeca an amusing person Without -ka we find: wauN'chala little imitator, i. e., monkey; wae'pazo the one who points thither, i. e., index finger; waki'chuNza the one who decrees his own, a leader From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 22:52:34 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 15:52:34 -0700 Subject: Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Semantically verbs turn into nouns when a shift from "temporary > occupation" to "permanent state" in meaning occurs ... Grammatically > the zero-derived nouns stop to be conjugated as active verbs, no > ablaut alternation occurs, no continuative -hAN enclitic added, and > perhaps something else. > > So I would say that perhaps wauNspe-ya-khiyapi is "you teach him/her", > and wauNspekhiye he-ni-chapi is "you are teachers". (-e ending in > Buechel), with this "temp. occupation" vs. "perm. state" opposition > being clearly salient. I take it that we mean permanent in terms of permanence of the occupation for a particular person, and not permanent in terms of lexicalization? There's something about ablaut grading that I wondered about in connection with Bruce's analysis. I think that e-grades vs. a-grades in nouns can be predicted in terms of something like specificity of reference. The e-grade is especially used with possessed things, e.g., s^uN'ka, but thas^uN'ke (tha-possessed CVC nouns take the -e grade), or c^haNl' ~ chaNte' (body parts with CVC-stems take -e(') in independent form), and possessed things have a specific, even definite, reference with respect to the possessor. One could even perhaps make something of an argument that this matched singulars (-e, specific) vs. plurals (-a, generic), but it's not clear in general that this predicts use of e vs. a with verbs generally or even with nominalizations of verbs. For example, why would negatives and diminutives condition -e under this logic? I'm also not sure that this assessment would hold up under modern usage. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jan 25 23:04:33 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 16:04:33 -0700 Subject: Singers (was RE: Bruce Ingham's ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Wrote Constantine Chmielnicki : > For x?okxa, "to be a traditional drum singer; to sing traditional Indian > music", the separation of a nominal form from the verbal one has yielded > perhaps all possible paradigms: > wa-x?okxa (Buechel) > x?o-wa-kxa (Lakhota Project) > ma-x?okxa > x?okxa hemacha, and > x?okxa wimachas^a (p.s.) I noticed in reading Bruce's paper that this term was similar to Dhegiha xukka 'singer'. I hope I haven't gotten this confused with Osage s^okka 'prompter in ceremony' again, though I'm not sure they're not related. The u vs. o difference is just differences in treating *o. The match is exact, except for the differences in fricative sound symbolic grading (s^ vs. x), and the fact that Da x? should come out ? in OP and k? in Osage. Maybe it's a loan from Dakotan into Dhegiha (or at least OP). That might explain the loss of ?. JEK From Rgraczyk at aol.com Fri Jan 25 23:54:05 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 18:54:05 EST Subject: Tribal ethnonyms Message-ID: I have been looking through the Smithsonian plains volume, and am finding it excellent. Congratulations to Doug, Ray, Bob, and everyone who contributed. Randy From Rgraczyk at aol.com Sat Jan 26 03:16:12 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 22:16:12 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: In a message dated 01/20/2002 11:29:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, John.Koontz at colorado.edu writes: > On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > > > There is a water monster that shows up in Crow tales. The term for it > > is buluksa'a. which is not obviously derived from anything else. Any > > possible cognates? Randy > > > > Looks like it might possibly be related to the *wakru$ka term (folk > taxonomy > > for anything from a small bug to an alligator, including insects, > arachnids > > and lizards). It has reflexes in various Mississippi Valley languages. > > Specifically it looks like Dakotan wablus^ka, implying *waprus^ka, albeit > with metathesis of s^k (and s^ > s). The *wakrus^ka and *waprus^ka > variants don't correspond regularly, but the match looks reasonable. I > wonder if the Crow form is regularly derived from *waprus^ka? Could it be > a loan? Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. Randy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 26 17:51:15 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:51:15 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: <11d.b17bdc1.2983797c@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 25 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is > cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s > before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. But I think bulu isn't a very good match for uN, u after denasalization. And what usually happens to kt? Isn't the k reduced to preaspiration? On the other hand, wablus^ka has an extra wa over anything exhibited in bulukta'a, and I'm not sure that uNktehi is terribly canonical in form for Dakotan, either, though it falls within the general range of the trickster term variants. Of course, I guess we should really be wondering what happens in some of the connected languages, too. So far I haven't thought of anything that matches uNktehi in MV, and I don't know anything about Hidatsa or Mandan. You'd expect maybe *oNtte((h)i) in Dhegiha. The -hi might be analyzed off as 'leg' in OP, where *hu becomes hi. Looking around, I've found in LaFlesche for Osage a reference to a creek called Wagthushka iabi /walus^ka iapi/ 'where a strange animal was seen' - warriors were crossing a stream on a log and when all but two had crossed, it turned its head downstream and went away. Notice that when citing forms from a context LaFlesche uses the proper plural form. I'm not sure the form is to be translated 'where a walus^ka was seen'. It looks like iapi is 'he speaks', but I could be wrong. Anyway, it looks like Osage bases its term on the word for 'bug, lizzard, worm', in Osage walus^ka (< *wakrus^ka). It seems to me that this was pointed out already. For Ioway-Otoe I find isc^exi, is^c^eximi(N) (female) for 'water spirit, horned underwater panther (a malevolent spirit monster) in Good Tracks. This looks like it would be something like *is^texi, which doesn't seem helpful in this context. All I could find for Winnebago was nuNuNjake' 'water snake'. This would be from something like *ruNuNtaka, perhaps (irregularly, I think) *ruNuNtka, which is actually not a bad match. I've assumed *ka > ke, which is regular, but it might also be *ruNuNtke, which is a fairly good match for uNkt^ehi. One language or the other has metathesized the cluster, and the initial *r is lost in Dakota (it would be y, as in *yuNktehi). That r would actually help explain the Crow bulu-. Crow would have added an additional *wa-. However, I feel like I'm sort of herding the form in the direction I want it to go. I'd feel better looking a bit further at snake and insect terms closer at hand. The IO bug term is wagri'. Winnebago has wikiri'. Together these suggest *wakri', maybe *wikri', which is in the ballpark with Dhegiha *wakrus^ka and Dakota *waprus^ka, though none of these match regularly. The -ka are probably noun formants and the prefixal wa- could be either the indefinite object wa- or one of the old fossilized noun classifying prefixes that Rankin has discovered across Siouan-Caddoan and Yuchi. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Jan 26 18:07:09 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 11:07:09 -0700 Subject: More on Monsters Message-ID: GoodTracks gives hompathroji 'spirits with long flat heads, sharp at top (live in buttes of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers)' in his English-to-Ioway-Otoe-Missouria side. In the IOM side he gives humpathroxje (old) 'dwarf'. It's possible that pa is pha 'head', but I can't make anything of the rest. Threje (rej^e), cf. OP snede, is 'long'. Homa or huma is 'elk'. This is basically the IO outcome of something like *huNpa, cf. OP aNpha 'elk', though the OP form is aspirated (without any *ph > h shift!), and the pre-IO form is evidently not. (A better example would be Te (wahu'w)apa 'ear of corn' : OP waha'ba 'corn (ear)' : IO waha'ma 'corn on the cob' : Wi woohaN'p 'ear of corn', though this stem *hap-/*haNp- is nasal only in IO and Wi.) I'm not sure any of these suggestions is relevant here, unless 'elk' is connected with 'antlered' or 'horned'. McCafferty's Mississippi bluff painting occurred to me in this connection. From Zylogy at aol.com Sat Jan 26 20:15:35 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 15:15:35 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: You know, something just occurred to me- forms such as buluk are pan-circum Pacific for "whale". I remember from someone who used to do proto-world type "etymologies". And if whales ain't water monsters, I don't know what are! Spouts from a distance might seem to be horns? Or dorsal fins as of Orcas? Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 27 17:44:54 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 11:44:54 -0600 Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: > Actually, I think that you could make a case that Crow buluksa'a is > cognate--or partially cognate--with Dakota unktehi. In Crow t can become s before a low vowel, and sometimes VhV > VV. >But I think bulu isn't a very good match for uN, u after denasalization. And what usually happens to kt? Isn't the k reduced to preaspiration? On the other hand, wablus^ka has an extra wa over anything exhibited in bulukta'a, and I'm not sure that uNktehi is terribly canonical in form for Dakotan, either, though it falls within the general range of the trickster term variants. Crow historical phonology is pretty hazy to me. Morphologically, I guess, in my naivete, I'd expect the prefix /bi-/ in Crow. Does this ever exhibit vowel harmony and come out /bu-/ ? Bob From rankin at ku.edu Sun Jan 27 17:57:55 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 11:57:55 -0600 Subject: Dhegiha prehistory, cont. Message-ID: >I haven't seen it in Dorsey either, but it is mentioned in a couple of spots at least in Fletcher and La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe". It does use /khe/. On page 94, it is listed near the end of several pages of stream names as Uha'i ke.....The river down which they Ohio river. came. That's interesting. It's hard to tell just from that whether it's a loan from English "Ohio" or derived from */uha-bi khe/ 'they followed it - the.horizontal.inanimate'. And if the latter, it's hard to know if it's connection to the Ohio R. is a folk reanalysis or if it dates back. > When you say "By the Sacred Legend...", are you referring to > some particular document? >Fletcher and La Flesche, chapter II, has a series of anotated extracts from what they call the 'Sacred Legend'. I don't know where or if the full Legend exists written down today, but I suppose the Peabody Museum would be the place to start looking. Yeah, I suppose so. I'm familiar with the passages in F&LF, but of course would like to see the original if it exists somewhere. Thanks for the comments. Bob From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sun Jan 27 22:38:02 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 15:38:02 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Crow historical phonology is pretty hazy to me. Morphologically, I guess, > in my naivete, I'd expect the prefix /bi-/ in Crow. Does this ever exhibit > vowel harmony and come out /bu-/ ? In the *r-stems (d/l stems in terms of Crow phonology and the practical orthography), the first person is bulu- and the second dilu- for du-instrumentals (cf. Dakotan yu-, OP dhi-), so it looks like the harmony is at least in part with the preceding consonant. But, there is probably some additional complication involved in the second person of the du-instrumentals, and I think harmony with the vowel following d is usual. My files remain chaotic and I can't quickly locate any of the summaries Randy has prepared on the subject! From Rgraczyk at aol.com Tue Jan 29 17:21:43 2002 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Randolph Graczyk) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 12:21:43 EST Subject: Water monsters Message-ID: Back to buluksa'a 'water monster': I am assuming that there is some additional material at the beginning of the Crow form, perhaps bilV or balV. Vowel assimilation does occur sporadically in Crow. The first person forms of the 'by hand' verbs look like an example: 1 bulu-, 2 dilu-, 3 du(u). Assimilation also occurs in verbs with the derivation prefix chi- ( Message-ID: On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > ... Vowel assimilation does occur sporadically in Crow. The first > person forms of the 'by hand' verbs look like an example: 1 bulu-, 2 > dilu-, 3 du(u). Assimilation also occurs in verbs with the derivation > prefix chi- ( 'set down', kulushi'i 'store, put back, put away' , as compared to > axshe'e win, chi-axshe'e 'win again'. ... Interesting! I knew about the personal inflection, but had overlooked the behavior of chi-. Of course, this is just what happens with *ki- and *r-stems (and other syncopating stems) in Mississippi Valley, to wit, *ki- is reduced to *k-. In the case of *r-stems and some others, there is an pleonastic *ki-, so, in Omaha-Ponca, a-gi-g-dhi-, dha-gi-g-dhi, gi-g-dhi-, with g- comparable to b- and s^- in the first and second persons, e.g., b-dhi-, (s^)-ni-, dhi-. Of course, the *ki- prefix is the reflexive possessive in Omaha-Ponca, though the vertitive has a similar morphology and means somethign like 'again' (home or back), and there are a few cases of *k(i)- as 'again', too. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jan 29 21:42:57 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 14:42:57 -0700 Subject: Water monsters In-Reply-To: <11b.ac9eb11.29883427@aol.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote: > I am assuming that there is some additional material at the beginning of the > Crow form, perhaps bilV or balV. ... > If the beginning of the Crow form was bil-, it could be bili' 'water' . > Otherwise I don't have any good guesses right now. This, with the vowel assimilation to the initial u of hypothetical uksaa, as Randy suggests, might account for the form buluksaa fairly well. JEK From BARudes at aol.com Wed Jan 30 02:30:26 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 21:30:26 EST Subject: Omission from Woccon Article Message-ID: John Koontz brought to my attention that the sources for the Proto-Siouan forms in Appendix 4 of the article were not cited. Apparently, because of editorial revisions and emails back and forth, the journal editor used a version that did not contain the citations. Briefly, the reconstructions are from a paper by Giulia Oiviero and Bob Rankin on the classification of Southeastern Siouan that will appear in a volume I am editing with David Costa in memory of Frank Siebert. The others are either from Matthews' dissertation or from Richard Carter's Woccon article. I apologize, in particular to the authors of the omitted citations for the error, and will send the full citations for each form to everyone over the weekend. Blair From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 30 03:26:56 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:26:56 -0700 Subject: Water Monsters Message-ID: In regard to Crow buluksa'a 'water moster', cf. Teton uNktehi 'watermonster'. First, with apologies for not checking sooner, for *kt, cf. *-kta 'toward', Crow (ku)ssaa' 'toward (that)', Hidatsa (ku)htaa 'in (that) direction', Teton (e)kta 'to', Omaha-Ponca (e)tta 'to, toward (it)', etc. And, just in case, *tk, cf. *itka 'egg', Crow ihka', Hidatsa ihka', Teton (w)i'tka, itka', Omaha-Ponca (w)e'tta, Winnebago hiic^ge', etc. So *kt is problematic in a regular development, though *t and *s do fall together and then redivide into t ~ s ~ s^, if I recall correctly. (My source here is a draft version of the Comparative Siouan Dictionary, though these are standard comparison.) I've also noticed that Hidatsa 'snake' is waapu'ks^a (< CSD). W. Matthews says mapo'ks.a means 'any animal or animals offensive to the sight of these Indians, or unfit for food, as worms, insects, snakes, etc. He also lists mapo's.a (waapu's^a (?)) 'a term applied to flies and insects less offensive to the sight than mapo'ks.a'. Crow 'insect' is baapuxta (< CSD). The draft of the CSD suggests comparing the pus ~ pux root here (we have to assume metathesis in Hidatsa) with pu"s in Osage z^apu"ska 'ant' (actually, all Osage u are [u"]), and I might go further and compare Omaha-Ponca z^aNgdhis^ka 'ant', which suggests that the Osage form modifies z^aN 'wood' to z^a irregularly. The Osage form uses pu"ska as 'bug', while OP relies on gdhis^ka (Osage has the cognate -lu"s^ka, spelled -gthushka by LaFlesche, but not in this compound). Also, the CSD suggests that Te wablus^ka, Sa wamdus^ka, etc., are modified from *wakru^ka (as attested in the Dhegiha forms) under the unfluence of the *puska form. (In all these forms -ka is a noun former, common with names of creatures.) We can also add the CSD Mandan wa'akiruxka? < *waakruxka 'snake, worm, snail' (from the CSD), which is a sound-synbolism grade of *wakrus^ka. I'm not sure where this leaves Crow buluksa'a, which is clearly similar to Hidatsa waapu'ks^a 'snake, creepy crawly' in its latter parts, but not in its former ones. In fact, it's more similar at the -ksa'a end than Crow baapu'xta 'insect', though the CSD seems to assume Hidatsa -ks^a involves metathesis. But Hidatsa waapu'- doesn't match Crow bulu- at all well, even though both involve a labial and u (and Crow b is the proper match for Hidatsa w, which is [m] in initial position. (In other words, if we step beyond the phonetics of the languages the forms are something like waapu- and wuru- underlyingly.) Randy could easily be right that the bulu- is essentially 'water', though perhaps we need to consider some amount of reanalysis, mutual influence, and dialect borrowing in place of strict compounding. Watermonsters, snakes, bugs, and the likes are a complex matter in Siouan comparisons. JEK From rankin at ku.edu Wed Jan 30 21:56:11 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 15:56:11 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: This is about English rather than Siouan, but when I heard it I couldn't resist. This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. The interview can be heard at http://www.npr.org/ under the program heading "Morning Edition" for January 29, 2002. Bob From ahartley at d.umn.edu Wed Jan 30 22:17:29 2002 From: ahartley at d.umn.edu (Alan H. Hartley) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:17:29 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: > This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at > Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker > pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had > taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. "might could/would" is good southern, but this must just be Disney! From Zylogy at aol.com Wed Jan 30 22:30:47 2002 From: Zylogy at aol.com (Jess Tauber) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:30:47 EST Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? This here fellow would like to know. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jan 30 23:24:36 2002 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:24:36 -0700 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. In-Reply-To: <24.201a9248.2989ce17@aol.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 Zylogy at aol.com wrote: > Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? Well, I can't say I have any idea how to do a conditional potential in Omaha-Ponca. And I can't do it in English. I'm surprised it wasn't "might would've if management would've" since most speakers (of English) I run into have the modal in the hypothesis and conclusion (apodosis?) both. I'd have to say "would perhaps have if management had" (or "maybe it would-a if management had-a"). I see he has perfect marking on both modals. As far as Omaha-Ponca, I don't understand the modal particles very well, but post-verbal (e=)iN=the 'perhaps' is probably relevant here. I'm still recovering from discovering that there's no direct way to say 'can'. From cqcq at compuserve.com Wed Jan 30 23:39:56 2002 From: cqcq at compuserve.com (Carolyn Quintero) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 18:39:56 -0500 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Message text written by INTERNET:siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > This year's Oscar for Best Embedded Modal goes to an unidentified worker at > Disney World in Florida, who, when discussing dissatisfaction with worker > pay cuts, said, "It MIGHT'VE WOULD'VE quelled it a little if management had > taken a cut too,..." Even I can't say that. "might could/would" is good southern, but this must just be Disney! < Actually it doesn't sound so bad to me.... ;-> In fact, I believe I might could easily hear that around Oklahoma. Carolyn From jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu Thu Jan 31 00:01:25 2002 From: jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu (John Boyle) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 18:01:25 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. In-Reply-To: <24.201a9248.2989ce17@aol.com> Message-ID: >Is that there modal embedding an example of something more general? This here >fellow would like to know. > >Jess Tauber >zylogy at aol.com Marianna Di Paolo did a nice article for American Speech (64.3 1989) on double modals called "Double Modals as Single Lexical Items" In it she says that 'might could' is the most common form of double modals (which is fine in my Utahan speech). She doesn't treat this type of double perfect marking, however. When I heard this on NPR I though it was great! John Boyle From BARudes at aol.com Thu Jan 31 00:34:52 2002 From: BARudes at aol.com (BARudes at aol.com) Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 19:34:52 EST Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: Bob, You MIGHT'VE SHOULD'VE talked to some of us up here in the Carolinas. We could've explained the usage to you right quick. Blair From rankin at ku.edu Thu Jan 31 19:14:00 2002 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 13:14:00 -0600 Subject: Siouanists, eat your heart out. Message-ID: >You MIGHT'VE SHOULD'VE talked to some of us up here in the Carolinas. We could've explained the usage to you right quick. I grew up in South Georgia, and "might could", Ken's "usta could" along with "might oughta" are second nature to me in casual English. But putting <'ve> on BOTH elements is out of the question for me and everyone I know. "Might would've" and "might should've" or "might oughta've" would be OK, but not with *might've. Bob