Osage

[Koontz John E]

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