Crow chi- and d-stems

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Tue Jan 29 21:40:30 UTC 2002


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- (<ki-), again before 'by hand' instrumentals:  du'ushii
> '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.



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