a wish?
Rory M Larson
rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu
Wed Jul 30 17:10:13 UTC 2003
I'd agree with Carolyn on this. I did see, and briefly
considered, the "attack" interpretation of KO(n)ONTHA,
but the translation "Friend, you walk in very good health.
He attacked me." seems a little schizophrenic for a chair
dedicated to a Vice President (unless we go with Louis'
suggestion that this last clause might be Curtis' Indian
name).
In OP at least, there seems to be a gradient series of
"desire" expressions, all based on the two elements *koN,
"wish", and *dha or *edha, meaning "think". (I believe
John and maybe Bob had a good historical linguistic
discussion of the "think" term a few months ago; I'm
winging it from memory here, and hope they will correct
me if I'm in error.) In the I-form, the series comes out
as follows:
kkoN'bdha = kkoN bdha = I want (in a somewhat demanding
or intentional way)
kkoNbdhe'goN = kkoN bdha-e'goN = I would like (in a
softened, undemanding
way)
kkoN ebdhe'goN = kkoN e bdha-e'goN = I wish (in a magical
or irrealis sort of
way; e.g. that this
blood clot would
become a boy)
The /e'goN/ in the latter two expressions is an adverb
meaning 'sorta', as in "I sorta think". This has become
standard in OP, but is not originally an essential part
of it. The /e/ in the last expression may be the
generic demonstrative "that", as in: "X, that I think".
For the first form, "want", the full subject paradigm is:
goN'dha = s/he wants
kkoN'bdha = I want
s^koN'hna = you want
oNgoN'dha = we want
Both roots are inflected here, except in the 'we' form, where
it appears only in front. I don't know the non-I forms of the
"would like" and "wish" expressions. It's notable, though,
that the last form, "I wish", uses /koN/ followed by the
word /ebdhe'goN/, which is exactly the word for "I think" in
modern OP.
I think that a couple of processes may be going on here.
Historically, we are getting a merging of two words into
one: "wish-think" => "want". The more completely merged
form tends to take on a somewhat forceful tone of demand,
which is not wanted in all contexts. One way out is to
soften it by adding a "sorta" adverb at the end: "I sorta
want it" would mean "I would like to have it", not "I
demand to have it". The other is to carefully preserve
the distinction between the original two roots: "(I) wish,
I think" would really mean "I wish", keeping clear that
there is no real-world expectation of the wish being
fulfilled.
If /goN'dha/ is understood as a single verb, "want", then
the we-form should add the /oN-/ to the beginning of the
verb to get /oNgoN'dha/. But if the strategy is to keep
the *koN separate from the "we think", then the /oN-/
should attach to the root *(e)dha, "think", giving us
/goN oNdha/ (OP) or /koN oNdha/ (Os.).
If this hypothesis is valid, then the semantic difference
between /oNgoN'dha/ and /goN' oNdha/ would be:
Friend, we want you to walk in good health
(and darned well expect it of you!)
vs.
Friend, we wish for you to walk in good health
(but admittedly have no influence over the matter.)
Carolyn wrote:
> If i, like (a)pi in OS, will cause the final e of *the* to be a, then we
get
> the ON-THA. Does that happen?
Yes, =i causes a-grade ablaut. So if the root is in fact
/dhe/, then we would get oNdha=i, as you suggest. And if
the root is /dha/, as I propose above, then we get the same
thing.
Rory
"Carolyn Quintero"
<cqcqcq1 at earthlink.n To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
et> cc:
Sent by: Subject: a wish?
owner-siouan at lists.c
olorado.edu
07/30/2003 07:59 AM
Please respond to
siouan
I believe that rather than the "charge" interpretation based on LF 'menace,
charge against', another reading is possible. In instances where a doubly
inflecting verb such as 'menace' is shown to be, if there is only one
subject pronominal, it will be the left one, not the right one. And if
there
is only one object pronominal in such a verb, it will be the left one.
Therefore this internal ON as either A1p or P1s does not seem at all
likely.
What about the KO(n) being LF's 'to wish or to desire'? This usage was not
present in the Osage I collected but it appears LF32:88. We could assume
that it is also a noun 'a wish'.
If i, like (a)pi in OS, will cause the final e of *the* to be a, then we
get
the ON-THA. Does that happen?
Then that leaves us with ON-THA-IHA, and the only thing I can make of this
is either
a) oN'the 'toss out, discard' (giving: a wish we/he threw away?)
or
b) aNthe 'he/they made me' with *the* as the causative and aN '1s
patient',
giving 'they made me wish'???
In Modern Osage these two alternatives would be(without the *ha* which is
not used at least nowadays) as follows:
a') oN'thape
or
b') aN'thape
I don't believe b) could be construed as 'they made me the wish' because
that would involve a different 'make', probably *kaaghe*.
Carolyn
'
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Koontz John E
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 1:20 AM
To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu'
Subject: Re: Attn. Dhegiha specialists.
OK, having read ahead ...
I actually make it
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> KO-THA-U-CA-SHE / THI-CE-XTSI MO-NI / KO-ON-THAIHA-IN
Top:
KO-THA U-GA-SHE THI^N-GE XTSI MO-NI
Kkudha ugas^e dhiNge= xc^i maNniN
Friend, ailment lacking very (you?) go
"Go (or 'you went') in health."
Bottom:
KO^NON-THA IHA
KkaN=aNdha=i=ha
He threatened (charged) me.
As Bob points out, the raised n's are missed in Doerner's transciption. I
think all the C's are actually G's, too, from what I can make of the
photo. He accidentally repeats the NI of the top part as IN in teh bottom
part, too.
Everybody else got the first one before I checked my mail this evening,
but I think I have the last one. See LaFlesche 1933:89b k.oN-tha 'to
attack, to charge upon an enemy, to raid, to threaten, to menace'.
LaFlesche gives the active inflection, and shows that both stems kkaN and
dha are inflected, e.g., akkaN=bdha 'I threatened him'. I assume that
kkaN=aNdha is the first person patient form, though I don't think there's
a parallel formation with gaN=dha 'to wish' (also with both stems
inflected).
I think there's a very good chance that the message was composed by
LaFlesche, though I don't know what connection he had with Curtis, and I
don't know what events in the life of Curtis (presumably) or circumstances
between Curtis and (presumably) LaFlesche the message may refer to.
It seems that somebody threatened Curtis (presumably) and that the
presenter wishes him well.
As far as the language, it is essentially Omaha-Ponca once you see the G's
instead of C's. The orthography isn't quite the usual one for LaFlesche,
assuming it's him, but he wasn't always consistant on raised n vs.
n-in-line (KO^N-ON-THA), and I suspect that xtsi for OP xti ~ xc^i isn't
unreasonable for someone who's recently been working on Osage. The use of
th for *dh instead of y or d shows it's not Kaw or Quapaw, though there's
no evidence that LaFlesche in particular worked with either language
(though he does lists some names from both in The Omaha Tribe). The use
of =i=ha PROXIMATE-DECLARATIVE (male) (in archaic form) pretty well shows
it's Omaha-Ponca. The -xtsi is odd, but not impossible. He is using o in
ko-tha (kkudha) 'friend', but he's back to u- in ugashe (ugas^e). Mo-ni
could represent either maNdhiN or maNniN, which in OP terms would be the
third person (or imperative, though there's no imperative particle) in the
case of maNdhiN, or it would be the second person maNniN < maNhniN <
maNs^niN. He always wrote aN (~ oN) as oN, except when he wrote uN (u
apparently schwa) occasionally.
JEK
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