Colors in Dakota

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Kathleen Shea wrote:
> On the subject of 'green/blue' (dubbed 'grue' I think by Bob), there seems
> to be what might be a productive process in Ponca of using the contrast
> between /c^/ (a marginal phoneme that developed historically from the
> palatalization of /t/ if I'm not wrong) and /t/ for distinguishing "baby
> talk" from adult speech and also for creating words of slightly different
> meaning that are similar in form.  For example, I'm told by my 90-year-old
> consultant that 'blue' is /tu/ and 'green' is /c^u/, although I'm not
> convinced that there's general agreement on this among Ponca speakers.  The
> same speaker distinguishes /maNs^c^iNge/ 'rabbit' from /maNs^tiNge/
> 'jackrabbit' (as I recall), illustrating another example of /t/ contrasting
> with /c^/.

Aha!  I wondered about maNs^c^inNge.  Every time I produced it before
Omahas I was corrected.  But it is definitely in texts from Omaha speakers
in the Dorsey collections.  I suppose it's possible that this is an
instance of him standardizing on a form he first encountered with Ponca
speakers.