Dakota: verbs with 'hill' involved

[Rory M Larson]

Hi Alfred!

My first question on that would be whether the [y] in _yahaN_
is real or epenthetic.  The latter seems possible, as it always
follows front vowels [i] or [e] in your examples.  Have you
tried looking up _ahaN_, or just plain _haN_ ?

The one pair of examples you give that I'm pretty sure of is:

> agli'yoxpayA
> they came down from a hill

> ahi'yoxpayA
> they came down a hill

Here, I'm sure the [y] is epenthetic.  _oxpayA_ must
correspond to OP uxpa'dhe, which means to fall.  So these
should equate morphologically to (hypothetical) OP:

  agdhi            uxpadhe
  came back here   fell

  athi             uxpadhe
  arrived here     fell

So in this case at least, there is probably no explicit
hill as such, but only the statement that they came back
here or arrived here via a descending path.  I'd suspect
that the (a)haN part means something like 'stand on high'.

Rory





                      "Alfred W. Tüting"
                      <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de>         To:       siouan at lists.colorado.edu
                      Sent by:                    cc:
                      owner-siouan at lists.c        Subject:  Dakota: verbs with 'hill' involved
                      olorado.edu


                      04/09/2004 05:30 AM
                      Please respond to
                      siouan






Can anybody plz enlighten me with the construction (etymology?) of those
one-word-sentences all involving the idea of 'hill'? (I'm aware of the
verbs included as there are _gli_, _hi_ etc., and the affixes' _a-_,
_e-_ (a + i ?) functions). But what is the meaning of the remaining
_yahaN_? Can it be broken down to _ya_ etc. and what does it mean?
(Buechel gives _yahaN_  in a meaning - see last entry below! - that
doesn't seem to be etymologically connected to the  idea of 'hill', does
it? Or am I missing anything?

gliya'hAN
to appear on top of a hill in sight on one's way home

agli'yahAN
they came up a hill and stopped in sight on their way home

e'yahAN
they go up a hill and stand on

hiya'hAN
to appear on top of a hill, so becoming visible; said in ref. to one

ahi'yahAN
they came up (...) a hill and stood in sight

agli'yoxpayA
they came down from a hill

ahi'yoxpayA
they came down a hill

ai'natxagya
beyond a hill

yahaN'
to prick or run into one, as a splinter, thorn etc

Thanks in advance

Alfred