OP u- and udhu- Verbs [also Variation and C-Cedilla]

are2 at buffalo.edu are2 at buffalo.edu
Wed Dec 1 16:46:38 UTC 2004


Ttappuska 'school' usually refers to physical building
TtappuskazhiNga 'school child'  usually used for student

'u' is present but devoiced.  I usually teach students here to
underline voiceless vowels to remind them not to say them, just make
the shape with their lips.

kkukkumi 'cucumber'




Quoting Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>:

> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 are2 at buffalo.edu wrote:
> > I've only ever heard aNgu- (not ugu) with the speakers I work
> with.
> > But gdhuba/bdhuga are both still variants today.  Also
> > wagdhabaze/wabdhagaze, wamuska/wamaNske.  I'm sure there are more
> that
> > don't come right to mind.
>
> Terrific! I haven't run into the first example here (just
> wabdhagaze), but
> I've heard wamaNske (wamoNske?) and Dorsey's texts have wamuske
> 'bread'.
> I wondered about that!  I wondered if it might be a change, or if
> Dorsey
> had it wrong.  Dorsey's form is actually a third variant, I guess,
> because
> of the different final vowel.  However, I think that -ske is a bit
> odd as
> a word final sequence and that -ska would be more common.  Hence, a
> spontaneous change to that version would be a reasonable analogical
> change.
>
> This reminds me of another mystery, the word for 'student' (and, I
> think
> also 'book learning'), which is ttappuska.  What I actually always
> heard
> was tapska, which, because of the cluster I assumed to be a fast
> speech
> form, perhaps really tttappUska, though I didn't notice any
> particular gap
> for the voiceless U.
>
> There's a second mystery with ttappuska.  If I remember correctly,
> Doug
> Parks once pointed out to me that Pawnee has a similar word for
> similar
> purposes.  I think he thought it a bit odd in Pawnee, and the Omaha
> form
> is certainly a bit odd as an Omaha word, too, because it doesn't have
> any
> obvious analysis as a compound and nothing else would explain the
> phonological shape, as far as I can see.  So, it is an atypically
> long
> unanalyzable stem, something that might obviously be a loan word,
> like
> kkukkusi 'pig' or kkukkumaN (?) 'cucumber'.  (Not sure I have the
> last
> right.)  Or (?) sagdha(N)s^(V) 'Englishman', and so on.  The
> 'Englishman'
> term is reconstructed from the rendition in Thwaites - it might also
> be
> sakkanas^(V).  Another word of this sort is hiNbdhiNge 'bean'.  Of
> course,
> all of these examples are considered certain or at least likely to
> be
> loans and the certain or probable sources have been recognized.
>
>
>



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