prairie - plains

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, "Alfred W. Tüting" wrote:
...
> As for Dakota, Buechel S.J. has:
> fr. blayA - > bla'ye [R.B.:= a plain]| [R.B.:= level]
> iyo'blaye - [B.: a plain extending from, as from a hill]
> izo' - [B.: an upland plain that is a peninsula]
> makxo'blaye - [B.: a plain]
> obla'ye - [B.: a level place, a plaint a valley]R.B.: a plain, a level
> place]
> oka'blaye - [B.: a level place, a plain], cf. blaska'/flat
...
> I wonder why the French term 'prairie' wasn't adopted, since the
> Natives' relationship with the early French immigrants were comparably
> close (maybe due to their intimate contacts as e.g. trappers, with
> intermarriages etc. - cf. Native last names like Peltier, Deloria <- Des
> Lauriers). Yet, one can imagine that the land they lived on and their
> very culture was based on meant too much to them to refer to it by a
> foreign term.

It doesn't seem likely to be a candidate for borrowing, except in names,
but I was kidding Bob Rankin that Kaw for prairie would be bleye (<
[preiri]).  I suppose that bleya would be the form of the same joke in
Dakota. However, the *pra 'flat' element, usually with extensions, is
about as well distributed in Siouan as *pla is in IE.

In regard to:

> prairie - 17c., from Fr. prairie, from O.Fr. praerie, from V.L.
> *prataria,from L. pratum "meadow," originally "a hollow." ...
> Interestingly, the original semantics doesn't seem to be 'grass' but
> 'hollow (spot)', maybe referring to 'wet/watery land' ->
> 'vegatation/grass'

There is a similar concatenation of ideas in Omaha-Ponca with respect to
hollows and lowlands around streams:

JOD 90:142.5

S^i   e'd=ua'thaN wiN maNa' wathi's^ka uxdhu'xa=xti  idhe'=dhe=xti
Again next        a   bank  creek      hollow   very it sends  very

dhi'giaghe=       tta=i=the
they make for you will surely

In the next challenge they will probably face you with a creek bank that
falls off steeply.

Which continues, after some deails of invoking aid:

JOD 90:143.3/2

is^ta hni'p?iNze=daN    uxdhu'xa=khe a'dhagaz^ade=tte     e'dhe
eyes  you shut   during hollow   the you will stride over indeed

which shows that the hollow (with khe for flat, horizontally extended
things) refers not to a hollowing of one bank, but to the whole
floodplain or ravine.

JOD 90:249.7

Ha'ghige=ama tti'xiNde uxdhu'xa ugdhiN'=tta=akha ha
Haghige      gorge     hollow   he will sit in   DECL

Haghige will sit in a deep gorge.

(Interesting that the subject article is ama, while the future auxiliary
is akha.)

Continuing:

JOD 90:249.8

Uxghu'xa ugdhiN'=   de wani'tta gat?e=            ma
Hollow   sitting in a  beasts   killed by falling the

gaN wa'dhathe    gdhiN=tta=akha.
so  he eats them he will sit

(Unexpectedly) sitting in the hollow, he will eat the animals that are
killed by falling into it.

In short, he's using a ravine, or creek-hollowed area, as a deadfall.

However, a "hollow" is not a broad plain:

JOD 90:419.16/17

E'gidhe   wathi's^ka=akha ttaNga'=dheha=i.  Uxdhu'xa=baz^i.
At length creek      the  spread out        it was not hollow

Xa'de ha.   Dhi'xdhe s^ku'be basaN         agdha=i=       khe.
Grass DECL  canes    deep    pushing among they went home EVID

Finally, the floodplains opened out.  It was no longer a ravine.  There
was grass.  They had headed homeward through thick canes.

Another word that Dorsey renders 'hollow' is in a placename:

90:454.13

HaNdhi' tti   uspe'=khe
Henry   House Hollow

(I suspect Henry here is really Henri.)

This seems to be a sort of swale, perhaps abrupt.

Uspe'=         daN=s^te e'gihe   i=dhe'
a sunken place perhaps  headlong he has gone

90:436.17

Wathi's^ka=khe uspe'          aNgu'gdhiN=i
Creek      the a sunken place we sat