Word for 'prairie' in Hochunk.

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Fri Jan 30 20:23:34 UTC 2004


On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Henning Garvin wrote:
> moowe               'to walk, follow a path'
> maNaN + howe    'earth, ground + follow a path, a path'
...
> mooska              'clearing or field'
> maNaN + hoska   'earth + clearing or field'
>
> I asked these forms of my informants and this is what they were able to tell
> me.

Great work, Henning!  This explains the vowels and the accent, and it's
really nice that the folks you are working with can recover the underlying
forms here.

It sounds like hoska must be based on ska in the sense of clearness or
lightedness.  And the progression with mooska is a lot like that with
prairie in English.



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