Michigamea (Re: (O)maha)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> Speculation upon speculation, the gateway to all delusion!

> My sense is that the Michigamea, although as John has pointed out the
> evidence is muy thin, were Dhegiha speakers and, as the Old Illinois
> name for the Ohio River /akaansasiipi/ indicates, the Dhegiha were
> associated with the Ohio River at least by the second half of the 17th
> century, ...

Granted that there are only four words, it looks about halfway between
Dhegiha and Ioway-Otoe.

I might as well provide the forms:

indage' ouai panis
'je suis indigne de vivre,
je ne me'rite plus de porter le doux nom de pe're'
(expressing guilt as to treatment of a son)
'I am unworthy to live,
I no longer am worthy of the sweet name of father'

tikalabe', houe' ni que'
'nous te croyons, tu as raison'
'we believe you, you are right'

My suggestions for rendering these are derived from some insights of Bob
Rankin (at least 'father' and 'think', as I recall, and maybe 'lack' as
well), and come down to this:

in-   dage'  ouai-     pani-  s
i(N)- da'j^e we'-      b-niN= s
his   father negative- I-am=  negative

'I am not his father.'


ti-   kala- be'    houe'-    nigue'
h-ti'-klaN= be     we'-      niNge=    (s)
you-  think=plural negative- it-lacks= negative

'Your thinking is not lacking.'


You could compare these with made up pseudo-Omaha-Ponca sentences:

*i-  dhadi   b-dhiN=az^i
 his father  I am   negative

*s^- nigdhaN=bi     dhiNga=  z^i
 you think   plural it lacks negative

There is no OP verb *dhigdhaN 'to think' that I know of, but OP has
i'dhigdhaN 'to decide, to plan', and its nominalization we'dhigdhaN
'decision, plan, mind'.  This has a dative i'gidhigdhaN 'to rule', and a
compound miN'=dhigdhaN 'to think of women'.  The form dhigdhaN' 'to marry'
is probably unrelated.

Note that OP requires the auxiliary maN 'I do' between the verb and the
negative in the first person.  I do not believe that either idhadi dhiN
'to be one's father' or dhigdhaN dhiNge 'to lack thinking' (or its
negative) are idiomatic in any sense in OP, either.  These examples simply
show what hypothetically cognate OP forms would look like.

In essence it is suggested that Michigamea (or Bossu's pidgin Michigamea)
has the following elements:

i(N)daj^e < *i(N)-tate 'his father'.  Here iNdaj^e is more plausible as
'my father', or as an error for *idaj^e or *iraj^e or whatever the third
person should have been.  Or perhaps we should envision something like 'My
father' [he-says] I-am-not [treated like that].  Compare OP iNdadi <
*iN-tati 'my father', dhiadi < *ri-ati 'your father', idhadi < *i-(r)ati
'his father' (typical of Dhegiha), or IO hiNda(N)j^e < *iN-ta(N)te 'my
father', naN'j^e < *r(i)-a(N)te 'your father', aNj^e < *(i-)a(N)te 'his
father'. Note that IO hiNda(N)j^e 'my father' is archaic.  Current is
suppletive hiNka.

*riN (*niN?) 'to be', attested in a first person bniN (bliN?) 'I am'.
Compare OP dhiN 'be (of some kind)', bdhiN 'I am', (s^)niN 'you are',
*dhiN 'he is', or IO n[y]iN 'be possessed of a quality'.  I'm not sure
what the inflection of this IO verb is.

*riklaN (< *rukraN) 'to think, to engage in mental activity', attested in
a second person plural (h)tikla(N)=be (or =bi) 'you-all think; your
thinking'.  Compare OP i'dhigdhaN < *i-ru-kraN 'to decide', inflected
i'bdhigdhaN 'I decide', i'(s^)nigdhaN 'you decide', but notice Quapaw
inflects di- < *ru- as p-di- 'I ...', t-ti- 'you ...'.  Reduction of *s^-
'you (syncopated)' to preaspiration is a common tendency across Dhegiha,
whether it leads to s^-ni- > h-ni- > ni- as in OP, or to *h-di- > t-ti- as
in Quapaw.  IO has rugra(N)' < *ru-kraN 'to consider, judge, think on,
think that', inflected (ha)du'graN 'I think', (ra)sdu'graN 'you think'.

ni(N)ge < *riNke' 'to lack'.  Compare OP dhiNge' 'to lack', IO niNge,
niNnye 'there is no'.

In addition there is a negative that seems to be prefixal we- in one case,
and circumfixal we-...-s in another.  Perhaps the final -s is simply
missing in error in the first case.  Siouan negatives exhibit suffixed
elements *=s^(i) and *=riN, sometimes separate, sometimes together, in one
order or another, cf. Da =s^-niN but Mandan =riN-x ~ =xi (where x is an
augmentive grade of the the fricative set s/s^/x).  Dakotan has =s^(i) as
an adversative enclitic 'also, indeed'.  Dhegiha has *=z^i only as
negative, with intrusive maN 'I do' in the first person.

IO has =s^kun(y)iN.  However, Winnebago has =niN 'negative' (and =z^i 'at
least'), and =s^kuNniN as a dubitative.  While the IO/Wi *=s^kuN-riN
sequence probably includes the negative element *=riN, it may be that the
older reading of *=s^kuN-riN was dubitative, and that the IO negative is
an old dubitative.  That is, perhaps Winnebago is more conservative than
IO in this aspect of its morphology.

Siouan negatives also sometimes exhibit a prefixal element combined with
the suffix to make a negative circumfix.  These prefixal elements are not
cognate, but Mandan in particular exhibits wa-, with which compare the we-
found in Michigamea.

My inclination without "Michigamea" is to see the *=s^i or *=Si element in
Siouan negatives as a sort of emphatic, not unlike French pas, etc., or
English not (originally).  This leaves *=riN, sometimes missing, as in
Dhegiha as the negative element.  If it is simply a form of *riN 'be',
then perhaps the original negative is missing entirely, as in modern
collquial French ... pas, etc., missing original ne, or, for that matter,
modern English ... not, missing original prefixed ne, too.

What Michigamea might contribute is a suspicion that the prefixal we-
(Michigamea?), wa- (Mandan) represent the original negative.  Not that we
really need another wa- prefix, or even another we- prefix.

I don't think any of this is inherently unreasonable, but even without
getting into the somewhat odd contexts Bossu provides in his annecdotes,
and other issues of that nature, these are plainly a bit difficult to be
sure of.  It looks Siouan to me, and it doesn't look Algonquian to the
Algonquianists, but maybe it's really just mush.

If it is Siouan, I hope I've shown that while Dhegiha generally, and on
some points, Quapaw specifically, are useful in interpeting it, so is
Ioway-Otoe, and the negative is really not at all like a Dhegiha negative.
It's at least as much like a Mandan negative as a Dhegiha one, and
otherwise it's at best reminiscent of the general character of a Siouan
negative, especially if we concentrate on the suffixal -s, comparing it to
*s^(i) and more or less ignore the prefixal we-.

JEK