Meaning of Hethushka...Another consideration.

Rory M Larson rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu
Mon Sep 27 14:01:49 UTC 2004


I'd also like to offer an idea here for consideration.
Is it possible that the ledh ([dh]) in hedhu's^ka is
epenthetic?  I know this happens between i- (high front)
and other vowels in many old words.  The preceding e-
is mid front, but might possibly have the same effect.
If so, we could translate the term as

  he       us^kaN
  horn     activity

assuming that nasalization was lost from the last
syllable, as often seems to happen to unaccented
syllables in modern Omaha that are properly nasal.

An example against this possibility is the pattern
of verbs of the we+u'+[root] form, which do not
produce epenthetic ledh between we- and u-.

Thoughts?

Rory



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