verb suppletion.

[R. Rankin]

Isn't this just the suppletion of Mississippi Valley
Siouan *ra:the 'to chew, eat physically' with one or
more persons of *rute 'to eat, dip'?  There are other
instances of verb pairs that are phonologically and
semantically partly similar getting mixed conjugation.
*e:he 'to say' and ie 'to talk' are mixed in more than
one language.  Historically it has happened with nouns
and stative verbs also:  Reflexes of *maNtho 'grizzly'
and wihuNte 'black bear' get mixed in Tutelo, Ofo and
Biloxi.  Similarly *wahkaN 'sacred' and *waNhkaN
'medicine' are mixed in some languages, with *wahkaN
becoming 'snake' in Chiwere-Winnebago and but *waNhkaN
becoming 'snake' in Tutelo, Biloxi and Ofo.  Giulia
Oliverio and I talk about these latter cases in the
little paper in the Siebert Festschrift volume, and I
explain the forms in detail there.

Bob

> IOM:
> haji, I eat; raji, you eat; ruje, he/she/it eats.

>> Wota itself is consistent with the A1 wate, A2 yate
>> inflection of yuta (if
>> I remember), which is paralleled by Winnebago A1
>> haac^, A2 raac^, A3
>> ruuc^.  This suggests something unusual about yuta -
>> PMVS *ru(u)t, or
>> perhaps is a bit of Dakotan irregularity that has
>> been transferred into
>> Winnebago.