'book'

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Dhegihan *gre'ze/gre'se, 'striped'

I should have read this first - I'm a bit behind on my Siouan.  Rory and
Anthony have already worked this one out.

> In any case, this word supports what we seemed to find with bru'ga/gru'ba,
> that the brVgV/grVbV alternation is a phenomenon of early 20th century
> Omaha, and is presumably irrelevant to other Siouan languages.

It turns out to be a bit older than that, but unless it is connected in a
generic way with the Dakotan tendency to alternate bl ~ gw for sound
symbolic reasons, it probably is a uniquely Omaha(-Ponca?) thing.

If it is sound symbolism, then my tendency to suppose bdhuga => gdhuba by
metathesis may be a bit off.  If it was originally bdhuga ~ gwuga (or
gdhuga?) then gwuga or gdhuga => gdhuba may be a dissimilation.

I assume that *gwuga or *gdhuga would be an emphatic or vivid or 'bad,
coarse' variant of bdhuga.  Sort of 'the whole bunch' or 'every censored
one of them' instead of just 'all'.  I tend to expect that gthuga would be
more likely in Omaha phonology than gwuga, but, of course, this is
entirely hypothetical and unattested.