OP dancing

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Wed Jul 5 15:22:18 UTC 2006


Gaaghe 'make' has taken on the role of a secondary causative in most if not all Dhegiha dialects.  It does not have the 'by striking' prefix -- that was simply a mistake on Hahn's part.  Wachi 'dance' has an aspirated /ch/.  I suppose one could tell from examining Dorsey (1890) whether this usage was common 120 yrs. ago or whether it might be a feature of language endangerment.  
 
Gaaghe is an interesting verb nonetheless in that it seems to lose its initial G on occasion in forms like Kansa /kkiighe/  <   kkiaghe 'make or do to or for someone'. (Dorsey, Kaw file)
 
Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Bryan Gordon
Sent: Tue 7/4/2006 11:03 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: OP dancing


I hope people don't mind if a barrage of questions exudes from my corner; I'm analysing so much text that I'm running into countless issues which no doubt many of you have encountered before.

One thing which has just struck me is: 

The OP verb for dancing is "waci gaghe" (not sure if that c is aspirated or not). I had always assumed this was a noun plus the verb "to make." Makes sense. But Hahn (p. 54) lists this lexeme amid her explanation of conjugation of verbs with the ga- instrumental prefix. Of course, "gaghe" "to make" does NOT have this prefix! If it did, we would get *aaghe - thaaghe - gaghai - aNgaghai for the conjugations, but instead of course we get paghe - shkaghe - gaghai - aNgaghai. 

So the question is, does "waci gaghe" actually use the "make" verb, or is it actually some other verb with the ga- prefix? I have searched through Dorsey but nothing has caught my eye.

Thanks for your insights! 

- Bryan Gordon



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