More on wachi

[David Kaufman]

> The 'dance' term is common Siouan with cognates in all the Dhegiha 
languages (and probably all Siouan languages).  I doubt it was borrowed 
from Dakotan.  The /ch/ has strange and interesting correspondences in the 
more distant languages like Biloxi, Ofo, Crow and Hidatsa though, so I 
suppose some borrowing is possible somewhere along the line. >
   
  dici for 'dance' in Biloxi.
   
  This reminds me of a question I wanted to ask on the Biloxi word for "penis."  (Hope this isn't offensive to anyone, but in the context of comparative Siouan studies I feel I need to ask.)  Dorsey had a few ways of writing this, one I think is tcoN and the others are tcaN and tcoNditi (don't know what the 'diti' is here).   tcaN also seems to be a component of the word for breechcloth, tcaNte, which I guess makes sense.  I'm wondering what other Siouan languages have for this body part and if the Biloxi form is cognate.
   
  Dave

"Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:
  > I agree with this. The c is most defnitely aspirated, wac^Hi ga'xe , as Rory
pointed out.

> The "copulatory F*** verb"?! Is that an actual linguistic term? 

I guess it is now. :-)

> I believe the c is aspirated: wac^Hi'gaghe. We should check with the
> speakers, but I would guess that this verb might be treated as a unit, or
> not conjugate at all. 

That would be interesting, and one more stage along the grammaticalization cline. It is certainly conjugated as a causative in other Dhegiha dialects. I seriously wonder if the *-re causative is productive with new concepts in any of the Dhegiha languages now.

> The term is presumably borrowed from Lakhota or a
> related dialect, where wac^Hi is the word for 'dance'. But in Omaha, this
> word is a little awkward, because c^Hi is their copulatory F*** verb. 

The 'dance' term is common Siouan with cognates in all the Dhegiha languages (and probably all Siouan languages). I doubt it was borrowed from Dakotan. The /ch/ has strange and interesting correspondences in the more distant languages like Biloxi, Ofo, Crow and Hidatsa though, so I suppose some borrowing is possible somewhere along the line. It wasn't originally homophonous with the F*** word. The F word originally had the vowel U, and the form /chu/ or /thu/. Siouan U became front-rounded umlaut u in Kansa and Osage, so those languages had /chi/ in 'dance' and /chu/ in 'F***', but front-rounded [u] often merges with /i/ in Osage and Kaw, and always does in Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw. And that's where the problem arose! 

The Kaw verb /kkiighe/ is translated as Dorsey had it. I would have expected /gi-/ also. I need to check my own copy of Dorsey's Kaw file slips. When I re-elicited the dictionary, I wrote directly on the slips in blue magic marker rather than in a notebook. But my file boxes are all in big boxes in the garage since I moved my office, and I haven't gotten to them yet. 

Quapaw has a different form, /kkik-kaghe/ 'to do for oneself', with has the /kkik-/ reflexive prefix and the verb initial /k/ also. I don't have a dative or benefactive in Quapaw, unfortunately. 

I seem to recall that John Koontz has made a study of these particular forms, so maybe he'll clear it all up for us.

Bob



 		
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