"WOUND"

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Wed May 3 18:41:18 UTC 2006


On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote:

> Some time ago, the list was addressing the conjugation of the verb "?o'"
> (?ó) [wound] which occurs in many Siouan Languages. While looking for
> something else, in "A Dictionary of Everyday Crow", Crow Agency
> Bilingual Education Program. 1987 (revised), I came upon:
>
> 1.  uua' (v tr) /uu/ shoot -- on p.20.  No conjugations were provided.
> Then
> In "Crow word list", Lowie. 1960.  p.170:
> u':  (u)  to shoot, wound, hit
>
> ma u' om        they shot some (game)
>
> akbareacu'packyo hawa'tem ba wu'k
> one of the Cheyenne headcutters) I shot
>
> u'ak arapapa'ce de'sa ka'te tseruk
> when they hit him, the bullet did not go in

I make these

bauuo-m 'they (diff subj) shot something'

(ba)buu-k 'I shot them'  (not sure about the ba-)

uua-k 'he wounded (hit) him'  (or 'it hit him'?)

Looks like in Crow this is a regular verb with the stem uu-, the citation
form uua, and the plural stem/citation form uuo.  However, I am puzzled
about when -a- appears, and unsure about bma-/a- (presumably the old
familiar wa-).

Also from the DEC:
> 2.  oo'xpe (v tr) /i/ shoot, wound  -- p.x; 20:
> He...   oo'xpik;   They...  oo'xpuuk
> I...      boo'xpik;  We...   boo'xpuuk
> you...  doo'xpik;  You (pl)   doo'xpuuk
> Shoot!  oo'xpih;   Shoot! (pl)    oo'xpaalah

I believe this is also regular, for Crow verbs with initial oo-, and I'm
guessing the oo- is a locative, with the actual root being -xpe.

> I also note that Hidatsa "Wordlist", Jones. Preliminary Version, 1979:
> 1.  Shoot    u?u-axbi; ni?i
> 2.  Shoot & hit    ú?u

I think Hi u?u matches Cr uua, and that both forms suggest *?uu(-e) (-e
being the theme forming vowel) or perhaps *uu?-e.  This wouldn't be the
first Siouan glottal stop form in whichb it wasn't clear if the glottal
stop was initial or final.  They seem to be a supersegmental
characteristic of the root, diachronically, rather than a segment with a
fixed position.

Actually, I think the historical vowel here is *oo-, so *?oo-e.

> 3,  Shoot at  írigi; ni
> (No conjugations offered)

Not related, I think.

> Now then... Does any of the above shed any new light on arriving at
> likely conjugations for the verb - ?o' (?ó).  Could this be a word that
> conjugates similar to the IOM: ?uN' (?ún = to do, make; act as/ in
> manner of), namely: I...  ha?uN';  you...  ra?uN';  we...  hin?uN'wi;
> etc.

I'd say, yes, though of course this is simple guesswork.  In such matters
you have to have a citation to be sure.

For Winnebago, Marino's dictionary based on Radin's lexical slips, has (p.
126):

?o 'to shoot'

?onaN 'to shoot' (with declarative =s^aNnaN ~ =naN) [i.e., 'he shoots'?]
ha?onaN 'I shoot'
s^?onaN 'you shoot'

(I've modernized and rendered into network notation Radin's BAE-style
notation, retained by Mary in her dissertation.)

In Mississippi Valley Dakotan and Dhegiha suggest m- for the first person
of glottal stop stems.  Since all glottal stop stems but 'wound' begin
with a nasal vowel (and usually end with it, too), this is presumably *w-.
Winnebago and IO (following Jimm) have ha- from regular *wa-, probably a
simple replacement.  For example, Winnebago ha?uN 'I make'.  Presumably
this was *muNuN in PMV Siouan.

Perhaps if the original first person of 'wound' was *woo-e (*woo?e
maybe?), and regular fist person *wa- becomes *ha- in IO and WI, then
*woo-e became *hoo-e.  Recent attested forms like ha?oo in Winnebago could
be back-formations "undoing the contraction" or simple replacements.

In MV Dakotan has n- for the second person, presumably from s^n-, which
seems to have been taken over from the nasal version of the y-stem
(*r-stem) paradigm.  Dhegiha has z^- < PMV *y-, consistent with the PS A2
regular inflection *ya-.  In a few verbs with preceding i- we find s^n-
and developments of that.  In Winnebago we find s^?- in the second person,
in which the ? is actually a part of the stem.  IO seems to have replaced
a form like that with ra-?- in 'to make'.

In Dakotan (mostly) and in Winnebago we also find k?- in *ki- derivatives.
In Dhegiha we find *k- (OP g-).

I've suggested in the past that the waffling in respect of ? when a
consonant prececdes, e.g., in the second peson and *ki forms, implies that
the glottal stop stems were actually vowel-initial.  In that case, ?, when
it occurs is by analogy with contexts in which it occurs epenthetically,
e.g., between vowels, perhaps, or initially.  Another approach arises from
the "supersegmental" character of ? i ?-stems.  Perhaps Dhegiha z^-
reflects a situation in which the glottal stop has been forced to the end
of the stem, while Winnebago s^?- and various cases of k?- reflect cases
where it appears stem-initially, perhaps as a result of some sort of
canonical solidification of ? as an initial segment.

In any event, 'wound' seems to be the only known glottal stop stem with an
oral vowel.  So if the IO glottal stop stem ?uN 'make' is inflected ha?uN
'I make, ra?uN 'you make', then by analogy o 'wound' might be ha?o 'I
wound' and ra?o 'you wound'.  If it were regular it would certainly be
very similar, and an epenthetic glottal stop would take it the rest of the
way. In support of this conclusion, when collectors of linguistic data
omit inflectional information, they often mean to imply that a verb is
regular.  Unfortunately this might also reflect ignorance or oversight.
Attestation is everything in a case like this.  We simply don't know how
the IO form was inflected at this point.

To illustrate the risk in assuming a paradigm by analogy with 'to make', I
can point out that OP baN 'to call out' is regular, though it starts with
a b and OP has an active b-stem paradigm, e.g., A1 abaN, not A1 *ppaN.  I
think the stem is doubly inflected as regular over p-stem in Osage,
however, i.e., appaN.  Presumably it was a *p-stem in Proto-Dhegiha.
Another example would be the only OP d-stem, daNbe 'to see, to look'.  It
was a pure d-stem in Dorsey's texts (I think there might be one or two
exceptions), but today it is regular over d-stem, e.g., A1 attaNbe instead
of earlier A1 ttaNbe.

This is not to say that one couldn't "restore" something reasonable for
'wound' when in need of an inflected form for actual use.  Speakers do
this all the time, and even get it wrong, which, of course, is part of the
process by which inflection changes in the first place.  However, a form
like this is the philological analog of modern paint replacing a peeled
spot in an old work.  From a purist point of view you have to say - or
imply notationally - that the deduced paradigm is hypothetical.  Instead
of writing something like o [a?o, ra?o], one would ideally write something
like o [maybe ha?o, ra?o] or o [ha?o, ra?o by analogy with uN].

So, while it's interesting to see comparisons outside IO that confirm the
stem 'wound' as a PS glottal stop stem, only an IO example would confirm
the IO pattern.



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