Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

ROOD DAVID S David.Rood at Colorado.EDU
Fri Dec 14 05:23:07 UTC 2007


Bob, my sympathies with the weather issues.  It's bad enough here (we've 
had record snow for this much of December, although November was way below 
normal), mostly due to too many people trying to do stupid things, but at 
least we've retained our electricity.  Global warming is doing more than 
just heating up the arctic, I guess.  My wife and daughter spent 3 weeks 
of November in Antarctica, where the snow is melting later and more slowly 
than they're used to.  The penguins were having a hard time finding 
snow-free places in which to gather stones to make their nests; they're 
ready to lay their eggs but many of them are having to do so in the 
nmelted snow, which is fatal apparently.

I gave up trying to unite the various "ki"s a long time ago, but I don't 
have the comparative perspective you do, and my instincts are that they 
all must have some common source --- the meanings and the positions are 
just too similar for any other hypothesis.  I'm quite sure that kic^hi 
'reciprocal' and ic^'i reflexive are mixed up in there too, somehow.  But 
the various kinds of syncope have messed things up terribly, and I think 
there are some plain "i" morphemes getting in the way as well.

The problem with Lakhota "khi" is that it's the vertative of "i", not of 
"hi".  The latter's vertative is gli.  I vaguely recall Allan claiming 
that "khi" preserves an initial "*h" that was otherwise lost everywhere in 
Lakhota; today's initial "h"s come from something else.

Best,
 	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> All,
>
> Pardon my temporary absence.  We have had no electric power at my home since 3:15 p.m. Wednesday.  The REA Cooperative that provides electricity to our part of the county says they will try to have everythig up and running again by Saturday evening, but another storm is scheduled for Friday night.
>
> I had not thought of the vertitive as derived from possessive or dative, but I must admit that it took me an inordinately long time to sort out all the various k(h)i's.  There tends to be at least a little semantic overlap among nearly all of them, aspirated or not.  I had to make a comparative chart of all the usual ones before things became even reasonably clear.  And even then, I tended to get things in the wrong columns.  I've redone it a couple of times.  I've toyed with the idea that all the KI's are somehow derived from the same source somehow, but it doesn't work in a way that most comparativists would find convincing.  And, as far as I know, Catawban doesn't help.
>
> If *k- is the normal vertitive and hi in Daktoan is the normal 'arrive here', then why wouldn't the vertitive of hi be khi?
>
> I seem to recall that John Koontz had explained the development of all these forms in one of his papers.  I'll have to look for Allan's.
>
> More later as things get back to normal here.
>
> Bob (cold and in the dark in Kansas)
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Jan Ullrich
> Sent: Thu 12/13/2007 10:26 AM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'
>
>
>
> David,
>
> Thanks for clarifying that. I don't have enough background in historical
> and comparative linguistics to decide between the two ki-, but I do
> agree that vertitives mean "come/go back" rather than "come/go home".
> Is it possible that the possessive ki-  and the 'return' ki- have a
> common source?
>
> Jan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of ROOD DAVID S
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:10 PM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'
>
>
>
> Jan, that's how I interpreted Bob's suggestion that the -ki- 'revert;
> become' is historically related to the -ki- of the vertatives, and
> distinct from any of the others.  I think we're saying that the morpheme
>
> in the vertatives is NOT the possessive.  But Bob will have to supply
> the
> cross-linguistic data for that.
>
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu
>
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Jan Ullrich wrote:
>
>>
>>> I'm going to side with Bob on this one.  It seems to me that the
>>> basic
>>
>>> meaning of the vertatives is not 'toward home' but 'back (again)'.
>> Over
>>> and over in the texts we read "i na gli na...." -- 'went there and
>> came
>>> back and...' without the concept of 'home' anywhere around.
>>
>> I fully agree that the vertitives mean "back" rather than "home". I
>> didn't think that was in contradiction to the possessive analysis that
>
>> I sided with, but perhaps it is. Or are you suggesting that the ki-
>> that potentially formed the vertitives is the same ki- 'return back to
>
>> the original state"? I might be missing some e-mails from this thread
>> as it seems my spam filter has been acting up lately.
>>
>>> Allan had an explanation for khi but I've forgotten it -- and I can't
>> put
>>> my hands on the paper right now, either.  Bob?
>>
>> Would be good to know.
>>
>> Jan
>>
>
>
>
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