cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

[Rory M Larson]

Bob wrote:
> I'm pretty sure the -ska of wazhiNska and ieska is the one
> meaning 'clear' (also 'white'), as in the Kansas place name
> ni hni ska 'clear spring'..  So wazhiNska would be 'clear thinker'
> and ieska 'clear speaker' (interpreter).  As for the other skas,
> who knows?  The secret is to realize it means 'clear' as well
> as 'white'.

I agree that this makes the best sense in these contexts.  I know too that 
many other languages handle color terms in ways very different from what 
we are used to.  It's just that I have a hard time putting my head around 
the commonality of 'white' with 'clear'.  It would be nice to have more 
examples of the latter use of ska, especially in productive usage.  I 
should check with our speakers, but I strongly doubt that they would use 
ska to describe clear water or a transparent window glass.


Bryan wrote:
> What if the -ska in wazhíⁿska is not the same as "white"?
> There are also other words, like tápuska, iyéska, which confer the 
> impression that it might be nothing more than an agent-nominaliser,
> perhaps historically related to shkoⁿ "active/move/do" (which would
> go some way towards explaining the apparent part-cognate-part-loanword
> set hethúshka iróska ilóⁿska where some languages have s and others sh).
> I think I recall hearing some words in Macy that indicated a productive
> use of this suffix on verbal predicates that don't show any signs of
> taking -ska in either Dorsey or the Swetland-Stabler lexicon.
> I've even heard an interpretation of "pahaska" (Pawhuska) as meaning
> "person who stands forward" instead of "white head/scalp",
> although that might be a creative back-formation.

> On the other hand, however, the Báxoje word for translator is
> "ich^é brédhe" "speaks clearly", which hints that clarity if not colour
> may well have something to do with the semantics of this family
> of concepts. I think what we need is either luck in finding a section
> of discourse documented that confirms or rejects the hypothesis,
> or a native speaker who has the relevant intuition.

I've toyed with the idea that the meaning of ska was extended in 
pre-reservation contact times to mean "special type of [BASENOUN] that you 
want to collect".  Thus, moNze-ska, "white-metal", or 'silver/money'; 
hiN-ska, "white-animalhair", for porcupine quills and later beads; 
tte-ska, "white-buffalo", for European cattle.  These all arguably have 
some degree of whiteness about them, but they fall more clearly into the 
"collectible" class.

I believe the ska in ttappuska definitely means 'white'.  (This word is 
especially interesting, and I'm thinking of giving a short paper on it at 
the Siouanist conference if they still have time slots.)  For ieska and 
wazhiNska, I can't offer better than Bob does above, which nevertheless 
requires metaphorical cross-sensory extension of a meaning that may be 
hard to establish for the plain use of the word.  I'm open to the 
possibility that some ska's might be a different word, perhaps related to 
shkoN.  To make that connection, we'd have to both lose the nasalization 
and do a Siouan sound-symbolic fricative ablaut shift.

Have you looked at -shka as a suffix?  Mark may have mentioned a 
distinction one of our speakers explained to us recently, that wagri is a 
maggot, while wagri-shka is a bug with legs.

Also, is there an OP cognate to Báxoje brédhe ?  I assume that should be 
breze in Omaha and Ponka, but I'm not familiar with any such word.

Cheers,
Rory

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