Various "pi" terms.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

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> Also another question regarding "pi".

> Oliverio has
"pi: good"
"stative V"
piwa 'good' ---pg. 268, Oliverio

I think, after thinking about it, that "pi" meaning 'good' should have the aspirated "ph"  Desiderative mode should have the unaspirated "p". In other words, they sound different.

> "-pi desiderative mode"
"V suffix"
"bi 'desiderative form' (H1878b); bi, be 'desiderative form' (H1883a)"
"Ofo: -be 'future' "
"maybe from pi: 'good' ; Hale: 'inserted before the negative suffix na' "

> "pi:kha good, fine"
"V"
"ipikin 'handsome' (H1879)"

I think it should be "phikha" in Oliverio's spelling.  "phikha" in my spelling here.

> "pi smell"
"V"
"la-ka-pin, la-ka-pinin (Hw)"
"see lakapi 'emit an odor' ; see also uwalahaha:
'smell', wihoxkupsua: 'fishy smell' " ---pg. 269, Oliverio

It looks to me as though 'smell' has a nasal vowel and is therefore different in pronunciation from the other two entries, above. It would be "pin".   It turns out to be instructive to look at 'smell' is some of the other Siouan languages.  I think it turns out that whoever translated "pin" as 'emit an odor' was closest to the same word in related languages.  The word actually means 'to fart': CROW pía ~ pípia ‘fart’, HIDATSA pí(h) ~ pía ‘fart’,MANDAN píh ‘break wind’,  WINNEBAGO wį́į ‘break wind’, and finally TUTELO  lakapįʔį ‘smell, emit an odor’ from the Dorsey slip file.


There you have it.  All three of our 'pi' words were pronounced differently, but the 'smell' word is the intransitive verb 'to smell', as in 'to stink', so it is probably not the term you want to use for 'a smell'.  So in summary, we have:


phi 'to be good'

pi  'desiderative mode'

pin 'to smell, give off an odor' (probably really meant 'fart', but those fellows a century ago were too polite to say so.)


Bob





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