Number 'nine' in Chiwere.

John Koontz jekoontz at MSN.COM
Tue Apr 8 18:10:32 UTC 2014


I'm sorry, some of my text comes out blue.  The quotes are marked with >.  

> Your take on the pronunciations are what I have found as well.  Maximilian was really big on the "x" sound which he represented as "ch".  Most of his entries with "ch" have a note that says something like "ch guttural."  

There are two ch's in German.  The "gutteral" (velar) one in ach, and the "soft" (or palatal) one in ich.   So I expect he's trying to make it clear it's the more velar of the two readings for ch.   

> And I am also of the opinion that his "sch" is our "sh" sound.  

Yes.  That's the German spelling for what English writes sh.   Both actually from Proto-German sk, cf. English doublets like skirt and shirt, or skipper and ship (where the one with k is generally a loan term).

> He also simply uses an "s" where he felt it was needed.  Although some of his spellings aren't always consistent when he is going with the same word (used in other areas), he does seem to have taken great care to represent pronunciations as accurately as possible.  Most of his terms have little notes (as I mentioned above) with them.  And from what I've seen of his use of "tsch", it seems to be a "ch" pronounced somewhat forcefully (I don't know the technical term for that).
He's essentially transcribing what he hears phonetically, not writing in a standard more or less phonemic orthography.    Tsch is standard German spelling for what English writes ch.   A forceful one would probably be an aspirated one.  The less aspiration, the more it would sound like English j, where German would have orthographic difficulties.    
 > I hadn't considered the idea of the term being reinvented in Osage.  I guess it shouldn't be surprising that a culture that has those types of conventions might fill a need in the same manner as before.   

It depends a lot on the cultural context, but number words are often forgotten or borrowed.    For some reason this is not especially true in Indo-European, so it's kind of unexpected.   I remember that Omaha speakers were particularly prone to substituting English numerals (and date terms, etc.) even in conversation that was otherwise Omaha.  
 > I'd wondered about the "xce" as well as far as being an intensifier.  In Otoe-Missouria, you have a few variants that I've come across.  First is more of the "h" sound with "-hji".  But I've also often found that where you have a sort of "intrusive h", there are often "x" variants (for example, hga/xga for "white").  So I've also seen "-xji" as well.  And to top it off, there are a lot of "s" sounds that work in there as well.  I hear the "s" version pronounced often where I work.  So that suffix would be "-sji" (other examples would be "wanuhje/wanusje" for "animal").  Another thing to consider is perhaps Maximilian's "ch" for the "xce" portion might be that "k" sound that emerges with glottal stops (I don't know the technical term for it but Hamilton and Irvin document it a lot in their Ioway books).
The =xti ~ =xc^i intensifier enclitic, generally glossed 'very' often used in a sense of 'real' or 'just, exactly' is common with 'one'.  

>  
Ø  Nine, grä̇bena – tscheh – uïningkä̇Ø  (the whole run together); i. e.,Ø  ten less one; they also say,Ø  schangká
lebraN (krebraN) =che wiN niNg(e?)ten                            the  one it-lacks
che = <ts>he with aspirated c (ts), 'the (vertical, inanimate)'.    Os che < PDh *the, with *th > ch before e (and i).  

In general 'vertical' (in a pile) is used with quantities.     

I agree with Rory that the historical form is s^aNkka, a word that appears widely in Eastern North America, so historically a loan, but I imagine that more analytical terms are fairly common.  You can find 'two fours' for 'eight' here and there, and sometimes you find variations like 'sitting on it, two' vs. 'two sixes' , in various languages.   We're used to thinking of number systems as fixed, and our modern arithmetic and commercial traditions insist on it, but in many cultural contexts there's less "standardization" or numerals.    
 > I looked up ‘nine’ in Carolyn Quitero’s Osage Dictionary, and the first (long) term is the only one she seems to have listed:                 lébrą hce wįįke
This is the same term., of course, with the initial nasal between wiN and (n)iNge 'to lack' omitted.  
 > Dhegiha *gr- generally goes to l- in Osage and Kaw, but apparently in Maximilian’s time the leading /g/ was still present.  His ‘ä’ and his ‘eh’ apparently both represent what we write as /e/, while the ‘e’ between the ‘b’ and the ‘n’ presumably represents schwa.  The ‘n’ in the first word would be /r/ followed by a nasal vowel.  In Omaha, the corresponding word for ‘ten’ at that time was grébrą, now shortened to grébą.
I agree with all this analysis by Rory.  The corresponding form in Dakotan (wIN)kc^emna(N) shows us that Proto-Siouan 'ten' is something like *kyepraN.  Some people might prefer to think of it as *kyewraN.  I don't think there's any contrast between *pr and *wr except "part of speech," which essentially encodes collections of phonological context.    Except in Dakotan the *Cy and *Cr clusters fall together.   
 
  		 	   		  
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