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<p><tt>Nice work, John!! That certainly shows that the gdhu'ba variant was present in the 19th century after all!</tt><br>
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<tt>> Another possibility is that there is nuanced difference of meaning between<br>
> bdhu'ga and gdhu'ba, and some speakers prefer one nuance over the other,<br>
> though in this case it seems likely that gdhu'ba would occur more widely.<br>
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<tt>I like this possibility best. I recall that a couple of years ago, some of Vida's speakers in Macy got together and produced an Omaha translation of 'Silent Night'. It was a full verse translation; it rhymed and went along with the music very nicely. Mark and I were struck by the fact that the same stanza used two different words for 'all': bdhu'ga and gdhu'ba. I have the strong impression that our speakers recognize a semantic difference between them, though we've never really pinned it down. My own sense, purely off the top of my head here, is that bdhu'ga is used for 'all' as a collective plural for animate/individuated entities, while gdhu'ba is 'all' as the totality of a mass noun. I'll try to test that next time I get together with a speaker. Meanwhile, maybe we could check the semantic context of the many references you've given.</tt><br>
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<tt>> No instances of wabdha'gase or wagdha'base per se, but<br>
> waba'gdheze 'book; writing; letter' does occur, upwards of 100 times.</tt><br>
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<tt>So those forms are probably early 20th century.</tt><br>
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<tt>> I assume the etymology is something like 'made striped or,</tt><br>
<tt>> as the case may be, spotted by pushing'.</tt><br>
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<tt>Spotted? Wouldn't that be gdhe'z^e? I'm assuming that gdhe'ze, 'striped', refers to the lines of writing.</tt><br>
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<tt>> I think ba- is also used in cases where pushing<br>
> per se is not really evidenced, but the tool used is oblong.</tt><br>
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<tt>Besides 'pushing', ba- seems to be used regularly for both 'sewing' and 'writing'. 'Drawing' takes a different instrumental prefix: bag^u', 'write', vs. dhig^u', 'draw'.</tt><br>
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<tt>Rory</tt><br>
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