<html><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><META name="Author" content="Novell GroupWise WebAccess"></head><body style='font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; '><DIV>Could there be an element of light reflection/shiny involved - since silver is called mathe-ska 'white metal', and obviously it is not "white" at all nore transparent (forgive the th for eth here)? Bodies of (clear) water are also highly reflective, and light rather than dark in color...</DIV>
<DIV>Jill Greer</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR> </DIV>>>> Rory M Larson <RLARSON@UNLNOTES.UNL.EDU>02/22/11 7:49 PM >>><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Bob wrote:</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> I'm pretty sure the -ska of wazhiNska and ieska is the one</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> meaning 'clear' (also 'white'), as in the Kansas place name</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> ni hni ska 'clear spring'.. So wazhiNska would be 'clear thinker'</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> and ieska 'clear speaker' (interpreter). As for the other skas,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> who knows? The secret is to realize it means 'clear' as well</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> as 'white'.<BR></FONT></TT><BR><TT><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Bryan wrote:</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> What if the -ska in wazhíⁿska is not the same as "white"?</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> There are also other words, like tápuska, iyéska, which confer the </FONT></TT><BR><TT><FONT size=2>> impression that it might be nothing more than an agent-nominaliser,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> perhaps historically related to shkoⁿ "active/move/do" (which would</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> go some way towards explaining the apparent part-cognate-part-loanword</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> set hethúshka iróska ilóⁿska where some languages have s and others sh).</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> I think I recall hearing some words in Macy that indicated a productive</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> use of this suffix on verbal predicates that don't show any signs of</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> taking -ska in either Dorsey or the Swetland-Stabler lexicon.</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> I've even heard an interpretation of "pahaska" (Pawhuska) as meaning</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> "person who stands forward" instead of "white head/scalp",</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> although that might be a creative back-formation.<BR><BR>> On the other hand, however, the Báxoje word for translator is</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> "ich^é brédhe" "speaks clearly", which hints that clarity if not colour</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> may well have something to do with the semantics of this family</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> of concepts. I think what we need is either luck in finding a section</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> of discourse documented that confirms or rejects the hypothesis,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>> or a native speaker who has the relevant intuition.<BR></FONT></TT><BR><TT><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Cheers,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>Rory</FONT></TT> <BR></body></html>