etymology of MANDAN

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:

> A few comments on 'wirahatsitati'.  The Crow word for 'willow' is biliichi',
> which may be cognate with Hidatsa miraha'aci 'willow' (this is the form in
> Wes Jones' data).

This is very helpful.  Given the fact that Mandan and Hidatsa have
undergone a major collapse in numbers of villages and dialects, having
Crow, which was presumably at some point part of the same dialect complex
with Hidatsa, is a big help in elucidating awkward Hidatsa forms.  This
gives us:

mira  ha'a ci
bilii      chi

Here we're writing ts as c, following the scholarly orthography adopted
by Wes, but ch for c^ (c-hacek), following the English-influenced popular
orthography adopted by the Crow.  I'll stick with ts below, just to keep
things consistent with earlier letters, and in line with the Crow
practice.

> The lack of correspondence in the vowels is problematic,
> but there are many Crow/Hidatsa forms that correspond perfectly except for
> one set of vowels.  I suspect that the first part i(bil-, mir-) is the
> 'water' word rather than the 'wood' word, since willows tend to grow near
> water.

Of course, the 'water' analysis would make Crow right about the vowels,
and Hidatsa wrong.  *smilie*  But, of course, 'water' makes just as good a
candidate as 'wood', prima facie, as long as the rest is uninterpretable.
I'm perhaps unduly influenced by the fact that typical MVS tree names are
so often <something>-stick or <something>-wood or wood-<something>.  (To
find Dakota tree names, look under c^haN 'wood'.)

One side issue:  In bringing up the problem of the often irregular
correspondence of vowels between Crow and Hidatsa Randy gives me a a
chance to admit that as I've been pointing out that vowels in this or that
form for Mandan don't correspond, I've been omitting a mental footnote to
this effect.  (See, I do leave some things out.)  It would be nice,
someday, if we could characterize these examples of non-correspondance in
some way.  Is it truely random, or influenced by vowel harmony or
reanalysis?

The real problem here is not the *wiri 'water' vs. *wira 'wood', though
that's a serious enough issue.  The real (or bigger) problem is haatsi vs.
chi. Note that chi corresponds roughly to tsa in hira-tsa.  The vowel is
wrong, but alternations of i and a (and e) at word ends could reflect
ablaut gradation.  I'm not clear on whether tsa vs chi is a plausible
correspondence, based on the way the two languages work, but let's leave
it at that for now.

So, as Randy says:

> I have no idea what the second part means.

It occurred to me, however, that MVS might elucidate this situation, and I
think it does.  Dhegiha terminolgies distinguish between 'yellow' and
'red' willows, the latter being, I think, actually dogwoods, the one whose
branches are sometimes used for arrows, with the shredded inner bark from
the peeled arrows being kinnikinnick, the agent used to cut native
tobacco.

Osage for 'yellow willow' is dhuxe-zi < *ruxe-zi(hi), where
*ruxe is 'willow' and *zi(hi) is 'yellow'.  The (hV) is an extension
common in MVS color terms, but not universal.

I think that *zi(hi) would appear regularly as *chi in Crow, *tsi in
Hidatsa.  What we do get is shiile in Crow and tsiri in Hidatsa, with a
different extension *-re.  The Crow form looks, furthermore, like it's
from the s^-fricative grade. Since fricative gradation is common in color
terms in Siouan, this isn't a big problem.  Presumably *chii(le) < *zi(re)
was replaced by shii(le) < *z^i(re) at some point.  In any event, this
makes the forms look like

mira  ha'a tsi
bilii      chi
???   ???  yellow

which definitely recalls the Osage formulation.  To me it suggests,
furthermore, that the mira 'wood' is correct, and that the puzzling haa
element is related to PS *ha 'skin, hide, bark', even though this is not
attested in Crow or Hidatsa (or Mandan) as far as I know.  Thus:

mira   ha'a  tsi
bilii        chi
wood  (bark) yellow

So it's Crow that has modified the vowel of the first part in this
interpretation.  *smilie*

This puts Hiratsa as 'willow' in a somewhat better position, but only if
hira is somehow equivalent to mira, and only if tsa is plausibly a
contextually appropriate abalut grade of tsi, say a noun-forming grade. As
far as I know, the only cases of *w > h in Siouan are in the first
person/inclusive person pronominals of Dhegiha, Chiwere, and Winnebago.
Alternatively, I don't know of any noun hira that would be equivalent to
'wood' in the context, e.g., something like 'stem', or of any sequence
hira that would make a good amusing joke out of the form.  This isn't a
fatal objection, given how little I know about Crow and Hidatsa and
Mandan.  Can anyone else elucidate this?

> Glossing 'wirahatsitati'
> as 'Willow (people), their village' looks right to me, with it(a)- being the
> possessive prefix.

Thanks!  That is:

[mirahaatsi-[i- ta-       ati    ]]
 willow      3p Alienable village