"to wound"

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, R. Rankin wrote:
> > Marino gives the Winnebago inflection as:
> > 'o 'to shoot', ha?o=naN 'I shoot', s^?o=naN 'you shoot'
> > Buechel lists o 'to shoot, to hit when shooting' with wao for the first
> > person [wa?o (?) JEK] and uNk?opi for the inclusive (k', upright
> > apostrophe).
>
> I knew the verb had been analogically remodeled along regular lines in Dakotan
> but was hoping it would have the oral equivalent of the nasal stem
> conjugation, m-, z^-, etc., in Dhegiha.  It would be worthwhile eliciting it
> in Ponca and Osage too while there's still time.

Definitely.  And it would be worth seeing what Dorsey's slip file lists,
too.  I was just a little disappointed to find the regular reflex myself.

> I'd have predicted *b-o as the 1st person in DA if it had retained the
> irregular forms.

I concur with this prediction.  This is consistent with hibu/hinu/hiyu,
though this isn't a stem that we usually think of as a ?-stem.  I'd say it
was behaving as one in this case, however.

> It's really hard to find a glottal stop stem that isn't nasal.  Thanks
> for checking it in the La Flesche MSS.

I think *?o 'wound' is the only fairly secure one (and I think it was Bob
or one of the other editors of the CSD who located it), though sometimes
*u ~ *hu 'to come' shows signs of ambivalence.  That is, though it's
interpreted as an h-stem, in several places in MV is behaves like a
?-stem, hiyu in Dakotan being one case, and the gi vertitive in Omaha
(instead of *khi) and the ai/dhai/ai inflectional pattern there being
others.  There are other contexts, however, where it clearly shows an h.
As Dakotan both loses verb-initial h and regularizes some of the minor
paradigms, especially verbs of motions, it isn't much help here.

I also think that second person n- in ?-stems in Dakotan may be a
contamination from the y-stem (*r-stem) paradigm, comparable to the Omaha
inflection of i(dh)aNghe 'to ask (a question) (of one)' (apparently or
originally inaNghe/i(s^)naNghe/idhaNghe) or dhiNkhe 'the (sitting)'
(miNkhe/(s^)niNkhe/dhiNkhe).

On the other hand, Winnebago s^? looks like a reformulation by analogy
with the third persons.

I think Dhegiha z^ (preseumably from *y) is the original reflex.  In other
words, I hypothesize that the paradigm was something like *Wo/*yo/[?]o for
'wound', and *muN/*yuN/[?]uN for 'do', based on the syncopated (or
unepenthesized or unextended?)  pronominals in *w and *y added to a vowel
initial (or perhaps ?-initial, as usually suspected) verb stem.  It's a
little bit hard to be sure with the first person of oral forms, of course,
for the reasons under discussion.  Maybe it was *wo, though that shouldn't
come out ?b-o or hi=b-u in Dakotan, but ?w-o and hi=w-u.

However, I'm not convinced I fully understand either this paradigm or the
phonology of *W or the syncopating first person and second person.  I've
been balancing several alternative interpretations in my mind now for
several years.

JEK