CHIWERE etymology

[Pamela Munro]

To me, the way "particles" aquire the rich idiomatic meanings they have is
one of the central mysteries. Not just in Siouan either. But I'd put this in
a more advanced course than 101.

Pam



Koontz John E wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> > In some instances the strings of particles get lexicalized
> > and acquire some meaning greater that the sum of their semantic parts.
> >
> > As for Siouan 101, I don't think any of us understands these things,
> > especially the lexicalized ones ...
>
> That about sums it up.  Things I don't understand about this form or
> Chiwere in general (not that I claim to understand Chiwere in general,
> anyway!):
>
> - Why/how j^egi alternates with j^i
> - What gi accomplishes in this form
> - Why Chiwere has we instead of he
> - What Chiwere i- vs. e- indicates, and where the i- forms come from
> - What the -re is in this form
> - Where Chiwere =gi LOCATIVE comes from
> - That wa morpheme or morphemes that Jimm brought up
>
> Does that leave anything I do claim to understand?
>
> I'd be happy to discuss these further, in or out of the context of the
> word j^iwere!
>
> Mainly what I can say bout the word is that tit seems to be one of those
> deictic/demonstative/verb of motion/causative/auxiliary strings, and that
> parts of it sure look like they follow the patterns of these for Chiwere.
> The whole is close enough to the OP word Dhegiha in form (as this form
> would be mapped into Chiwere's different path out of Proto-(Mississippi
> Valley) Siouan) for me to suspect that Dorsey got the meaning right
> (presumably from speakers of his time, though, and not by deduction from
> the morphology).