Oglala (was Re: Locative Postpositions)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Alan H. Hartley wrote:

Referring to the circumstance that the Omaha name for the Oglala is
Ubdhadha, which, in the form NiN Ubdhadha, is also the name (and namesake)
of the Niobrara River.

> Koontz John E wrote 29 Oct 99:
>
> > In the case of Oglala we do have a possible alternative explanation, but
> > I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.  For one thing, there's the
> > switch from g (Dakotan) to b (Omaha).  There are cases where Dakotan has
> > substituted gl (*kr) or bl (*pr) for forms that other languages suggest to
> > be *pr or *kr, or at least generated alternative forms.  'Bug' is one such
> > set, for example, and you can find others, especially among the stative
> > verbs.

The only clear example is actually Teton wablus^ka 'bug' compared with
Omaha-Ponca wagdhis^ka 'bug'.  Here the shift is in the opposite
direction, and, as Bob Rankin has observed, clearly sporadic in an emotive
word, not regular.

The other examples I had in mind (all from Buechel) turn out to be
somewhat different from what I remembered.  They involve cases where
Dakotan has gm or gw, somewhat unusual clusters usually with no clear
Proto-Siouan antecedent.

These include, possible gmiNyaN 'round, as a wheel' < *gmiN-ya, compare
the more widely attested set with *priN as -mni(N), as in yumni(N) 'to
turn around, e.g., a crank'.  This comparison may be incorrect, though I
consider it to be reasonable enough to examine further.  It would have to
involve some sort of sporadic feature metathesis and adjustment, with mn >
nm > <ng>m ~ gm.  Possibly similar gmuNza 'slimy, fish-like, smelling
strong, like spoiled meat', cf. OP bdhaN 'an odor'.  I don't know of an
example of mnuN in Dakotan, but OP bdhaN would match that form regularly,
if it existed.

Another similar example would be gwegwes < ?gwegweza 'striped, used in
reference ot the ribs, as is said of very lean men ...', cf. gweza 'lean,
thin, ragged', cf. the more standard gleza 'striped'.  This is also a
possibly incorrect, but reasonable, comparison.  Here the change,
presumably again irregular and spontaneous, is not from bl to gl or the
reverse, but from gl to gw, which is not much use in the present context.

The only similar OP-internal example I know of is the alternation between
bdhuga 'all' and gdhuba, a metathesis attested as early as the 1890s.
This involves metathesis and not a strict alternation of bdh and gdh (or
bl and gl).  Similar, but different in detail, also long standing, is the
alternation between xdhabe and xabdhe 'tree'.

> > Bdhadha is said to mean 'spreading out' (becoming a wide and shallow,
> > i.e., a braided stream?) in reference to this stream name in Omaha-Ponca.
>
> Riggs gives kada (kala) and redup. form kadada (kalala) for 'spill,
> scatter, pour out, sow' (referring to such as grain but not liquids,
> which is unfortunate when we're talking about rivers), with prefixes a-
> 'on, upon' and o- 'in, into'. As cognate with Oglala (s.v.) he gives
> o-hdada (v. pos. of okada) 'scatter one's own' (Yankton okdada). Can
> these be cognate with OP u-bdhadha? Can the latter refer to liquids?

Kala (without reduplication) is, of course, the stem underlying glala,
which is placed in oglala in the standard folk-explanation of Oglala.  I
say folk explanation, rather than folk etymology, because I'm not
convinced that this explanation doesn't more or less capture the only
Dakota-internal explanation available for the name.  If we neglect the
specifics of the situation, taking them as notional, we still have the
possibly correct gloss.  Something scatters or spreads its own in or at
something.

Note that the pattern of o + ka is common in derivations referring to
color or appearence, as OP niN ugas^ude 'the White River' (sometimes
confused with the Missouri or niN s^ude).

The ka instrumental refers usually to 'striking', but there seems to be a
minor use (or homophonous morpheme) referring to action by wind or water
flowing.  The sense of ugas^ude might be 'flows in turbid' or 'renders
itself turbid'.  I'm not clear on this.  Dorsey's work includes ugaz^ide
'to shine through red', ugat?iNze 'flow thickly', uga?e 'be scattered
there', ugas^abe 'make a distant shadow', ugazi 'make a yellow glare'.
Perhaps 'shining' or 'appearing' involves 'flowing (to the eye)'?  Or
perhaps it simply 'strikes (the eye)'.  We also have ugas^aN 'to travel'.

----

An important note regarding the correspondence of Oglala and Ubdhadha is
that the Omaha form is not a regular correspondent.  Not only is the bl
for gl not a match, but the dh for l is not a match (except in the bl/gl
cluster).  Thus this form has to be borrowed, presumably into Omaha.  The
regular correspodence would be ugdhana, or ubdhana with the g to b shift.
Dakota l represents *r in clusters.  In some cases the cluster is reduced
to a simple l.  In second persons of y-stems this l fairly clearly
represents old s^l (now just l).  In somewhat similar fashion Omaha has
changed old s^n in second persons of dh-stems to hn and then just n within
living memory. In some cases Dakotan has l where no evidence suggests an
old cluster.  One example is the diminutive =la (=daN, etc., in other
dialects).

A few other examples occur in stems like kala or lakhota.  In the word
initial examples this turns out to regularly match certain stem initials
in other Siouan languages.  Where cognates exist, e.g., not for lakhota,
but for leks^i, lez^e, etc., OP has n, e.g., negi, nez^e, and so on.  This
is called the "funny r" correspondence from a chance rejoinder I made when
I first discussed this with Rankin and others.  "It's not a regular r,
it's a funny r."  Regular r turns up as y in Dakotan and as dh in Omaha.
(Note that I didn't actually discover funny r first, Dorsey did, and I
think Terry Kaufman may have noticed it earlier, too.  I believe Wolff and
Matthews may have missed it or passed over it in silence.)

Funny r behaves like r in a cluster in Dakotan, or, more properly, r in
clusters behaves like funny r in some contexts in Dhegiha (after s and s^
in Djhegiha, but not after x, p, or k) and in all contexts in Dakotan
(after s, s^, x, p, and k).

Anyway, Ubdhadha has that second dh where it shouldn't, but it turns out
that Omaha normally has dha for la in borrowings from Dakotan, e.g,
s^ahiedha 'Cheyenne' < s^ahiela, and so on.

In regard to Oglala ~ Ubdhadha, I believe that the question is whether
Omaha borrowed ubdhadha from Dakotan Oglala or Oblala, i.e., whether the
switch in the stop occurred in Dakotan or in Omaha.  The actual evidence
for switches from b to g is all in Dakotan.  Another possible question is
whether the Niobrara takes its name from the Oglala or vice versa.  Or, of
course, it could be a chance homophony.  One possible explanation is that
Oglala in Dakotan is from earlier Oblala by some process of reanalysis and
rectification of an obscure form, and that *Oblala referred to the people
of the Niobrara (or Mnioblala in Dakotan form).  In this case Omaha might
preserve the original form of the Oglala name and, coincidentally, the
stream name that explains it.