Ch.Orthography/ Word for "Chief", "Family"

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Lance Foster wrote:
> And finally, when we are talking about kinship, for IO we usually use
> 'hina' for 'mother' (the word you use to address 'mom').. but there is
> also 'ihun' for 'his/her mother' etc. (the word used to refer to a
> 'mother') And for father, 'hinka' but his/her is either anje/nanje.
>
> If I was doing an illustration of 'mother' or 'father' which should I pick?

Most of the Siouan languages have two terms for 'mother' and two terms for
'father'.  The members of the pairs are in a suppletive relationship,
meaning basically that one stem in the pair is used in some parts of the
possessive paradigm and one stem is used in the other parts.  The details
vary from language to language, but in Omaha-Ponca, for example:

'father'

vocative          dadi' hau (male speaker)  (old usage dadi' ha)
                  dadi' ha (female speaker)
my ...            iNda'di
your ...          dhia'di
his/her/their ... idha'di

There isn't a term for 'our father'.  (That must bother missionaries!
No, I guess you want the vocative there.)  Usually 'your father' is
substituted.  Here the two stems are -dadi and -(dh)adi, the latter
comparable to aNje.  The first person possessive is irregularly formed
with this stem.

The normal breakdown in suppletive kinship paradigms in Omaha-Ponca is
vocative and first person vs. second and third person. A number of terms
have innovated new suppletions, e.g., for 'his younger brother' isaN'ga,
the vocative/first person is now khage'saNga.

My linguistic intuition is that the "citation form" is the third person,
but for teaching purposes you have to learn all four or five.  A
dictionary has got to list all forms or, at a minimum, both stems with a
comment in the introduction about how to apply them to produce the four
(five) derivative forms, and, for this set, something about the irregular
inflection in the first person.  A child will probably assume their own
father, so the first person or vocative are perhaps the most natural
caption to a picture.  I've noticed that native Omaha-produced lists tend
to ignore the second person entirely and concentrate on the vocative/first
person and third person.

How's that for a comprehensive non-answer!

JEK