Sky and clouds

[Koontz John E]

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On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Bruce Ingham wrote:
> Something has been at the back of my mind for years.  In Lakota the word
> given in dictionaries and elsewhere for 'sky', 'cloud' and 'heaven' is mah^piya.

This is pretty much the same across Mississippi Valley Siouan, anyway.
'Sky' is usually at least etymologically the plural of 'cloud'.  A
stem-forming vowel -e- or -a- can occur after the plural before
postpositions, etc., cf. maNxpi(y)a- in Dakotan.

This said, at the moment sadly I can't recall how this works in
Omaha-Ponca!  I think 'sky' might be maNxpi, obviously an old CVC + pi
plural formation.  If this recollection is true, then could be interpreted
as a fossilized CVC root form.  All modern roots are V-final, except that
in some compounds CVCV forms lose the final CV, e.g., s^aNge 'horse' vs.
s^aNttaNga 'wolf' (would be s^uN"k"-thaNka in Dakotan), or waz^iNga
'(small) bird' vs.  waz^iNttu 'bluebird'.  A similar pattern of truncation
occurs in some diminutivized kinship terms, though it may be of a
different origin there, e.g., siz^iN 'dear child' < nisi z^iNga 'little
offspring'.

I don't remember 'cloud' at all.

> Sometimes also in Lakota prayers the equivalent for 'heaven' or 'sky' is
> waNkatuya or WaNkal literally 'up there, high up'.

Perhaps comparable would be OP maNs^iatta < *maNs^i-a-kta 'tall
(uninflected), on high, in the heavens'.

> Therefore I wonder how to say such a thing as 'there are no clouds in
> the sky'.

I'd assume that historically this would be akin to saying 'there are no
clouds among the clouds'.  In other words, I think the conception of sky
was an emptiness populated by clouds, so that clouds were the thing to
which attention was directed, leaving no actual term for the emptiness,
except in the theological conception of stacked worlds that occurs among
Siouan groups as it does elsewhere.

It might be relevant that sky is psychologically very different in a
grassland from sky peeping between trees in a forest or hanging between
mountains in a valley.  It seems less a lid and more a vastness.
Easterners always comment to me on how weird it seems too see distant
rain.

However, whatever the etymological basis of the forms, with or without
English, French, etc., and Christian influences, this conception may have
changed in a given language.

The formulation of 'sky' as 'clouds' enters into the compound
'blue-sky-people' for the Arapahoes.

> ... and one sees sentences like, I think, mah^piya ska wan woslal he
> 'a white cloud stood vertically (in front of them)'.

I seem to recall that clouds walk in Omaha-Ponca.

JEK