[Fwd: [Fwd: poison ivy]]

[RLR]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Jimm G GoodTracks wrote:

> Melvin GIlmore, (his plant book), has for Poison Oak/ Ivy:
> Hthiwathehi (Omaha/Ponca), "plant that makes sore".
> jgt

I think this would be

xdhi=      wadhe           hi
exudations it causes them  plant

----------------------
Clearly fits the meaning of the Kaw cognate "xli", which means 'running
sore(s)'.

And I think I should clarify my last message of yesterday regarding the
analysis of Lakota "wikhoshka".

khoshka'	have a venereal infection
khoshka'laka	young man
wikho'shkalaka	young woman

The analysis I sent yesterday would be the folk analysis.

wi-kho'shka   (+its plant/weed)
fem-infection

While it's possible that the "wi-" here is the feminine morpheme (as in
Wi-nona), the actual morphology here was probably:

wa  + i  + kho'shka
ABS  INS   infected

where ABS is the noun-forming "absolutive" prefix in Siouan, INS is the
instrumental "i" prefix followed by the intransitive verb stem. In
reality, then, the form means 'what-infects its plant', a fairly typical
Siouan grammatical construction.

And re Bruce's note on descriptive natural history terminology: After
Frank Siebert published his paper on Algonquian animal/plant names in an
attempt to isolate the proto-Algonquian homeland, I set about searching
for similar terms/evidence in Siouan. While it's true that the oldest,
most widespread animal terms seem to be "names" (i.e., unanalyzable), a
huge number of natural history terms that Siouan speakers clearly knew
about do seem to be transparently descriptive. What this suggested to me
was that perhaps Siouan speakers had, in relatively recent times,
migrated from one climatic/floral/faunal zone into a new one which had
many different trees, plants and animals. Thus the (more recent)
descriptive terminology. Other interpretations are probably possible.
And some languages just seem to "like" descriptive terms.

Bob
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