Rib (was Re: Portatives in Omaha-Ponca)

[Rankin, Robert L]

> I checked this with one of my consultants, and the word for
> 'ribs' in Ponca is dhethi, with an aspirated "t."  (He said it was /thi/
as in /athi/ 'he/she arrived (here)' and not as in /tti/ 'house' when I
asked him.)

That's pretty interesting. It would be virtually the only word I know of out
of thousands where the stop correspondences don't seem to match exactly as
expected for the Dheghiha dialects. The only other case I can think of is
'four' which has tt instead of the expected d in Kaw.

Since I can no longer double-check it with another speaker, perhaps you can,
but La Flesche's Osage also signals an aspirate in thitsi.  It's possible I
just transcribed it wrong in Kaw and Quapaw.

bob