Season/Year and Earth (was Re: Sleeps and Winters)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Wablenica wrote:
> >In OP umaN'[dh]iNkka, 'season, year', also sometimes used in counting
> >ages.  And I've always noticed maN[dh]iN'kka 'earth, soil'.
>
> Lakhota also has o'makxa - season, year.
> I wonder, how/why do these words in Siouan relate to makxa "earth"?

Me, too.  There's an obvious connection of earth in the extended sense of
the whole earthen surface of the earth and season.  Somehow 'in earth' =
'season'.  Maybe 'on earth' would be a better reading?  Or is it just a
coincidence inherited from Proto-Siouan?

And what is the extra -dhiN- syllable in Dhegiha?  In OP the dh is never
nasalized to n, and the dh can be left out in fast speech.

There's another unusual dh in is^tiniNkhe 'Trickster' (aka 'Monkey' in
OP).  Here it is usually nasalized to n, but I've seen dh, too, and in IO
it is deleted, leaving is^tiNkhe.

JEK