Number & Counting Comparisons in Dhegiha

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Justin McBride wrote:
> Unfortunately it seemed to be a reserved word for a cultural item--not
> exactly something that I'd want to use in a classroom setting.

While I wouldn't be surprised is the existence of something like we'yawa
blocked a more productive use, I'm not sure it would.  We don't know a lot
about the productivity of the grammatical prefixes in Mississippi Valley
Siouan.

> I wondered briefly about switching the instrumental to '-ya-' 'by
> mouth' to tweak the meaning, and maybe adding a helper or two, such as
> 'iye' 'speech' or something to that effect.  I came up with the
> curious phrase 'iye wayayawa.' Is it just me?  ...This seems kinda
> silly.  I'm wondering if it is even possible to use instrumental 'ya'
> to refer to speech.  Does it generally invoke the sense of physical
> mouth mechanics, such as blowing or chewing?  I'm thinking the
> speech-mouth connection may be somewhat romanticized or just
> out-of-place.

Omaha has forms like dhaxu'be 'to speak in wonder of' and dhas^i'ge 'to
speak against' (glosses from Dorsey's texts).

> On a somewhat related note, I think you've (Dr. Rankin, that is) shown me
> some interesting Kansa examples of redundancy in 1st & 2nd  persons in which
> two different sets of prefixes are used at the same time.  (I can't think of
> any of these examples off hand).  For instance, in the above example, you
> posited 'yahnawa' as an analogous possibility.  Do such constructions more
> often involve combinations of A-Active Regular Conjugation and (Y-) R-Stem
> Conjugation?  Does this ever occur with any of the less productive
> conjugations?

Modern Omaha has regular + d-stem inflecion of daNbe 'to see'.  LaFlesche
gives regular + b-stem (p-stem) for "boN" (i.e., poN) in Osage.  It's
actually a fairly common situation.  Omaha-Ponca have idhappahaN,
is^pahaN, ibahaN for 'I/you/(s)he know(s)', with double inflection only in
the first person.

> would be anything other than part of the verb root in this case.  Are the
> instrumental prefixes pretty consistent between dialects?  Specifically, is
> the 'by mouth' prefix found in all of them in roughly the same form?

The instrumentals are pretty much the same across the family.  There's a
certain amount of irregular variation in form, confusion of similar cases,
or merging or splitting into two variants, but no wholesale innovation or
loss.