*t-stems in Dakotan

[Koontz John E]

The verb form I couldn't remember in my posting on lists of stop-stems is
kikta 'to get up' (wekta, etc.).  I take it to involve an underlying stem
ta.  I believe I simply found this in Buechel looking under kik- out of
curiosity.  Also relevant in Dakotan is akiktuNwaN 'to look around for
one's own', mentioned in Boas & Deloria 1941 as anomalous.  This time it's
that 'see' gloss (and one of the stems) again.

The anomally in each case in Dakotan is the extra -k- following the first
ki.  The first ki is the one that fuses with the personal pronouns in
inflection (or however we interpret the paradigm we, ye, ki).  The
intrusive -k- after that is anomalous as part of the regular pattern in
Dakotan or Omaha-Ponca, but "normal" as part of the stop-stem pattern in
Omaha-Ponca.

My suspicion is that the extra -k- is historically non-anomalous, or
rather, inherited, in Dakotan as well.  That is, I think that stop-stem
possessives in Proto-Mississippi Valley Siouan, maybe Proto-Siouan, had
*k- (syncopated from *ki-) as a derivational prefix.  The details of
inflection of both the derived and underived stems vary, but I believe
that the pronominals of the underived stems were also syncopated (*p-,
*s^-) originally, as they still are in Omaha-Ponca (and most other Siouan
languages, Dakotan and Mandan being major exceptions within "Central"
Siouan).

It is debatable whether the derived possessive stems (in, e.g., *k-t...)
had an additional *ki, too, e.g., *ki-k-t..., at this stage or that.
Adding an additional or pleonastic regular prefix over an irregular one is
an on-going tendency in Siouan languages, and typically behavior at a
given instant (now, 1890, etc.) varies with the individual stem.  Various
patterns are attested, even within particular languages.  We pay more
attention to this with pronominals, but it seems to me to be a relevant
consideration with other prefixal morphology as well.

It is also variable whether in cases where there was this additional *ki-
the resulting stems were regularly inflected, or had the fused paradigm
(*we-, *ye-, *ki-).  I'm not sure what conditions the fused paradigm,
apart from analogy, which seems to be the main factor at present.  It may
originally have been something like k => [nil] / V_V', but there are
exceptions to application of this.