waiN

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Ardis R Eschenberg wrote:
> PS I don't think it is a loss of a glottal stop in fast speech, either.
> Wa'u woman never becomes wau.

I agree.  The paradigm that are called glottal stop stems in Siouan
studies, the ones that inflect miN, z^iN, iN, aNiN in Omaha-Ponca, never
have any trace of [?].  Similarly, eaN 'how', which is presumably from e +
aN 'to do', where aN is a glottal stop stem, also never has [?].  I
included a (?) in the form only to draw attention to the root.

The only phonetic ? manifested in OP is ? from *k? or *x?.  Thus ?i 'to
give' has a?i as first person.  This matches Dakotan k?u. first person
wak?u.  For that matter, Osage has k?u, ak?u (Osage u is [u"]). Examples
with *x? are a bit harder to turn up, but wa?u that Ardis cites is one,
cf. Osage wak?o and Quapaw wax?o.  I believe that the CSD project
uncovered evidence that this characteristic Dhegiha 'woman' word derives
from an earlier form meaning something like 'matron, married woman'.  The
? here is not detectable except between vowels, since all V-initial words
have an epenthetic ?.  (At least I didn't notice any difference.)

There aren't any traces of *k or *s^ plus glottal stop stem leading to *k?
or *s^? in OP, either, these being the usual ways in which *? is
manifested phonetically in Siouan languages, apart from the any tendency
of ? to appear word initially or between vowels.  Essentially all the
Siouan languages have an epenthetic ? before word initial vowels, the
exception being Winnebago, which has epenthetic h instead.  (The Winnebago
are the Cockneys of the Siouan world.)  Interestingly, Winnebago doesn't
add h to ?-stems.  Somehow they know (or knew) ...  which makes you wonder
about the assertion that organic initial ? is indistinguishable from
epenthetic ?.  Perhaps by knowing what happens when prefixes are added?
At least in those languages where ? < *? is not observed between vowels.
Winnebago also has s^?  in the second person of ?-stems.

The main language with k? (in datives and inclusives) is Dakotan.  In OP
and other Dhegiha languages the first person in m- (< *w perhaps) and
second person in z^ (< *y perhaps, as that is a regular development) look
very "unglottalic."  Dakotan's second persons of ?-stems in n- look like
either *r-, i.e., n- < *r-VN... or, perhaps more likely, contamination
from *r-stems, i.e., n- < *s^-n....  In Omaha-Ponca this is the pattern of
verbs like 'the (sitting)', which is miNkhe, (s^)niNkhe, dhiNkhe and 'to
ask (a question)', which is imaNghe, i(s^)naNghe, idhaNghe ~ iwaNghe.
(That's the whole list of such verbs, I think.)

The precise nature of the initials of the ?-stems in Proto-Siouan remains
obscure.  In any event, *? figures in Proto-Siouan in ejectives,
glottalized fricatives, and the initials of glottal stop stems.  It
doesn't seem to occur, say, within roots between vowels.  Nothing like
Tahitian fa?a 'to make' (< PP *faka, I think).