waiN

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> > There are two distinct roots under discussion here.
> > Proto-Siouan *?iN   'to wear' (&homophone 'think') and
> > Proto-Siouan *k?iN 'to pack on the back, carry'
>
> The meanings also seem close enough to be variants of a
> single verb concept.  ...

I was thinking somewhat along these lines myself, though more abstractly.
The same verbs that have "short" or "syncopated" pronominals (b, p/t/k, m
for a; s^, z^ for dha) generally have "short" or "syncopated" possessive
prefixes, too, i.e., (g, k for gi).  For example, bdha'the 'I ate it' and
gdha'the 'he ate his own'.  I just picked a verb and ran it through the
rules, but I'm not sure this one would meet the approval of a native
speaker.

The problem would probably be that gdhathe would have to mean 'eat one's
own (relative)' not 'eat one's own (sandwich)'.  Possibly not, but I
thought I'd better admit that up front!

I believe I'm correct in recalling that dha-stems take g-dha- in
possessives, while ga-stems take gi-g-dha-, which seems to have something
to do with Mississippi Valley's *ka- instrumental being *(r)aka- in other
branches of Siouan.  Except for the dh-stems, where it's g-, the
syncpating possessive is gi-g-, though with the -g- fairly heavily fused
with the stem, initial, e.g., gikkaghe < gaghe, inflected agippaghe,
dhagis^kaghe, gikkaghe.  This is almost the sort of double inflection you
get with daNbe 'to see', e.g., attaNbe, dhas^daNbe, daNbe, but with the
addition of the intervening gi and the tensing of the stem initial in the
third person.

So, anyway, one might expect that a verb iN with first person miN might
have *kiN > giN or perhaps *k?iN > ?iN as its possessive form.  However,
I'm not aware of any (other?) ?-stems with possessives, so it's hard to
say if k?iN is one.

I do know that the dative of such stems is particularly weird, with the
morphosyntax gi-PRO-root, e.g., egimaN, egiz^aN, egaN 'I/you/he do so
(to/for someone)'.  Similarly, with h-stems, egiphe, egis^e, ege 'I/you/he
say (to someone)'.  Normally PRO would precede gi.

JEK