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[David Kaufman]

Hi,

I'm currently working on an article regarding the "verby" aspect of many Native American languages vs. the "nouny" aspect of Indo-European languages.  I know Hidatsa, for instance, has a grammatical construct which essentially makes any noun into a verb by adding a sentence final -c, which is also a sentence-final marker.  Thus, I think the word wacawiri "bowl" can become wacawiric, which, as best I can tell, would literally mean something like "It is bowl-ing."  Also, the sentence "(the) man is tall" seems to be rendered wace wahkuc, which literally seems to mean "(the) man talls"!  (John B.--please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, since you're the Hidatsa expert!)  I'm wondering if other Siouan languages and even non-Siouan languages might have similar grammatical constructs where an English noun or adjective actually becomes a verb form in the Native American language.

Any info will be appreciated!  Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

Dave Kaufman
dvklinguist at hotmail.com
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