Virtues-wolves-coyotes

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, Shannon West wrote:
> Well, I think it's pretty clear the ya- is the instrumental 'with the
> teeth', so yaslec^a would be 'to split with the teeth' (as Beuchel says) or,
> as you say 'to gash'. Could the ma- not be the first person object? 'It tore
> at me with its teeth' or 'It chomped me' or something. :) I don't know much
> about the historical end of things, so this could be totally off the mark,
> but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw it.

I came up with gash as a way to encode the notion of a lengthwise opening,
which I think, all the forms considered, was the idea in the root.  I
hadn't thought of ma as the P1 marker, but I think that would be
unparalleled in derivational patterns, and rather unusual typologically,
too.

I suppose the southern Athabascan and vicinity root might work, in spite
of Willem's reservations, if 'mouth-split' part could be seen as having
been added to distinguish one sort of ma from another.  Goodness knows
there are enough ma and magha, etc., roots in Siouan, but I'm not sure if
the situation could actually produce confusion.  Perhaps confusion isn't
the only reason for adding distinguishing epithets.

As far as evidence of mechanisms for borrowing, there are a certain number
of Coyote stories known from Siouan contexts, though, of course, Coyote is
not the central Trickster character in the Siouan literatures I know
anything about.

I suppose ma might just as readily be a Siouan root for what gets gashed
or split.  It might help to know more about the nomenclature and
folklore of Coyote than I do.

JEK