Virtues-wolves-coyotes

[bi1 at soas.ac.uk]

Yes
I've always thought that Lakota looks suspiciously like a language
which has recently been agglutinated from an earlier monsyllabic
isolating stage, almost like a language that has been recently
'reworked'. It probably isn't that simple, but it has that look about it.
Bruce
On 15 Jul 2002, at 0:38, Koontz John E wrote:

>
> Aside:  Siouan languages are really good at making do with a rather
> minimal set of short noun roots and somewhat more numerous short verb
> roots, put to work on building a larger working vocabulary with the aid of
> intensive nominalization and/or compounding.  This is why Proto-Siouanists
> end up with long lists of monosyllabic and bisyllabic roots combined with
> a handful of very busy verb affixes and enclitics.  Even the bisyllabic
> roots are in many cases effectively monosyllabic, as the second syllable
> vowel seems to be almost an independent element saying 'it's a root'.
> Sometimes you get a glimmering of the processes that collapsed longer
> original forms into the attested monosyllables and bisyllables, and then
> you realize that the apocopated first syllable is just a prefix wa-
> anyway, or that the second syllable initial consonants of some verb roots
> show signs of being old d4erivational morphology, etc.