Wolverines (Re: Virtues-wolves-coyotes)

[bi1 at soas.ac.uk]

Thanks John
The Stoney one looks like a cognate.  It was as you say a list of
animals in Bushotter.  It is in text 114, where he groups them as
thalo yul uNpi 'carnivors'.  In another text 105 he talks of 'starnge
animals' wamakhas^saN...os^tekapi, but doen't say what they are.
Possibly the sort that you get in Australia.

Bruce
n 17 Jul 2002, at 23:16, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 bi1 at soas.ac.uk wrote:
> > While we are on animals I noticed in the Bushotter texts a word mnaja
> > (ie mnaz^a) as 'wolverine'.  ...  I have also seen it in Riggs Dakota
> > Dictionary as 'lion, wild cat'.  ...
>
> I looked in the Siouan Archives files, and in various dictionaries and,
> other than the Bushotter and Riggs references found only a Stoney form
> mnazan. I suppose the -n is the diminutive.  I think the fricative shoift
> is normal.  I also checked under 'lion', 'cat', and possible phonological
> matches without luck.  I'd expect something like *naNz^e in Dhegiha or
> Ioway-Otoe, and like *naNaNs^ in Winnebago, though I also looked in
> Omaha-Ponca under *bdhaNz^e and in Winnebago under *pa(N)naNs^, just in
> case.
>
> This doesn't mean there isn't some attestation out there.
>
> I did notice "shanmonikasi" as a variant for 'wolf, prairie wolf, coyote'
> in IO, attributed to Maximilian.
>
> I also think I saw the Bushotter reference in question.  Interestingly, it
> was a list of animals, and between 'badger' and 'lion' were ma'yas^lec^a,
> s^uNkmanitu, and s^uNkmanitu thaNka.  In the interlinear these were
> glossed 'coyotes, wolves, and large wolves', and in the free they were
> glossed 'coyotes, foxes'.
>
> I suppose we can take 'lion' as a way of saying (in English) 'big cat',
> consistent with 'cat' as a generic preditor term.
>
> JEK
>


Dr. Bruce Ingham
Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies
SOAS