Dakota wakhan

[Ardis R Eschenberg]

A little note on Omaha concerning this is that wakaNda is used for 'God'
whereas xube is used for 'sacred' currently.  I thought the wa- was a
nominalizer in the above just as 'waxube' is used for holy things.

BTW Really disappointed to have missed the conference.  Sounds like it was
wonderful.  France wasn't too bad either.



On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> The recent discussion of the lexical class of Dakota 'wakhaN' brought to
> mind a historical comment I recently made in a paper that Giulia Oliverio
> and I are publishing.  It is possible that the nominal status of 'medicine'
> has affected the status of 'sacred, mysterious', ordinarily a stative verb.
>
>
> Is it also possible that the root of 'sacred' was just -hkaN and that the
> wa- nominalized it?  Here, in any event are the two cognate sets.
>
>     	  		'medicine'		 'sacred'
> *PSI:			*wáN:hka		*wahkáN
> Dakotan:					 wakháN 'spirit, sacred'
> Chiwere: 		 máNkhaN 		 wakháN 'snake'
> Winneb:  		 maN:káN 	 	 wakáN  'snake'
> Omaha:   		 maNkkáN 	  	 wakkáNda 'sacred,  god'
> Omaha:		         maNkkáN 	  	 wakkáNdagi'water monster'
> Kansa:   		 mokkáN 	  	 wakkáNda 'holy, god'
> Osage:   		 maNhkáN 	  	 wahkáNta 'holy, god'
> Quapaw:  		 makkáN 	  	 wakkáNtta 'spirit, god'
> *OVS:			*muNka    'snake'
> Biloxi:   		  n-dé:si 'snake'
> Ofo:      		  oNktéfi 'snake'
> Saponi		        "moka" 	  'snake'
>
> In 'medicine' and 'sacred' we have two semantically similar, but
> derivationally unrelated, roots which, quite by chance, differ only in
> nasalization and accent placement.  Their superficial similarities appear to
> have led to a certain amount of mixing.  The 'medicine' column is where this
> Ohio Valley Siouan set properly belongs phonologically, but it has undergone
> the semantic specialization, acquiring the meaning 'snake', that is typical
> of the 'sacred' set in particular geographical areas.
>
> 'Sacred' underwent an exactly parallel change in Winnebago, Chiwere and
> Omaha.  Here it should be noted that the concepts 'God, sacred' and 'snake'
> were related in much of the prehistoric eastern and central U.S.
> Nevertheless, there is identical semantic specialization in all three OVS
> languages.
>
> Paul Voorhis provided comments on the areal nature of this phenomenon.
> Voorhis points to similar parallel conflation of 'snake' and 'deity' in
> Kickapoo.  Shawnee maneto is similarly 'snake' (David Costa, personal
> communication).
>
> Here, as usual, Biloxi and Ofo lose initial labial resonants, while Virginia
> Siouan keeps them.  The -(k)desi portion of the Biloxi and Ofo cognates
> means 'striped' or 'spotted' and has good cognates throughout Siouan.
>
> Bob
>
>