Dakota ni(N)c^a

[ROOD DAVID S]

John,
	Both ni'c^a and wani'ca exist; until you cited Ingham, I had never
heard of wani'ca being conjugated -- it's always meant something like
'there isn't any' in the contexts where I've heard it.  The sterotypical
sentence with ni^ca is "ma'zaska mani'ce" 'I don't have any money'.
	At some point I remember learning that one of these was preferred
for things that are normally expected to exist to be missing, such as body
parts or those kin that everyone has, like mothers and fathers, while the
other was used for less expected stuff like food or cars or those kin
terms that not everyone has, like older or younger siblings -- but I can't
find written confirmation of that even though I've just looked, and I
can't be sure which is which.

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Koontz John E wrote:

> I had proposed earlier to look at 'lack' verbs in other Mississippi Valley
> languages:
>
> Dakota (wa)niN'c^a
>
> Ingham gives 'hace, not; lack, have missing' wanic^a vn (neuter verb,
> i.e., stative), first person wama'nica or mawa'nica. ex. isto saNni wanica
> 'he had one arm missing'; ...; nuNge mawanice 'I have no ears, am
> disobedient, obstinate'
>
> I'm not aware that he lists a form without wa- and under 'lack, miss, be
> short of' he gives naokpani va and yuchaN vn.
>
> Buechel lists ni'ca 'be destitute of, have none of', first person manica.
> He lists wanica 'none', but gives manica as the first person.
>
> IO n(~)iNn(~)e ~ n(~)iN<ng>e 'there is/are no, none, nothing, be without'
> The sequence *VNke comes out VNn~e in Ioway (?) and VN<ng>r in Otoe (?).
> The <ng> is eng, and n is regularly n~ (enye) before i or e or iN.
>
> Wi his^jara' niNiNk 'to be blind'  Lit. 'to lack eyes'.  The inflection is
> his^jara hiNniNk 'I ...', with the first person patient hiN-.
>
> Also, nuNuNg^niN'k, nuNuNg^ra'niNk 'be deaf', lit. 'to lack earholes', cf.
> Dakota 'disobedient'.  First person nuNuNriniNk with i(N) first person
> patient after a vowel:  -ra + iN => i(N), (N) unnoticed before n.
>
> I believe these idioms may be the only attestations of the form in
> Winnebago.
>
> John E. Koontz
> http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz
>