ASB puza

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003, David Costa wrote:
> Ummm... I'm confused. Which term here matches wiikwee-?
> > For what it's worth, I've just noticed that wiikwee is actually a pretty
> > good match for that Siouan 'cat' set (per the CSD):

MI      wiikwee-

PSI      *-truN  (one might have plumped for *-kwuN, too)
PreDa    *ikwuN  (i.e., m = w/__VN)
Te        igmu'
Sa        inmu'
PreIO  *wiitwaN ???
IO        udwaN' (+ yiNGe 'little')  (u- ???)
Wi      wiic^aN'wa(siNiNc^serec^) 'cougar' (long-tailed cat)
PreWi *wii'twaN
PreDh *i(N)kruN-ka  (*-ka is a noun former)
OP       iNgdhaN'(ga)
Ks        iluN      (l < *kr)
Os        iluN'ka   (l < *kr)
Bi        *tmoc^-ka (tmo suggests *twuN)
Tu        *talus-ka yiNki (attested form regularized as "taluskik")

Yuchi     atyuNne 'wildcat'
Mohawk    atiiru

To understand how kw matches tw matches tr you have to understand that (a)
this is the set, for better or worse, (b) cucurbit (where attested)
matches it in form pretty exactly, language by language, but with the
prefix wa- instead of (wi)i-, and (c) Siouan avoids clusters like kw or
tw, clusters like tr, and labial + rounded vowel sequences like wu(N).
Thus wild variations among kwuN ~ kruN ~ twaN ~ truN look like reasonable
dissimilation products.  'Cat' and 'cucurbit' are the only sets (?) with
this cluster.

I suspect something like (?) t(V)ruN wandered in at one point in Siouan,
and the twaN and kwuN forms represent dialect adaptations of it.
Something like wi(i)twaN or wi(i)kwuN might then explain wiikwee.  The
w-prefix would result from either (a) attaching wa- as a sort of
nominalizer, or from (b)  the old scheme of classifier prefixes that Bob
Rankin has suggested underlie things like the wii- in Wi wiic^aNwa.  In
particular I believe it looks to him like wi- might be the "animal"
prefix.  There are traces of these in Siouan, Catawba and Yuchi.

I realize that comparing MI ee to Siouan uN or aN may be problematic, but
perhaps aN was sounded <ae>N, especially before *yiNk(e) 'small'.  OP haN
egaN=c^he '(early) morning' < 'night like when' is pronounced
h<ae>N'g<schwa>c^hi, to give a for instance, and ppi'=az^i 'bad < not
good' is pronounced ppi'=<ae>z^i or when the accent shifts just reduced to
ppez^i'-.

Say, isn't ee rather unusual in this position in MI?

As for why terms for cats should be borrowed or possibly associated with
terms for cucurbits - well this is perhaps part of what Michael McCafferty
is looking at from another direction, though it's up to him to decide if
any of this is relevant.