Inflecting 'to paint'
Koontz John E
John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Thu Dec 11 05:19:59 UTC 2003
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, R. Rankin wrote:
> Dakotan seems to have REapplied the instrumental /i-/ to derive an
> entirely new verb with the narrowed meaning 'to paint'. But in Kaw the
> verb(s) 'to paint' seem all to be reflexive /íkkik?oN, ikkinoN/ 'paint'.
> Clearly, they are formed on the basis of */?oN/ 'do', and, equally
> clearly, one verb above has the expected glottal stop while the other
> has an epenthetic /-n-/, the expected correspondent to the Dakotan
> /-y-/.
I checked across Mississippi Valley and found the following:
IO ?uN'=hi 'to paint (house, wall)' JGT:195 (also iwa' or uwa')
Ex. hga ?uN=ha= hne khe
white I paint it FUT DEC
I'll paint it white
This is a causative.
OP ...kki?aN' 'to paint one's face; to paint oneself'
kki?aN=...khidhe 'to cause someone to paint themself'
(coloring agent) i'...kki?aN 'to paint oneself with (coloring agent)'
These are reflexives, one causative. Dorsey gives ? here, but I
didn't notice ? in comparable environments except when it came from
*k? or *x?, which is probably not the case with this stem.
No anomalies in inflection noted.
Otherwise a variety of other stems seem to be listed instead, apparently
in the sense of 'to paint (color) on (thing)', especially with roots -ha
and -wa, whereas these usages seem to be 'to paint (thing) with (color)'.
I also checked in some Dakotan dictionaries other than Buechel, and found:
Riggs i'yuN 'to use', e.g., hu i'yuN 'to use one's legs, to be on foot',
T[eton] 'to rub on, apply'. See iuN, which seeing I found iuN' 'to rub
on, as ointment or soap', inflected iwauN, uNkiuNpi.
Ingham gives wi'yuNpi 'paint, colour' (the noun), i'yuN/i'wayuN 'to
paint', thi wi'yuN wic^has^a 'house painter'.
It strikes me that the accentuation of i'yuN is irregular, and differs
from i'yuN to iuN'.
I am unable to say whether *(ir)uN ~ (i)?uN 'to paint (with)' involves a
different root from *(i)?uN 'to do (with)'. They are clearly either
confused with each other or related to each other. I do feel that the PS
phonological status of *? in the glottal stop-initial verbs may be
debatable, though it certainly sometimes becomes real enough.
JEK
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