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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