Affrication Diminutive Marker (Re: butterfly)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Kathleen Shea wrote:
> I've found that it's true that speakers of Ponca tend to use both the
> dental-stop variant and the affricated variant of words interchangeably or
> recognize only one as the "real" form.  However, I have noticed that there's
> some productive use of the distinction to create new vocabulary.  I have
> only one consultant right now, Uncle Parrish Williams--and I really need to
> check with more speakers--but he firmly maintains that ttu means 'blue' and
> c^c^u means 'green.'

I think this usage appears in Howard's book.

> The uncomfortable homophony that John mentions between wac^hi'gaag^e 'to
> dance' and c^hi 'to have sex with' is often avoided in Ponca by
> substitution with the more "polite" term naNthe 'to dance' (literally,
> 'to kick').

I think that occurrence of gaaghe itself is an attempt at fixing this
homophony.

> It's also true that Ponca makes use of affrication of dental stops for a
> diminuative effect, or "baby talk" (what John calls "grandmother speech"),
> as in "Dha?e'c^hewadhe!" 'You poor thing!' (said to a child) compared to
> "Dha?e'thewadhe!" (said to an adult), with the same meaning.

This reminds me of the example haNegaNc^he 'dawn' = 'night' + 'like' +
'the (time), when', or 'when it's *a bit* like night'.