Indian perfume set.

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> "Be a coup"??  Do you mean as in 'counting coup'?

Yes.  I think LaFlesche terms it an honor, but I have't rechecked the
reference.

> If nubdhaN is coming from MVS (Hypothesis 1), then
> it certainly wouldn't be recent.  If it is coming
> as a loan from a prehistoric IOM *pyobraN or *pyubraN
> (Hypothesis 2), then the most likely time for it
> to happen would be at the *pr stage of the above
> sequence (assuming OP nu < *pro, but not < *pyo).
> Since all the Dhegihan languages have single
> consonant sounds where the *pr should be, I would
> suppose that *pr had gone to *R before Dhegihan
> diverged.

Yes.  So it *couldn't* be a loan from IO per se.  In fact, one would be
forced to say that the IO form was not so much a correspondance as a later
parallel in another language, showing where *R < *pr might have come from,
possibly a preservation of a Proto-Mississippi Valley age form.  The
former strikes me as more likely, because Cy clusters seem fairly rare
and/or unstable in Siouan.

In regard to assuming *py in OP, since we know from the first person of
'to think' that *py > *pr in Dhegiha, and we know from forms like 'potato'
and 'male' that *pr > *R in initial position, and we can suspect from
forms like 'pot' and 'frost' that *py in initial position leads to *R in
Dhegiha, too, we can suspect that nu < *Ro (the only source of nu in OP)
comes from either *pro or *pyo.  The IO form shows how *pyo could occur in
the context.  We'd expect *hpi-o- to contract to either *hp-o- or *hpy-o-.
We have to assume that *hpyo- simplifies to *pyo-, or, effectively, does
not contrast with it.  All this would have to have occurred in or before
Proto-Dhegiha, however, making it likely to be independent of the IO form.

Unfortunately, however, another possibility, relevant to *pro, i.e., to nu
'male', occurs to me, which is that nubraN refers to the 'scent for
male(s)', as opposed to, say, 'smelling like a male' (not necessarily a
good thing).  Jimm Good Tracks and Mark Awakuni-Swetland (and Dorsey,
cited by Gilmore) refer to the significance of horsemint in male adornment
contexts, and Patricia Albers has referred to distinctions between scented
plants suitable for males and scented plants suitable for females.  One
problem with this is that I'd expect some sort of dative stem for the
verb.