Indian perfume set.

[Mary Marino]

I'm not crazy about it either, and I have looked at a lot of "sound
symbolism"  (consonant ablaut) sets, in both Dakota and Hotchunk.  /s/ and
/s^/ do not invariably interact with each other in c ablaut sets, if I may
state the obvious.

In these parts, among my consultants, 'sweetgrass' is pez^uta was^temna.  I
think there is likely to be as much regional variation is this as in other
plant and animal lexica.

I don't quite have the hang of e-mail phonetic orthography in Siouan, so if
my usage is deficient, please set me straight.

                 Mary



At 01:57 PM 10/13/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm not crazy about the semantics if this is indeed fricative symbolism.
>There's been quite a bit of innovation in these sets though.  The Kansa
>term for 'onion', mazhaNghe, is cognate with Dakotan for 'sweetgrass'.
>
> > On the subject of plants, rice is I think psiN and onion ps^iN in
>Lakota (haven't got a dictionary to hand).  This looks like the familiar
>Lakota sound symbolism.  Does it work that way in other Siouan
>languages?