Dorsey's Law again

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 rankin at ku.edu wrote:
> The full meaning(s) given by Miner is 'stay in vicinity to protect young
> (animal); stay within earshot to protect inhabitants; stay with pregnant
> woman'. (Miner 1984:#575)  Seems to me it matches *kriN 'stay, continue,
> sit, camp' a lot better than 'pack on the back' (which also leaves niN
> unidentified).  But, of course, that leaves the glottal unaccounted for.
> I wonder if an earlier form might have been *ha?ikiNniN, with some sort
> of glottal transposition.  In that case, it could just be a
> "Grenzsignal".

I believe Winnebago hai- is usually < (h)a + gi-.  There actually is an
auxiliary niN, though I'm not sure if the example I remember is from
Winnebago or Mandan (or both).  The example is xop + niN 'be holy'.  This
may or may not be *riN 'to move', but say it was *riN 'to move', then the
form would be something like 'go along carrying one's own on the back'.
Which brings us to the gloss 'protect young (animal)', which I took as the
root sense.  I was thinking of the protector as the mother and recalling
cases like the opossum, where the mother carries the young on her back.
This would certainly make a good metaphor for a protective mother or, by
extension, anyone else especially solicitous.  I looked for comparable
forms elsewhere, however, and didn't find any quickly.  Forms like gik?iN
'carry one's own on back' do exist, of course.  Anyway, that was my logic.

JEK