Dorsey's Law again

[R. Rankin]

I take the WI auxiliary niN you mention in xopniN
to just be the cognate with Dhegiha *dhiN 'be of
class membership'.  B-liN 'I am', $-niN 'you are',
dhiN 's/he is', etc., as in KkaNze bliN 'I'm Kaw'.
But the semantics point to 'stay, continue'.
Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 1:41 PM
Subject: RE: Dorsey's Law again


> 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
>