butterfly

[Rory M Larson]

Casting out the 'comb' word, Bob has offered an
interesting list of wildlife terms that use /nikka/:

  Quapaw: /ppiza nikka/   'lizard'
          /ttitta nikka/  'blue jay'
          /z^aNnikka/     'gnat'

  Kansa:  /hazu nikka/    'black [long stemmed] grape'
          /wakkuje nikka/ 'kind of lark'

  OP:     /wattininikka/  'butterfly'

In all of these cases, the term ends in /nikka/.
If Quapaw /ppiza/ < PDh *puza 'dry', we seem to
have a problem: the stative verb should come after
the noun, not before it.  The parsing /ppiza nikka/
'dry fellow' seems plain ungrammatical.

/z^aN nikka/ as 'wood fellow' and /hazu nikka/
as 'grape fellow' work, however, because a
modifying noun precedes the noun it modifies.
Does anyone know what Quapaw /ttitta/ and Kansa
/wakkuje/ mean?  Are they nouns or stative verbs?

One way out of the problem with /ppiza nikka/
might be to deconstruct the apparent noun /nikka/.
John has suggested that this is composed of the
verb *niNh 'live' with the generalizer/nominalizer
-*ka appended: *niNhka => nikka.  That could give
us three elements: *puza + *niNh + *ka, or
'dry' + 'live' + KA.  In that case, the first
two could be grouped together first to make a
single verb, 'dry-live', which could then be
turned into a noun by the addition of -*ka:
*puzaniNh-ka => Qw ppizanikka.

In this view, an active verb could be modified
by either a noun or a stative verb in front of
it, and the construction would reduce to an
active verb.  An active verb could be turned
into a noun or a stative verb by appending -*ka
to the end.  Does this seem reasonable?

If so, then all of the --nikka terms above might
be understood as nouns derived from the verb
*niNh, 'live', which has been modified by a
noun or stative verb that tells something about
the condition or context of how the animal (or
plant) lives.

Hope I didn't get carried away on a misunderstanding
of Qw /ppiza/!

Rory