butterfly

[R. Rankin]

No, Quapaw /piza/  "appears" to be 'dry'.  Just as
/nikka/ "appears" to be 'man, person'.  But this
appearance is just what I'm questioning.  We may
be over-analyzing some of this.  And I don't care
for the idea of turning Quapaw into New Guinea
Pidgin with 'fella' attached to everything.  :-)

You're quite right that the syntax is often funny
in these forms.  I think it's just as likely that
this/these is/are a different /nikka/.  Seems to
me I also have one of the spider terms with
/nikka/ too, but I can't find it right now.

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rory M Larson" <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: butterfly


>
> 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
>
>
>