comb (was Re: butterfly)

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Alright, but the name of an instrument should be coming from the third
> person form of the verb it's derived from, so that leaves us with
> i'gaha=i.

One might expect that, but there's no real trace of it here.

I've found in the Dorsey texts:

mikka'he 'comb' (only as noun)
gahe 'to comb'
giahe 'to comb for someone'
i'gigahe 'to comb for someone with'
i'kkigdhahe 'to comb oneself with'

These are mostly attested in somewhat more elaborate form than here given,
e.g., gahe is in gaha=b=a=z^i 'uncombed  (proximate/plural)', and i'gigahe
is in iNdhiNgaha=ga 'comb for me (with it)!'.

It appears that the ga- instrumental is favored for combing, since there
are also

gas^nude 'to pull out with a comb' (ga + s^nude 'pluck, pull out, bare')
gias^nap[h?]e 'to comb smooth for one' (gi + ga + s^na 'smooth' + phe)

-p[h?]e in the last might be the *phe 'comb' root that shows up as -he in
gahe et al.

There's also

xdhaz^e 'umcombed, disheveled'

> But I don't think the =i particle will normally be used in
> this case, so that gets us i'gahe.

I usually give in providing a third person, since the proximate form is
less marked.

> If we want to add 'self' to the implication of what is being combed,
> will that give us i'kigdhahe ? I believe Alberta said that 'I comb
> myself' is aki'gdhahe.

That agrees with the forms attested in Dorsey.  The stem kkigdha'he would
underlie i'kkigdhahe, and it's nice to have it confirmed!

> A form like PDh *miNh-ka-phe would work, except that we would expect
> that instrumental i-: *miNh-i-ka-phe.

I suppose, if miN- here is 'woman', that we'd have to take in the capacity
of a either an object or a 'kind of' modifier.  That is, perhaps there
were 'man-combs' and 'woman-combs', but only 'woman-combs' remain as a
term.  I guess the 'kind of' element amounts to a sort of subject here. I
might expect an instrumental locative i- here, too, but if it doesn't seem
to appear, my inclination is to leave it at that.  I guess it would be
nice to have some parallel examples of deverbative instrumental nouns
without i-, but at the moment I don't have any in mind.

As far as why there is a kk here and not just g, when the connection with
gahe seems fairly obvious, the only explanation that occurs to me is the
probability that miN 'woman' is an h-final stem, historically speaking,
i.e., from PMS *wiNh-.  The final -h is suggested by Crow bia, Hidatsa
wia, Mandan miNiNh(e), Tutelo mi(i)he.  The h-final forms seems to be the
ones that condition Va (ia, ua) finally in Crow-Hidatsa.  Note that
Dhegiha does have mi(N)ga 'female animal' where one might expect mi(N)'kka
if the wiNh-ka rule worked with complete regularity.  The complete absence
otherwise of any trace of final-h in Mississippi Valley, unless perhaps
final-h explains the failure of Dakotan wiN(yaN) 'woman' to be *miNyaN,
suggests we should be a bit careful in assuming that final-h explains the
kk in 'comb' in some Dhegiha forms.  I rather like the possibility myself,
but it is rather going out on a limb.  I don't think there's a trace of
such forms outside of Dhegiha, and they would have to be very
conservative.

JEK