Dakota: verbs with 'hill' involved

"Alfred W. Tüting" ti at fa-kuan.muc.de
Fri Apr 9 17:21:02 UTC 2004


 >Hi Alfred!

My first question on that would be whether the [y] in _yahaN_
is real or epenthetic.  The latter seems possible, as it always
follows front vowels [i] or [e] in your examples.  Have you
tried looking up _ahaN_, or just plain _haN_ ?

The one pair of examples you give that I'm pretty sure of is:

agli'yoxpayA
they came down from a hill

ahi'yoxpayA
they came down a hill

Here, I'm sure the [y] is epenthetic.  _oxpayA_ must
correspond to OP uxpa'dhe, which means to fall.  So these
should equate morphologically to (hypothetical) OP:

   agdhi            uxpadhe
   came back here   fell

   athi             uxpadhe
   arrived here     fell

So in this case at least, there is probably no explicit
hill as such, but only the statement that they came back
here or arrived here via a descending path.  I'd suspect
that the (a)haN part means something like 'stand on hi

Rory<<


Hau Rory!

thanks for your prompt reply that really gave me some hint on this matter:

I actually found

_ahaN'_ - to stand on

_oxpa'_ - to drop -> oxpa'ye thi'pi - dormitory quartern

_ahaN'_ - to stand on, rest on

_ahaN'_ - take care, look out. 'Be careful!' (as is said when something
is losing its balance and will drop, as a lamp on the edge of a table)

... and, of course, _han/he_ - to stand (of many things of appropriate
shapes) e.g. (of a restaurant in Rood's examples): "Ka wiglioinazi kin
hel isakib wanzi HE" (There's one over there, next to the gas station).

As it might seem (and the 2nd example appears to indicate), _ahan_ not
only implies the idea of standing on/at smth, but also of being careful
in a sense of 'to watch' (=look out), which might derive from the idea
of standing on a hilltop and looking afar from there.

Here are some more entries (Buechel SJ) maybe pointing in this direction:

_ahaN'kiktapi_ - a wake, a watching at the body of a deceased person
(from: _ahaN_ + _kikta'_) - maybe, this taking place on a hilltop(??)

_ahaN'naz^iN khuwa'_ - to bother one constantly (perhaps: smb 'chasing'
you by standing and watching/observing your behavior etc.)

_ahaN'zi_ - to be shady, overshadowed
(_ahan_ + _zi_ - yellow, smoky??; maybe, as of a cloud on a hilltop?)

Amalupte kin lila pilamayayelo!


Alfred



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