southern plains horses

[ROOD DAVID S]

Similarly, Wichita has 2 words for 'horse': the caballo word (kawaarah in
Wichita), and one that looks almost like one of the 'buffalo' words,
namely taara (the buffalo word is tarha).  I used to think they were
suppletive forms for free noun vs. incorporated noun (I have never gotten
kawaarah incorporated), but last summer someone used the taara form as a
free noun.  I have no etymology for the taara form except the possibility
that it's somehow related to the 'buffalo' one.  (If a contrast is
necessary, taara means 'buffalo cow', but it also occurs in contexts were
gender is irrelevant, as does the one for 'buffalo bull'.)

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Wallace Chafe wrote:

> Caddo has two words for 'horse', which people often cite to show that "we
> don't all talk alike": kawa:yuh and di:tamah (with falling pitch on the
> di:). The di:- part in the latter means 'dog', but I've never been able to
> figure out the -tamah. I mention this because the Caddos were neighbors of
> the Tonkawas, with some linguistic contact, and it's quite possible the
> Tonkawas also had an alternative word derived from caballo, which Hoijer
> just didn't happen to record.
> --Wally
>
> > A propos of horses, dogs etc.:  Tonkawa had a word for horse that meant
> > 'dog for carrying things'; it had also had one which meant something to
> > do with burdens, which had been used in Gatschet's day -Hoijer collected
> > this word but not n a text (maybe it had been subject to taboo at some
> > time).  Given that Spanish was the major source of loans into Tonkawa,
> > it's a little odd that it never took over a form of caballo/cahuayo.
>
>