"real" nouns

[Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC]

Yes -- I've also read somewhere about a language where sheep are "rabbit"
and rabbits are "real rabbit" ... seems to me that article had a lot of
similar examples, some involving introduced plants, from various parts of
the world.  It's been a long time, though, and the details are really dim
in my mind...   Seems like a perfectly reasonable way to name things; not
very surprising.


In Lakhota shoes are shoes, and moccasins are "real shoes".  I can't
recall which language I heard this in, but I have also heard of chickens
being named for "turkey", and then turkeys being "real turkeys".  It looks
like an idea that occurred to more than one group about more than one
item.

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, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 jschudli at indiana.edu wrote:
> > So horses are "dogs" and actual canine type dogs are "real dogs". I'm
sure
> > there are other introduced items that follow the same pattern as well,
but I
> > can't dredge them up from memory at the moment.
>
> OP:  tta' 'deerlike animal'  ('ruminant' is the fancy gloss)
>      tta'=xti 'deer' = 'real deer'
>
>      PpaN'kka 'Ponca'
>      PpaN'kka=xti 'subclan of one of the Ponca clans' = 'real Poncas'
>
>      (I think there are some other lexicalized =xti 'real' forms, but I'm
>       forgetting them.)
>
>      A similar pattern:
>
>      ni'kkas^iNga 'person' (historically 'little person'?)
>      ni'kkas^iNga ukke'dhiN (kk?) 'Indian' = 'common variety of person'
>
>      wa(a)'xe 'whiteman'
>      wa(a)'xe ukke'dhiN (kk?) 'Frenchman' = 'common variety of whiteman'
>