Biloxi ayeke?/ayeki (Dorsey's Breves; e vs. i in OP)

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
> And since you were talking about "corn", Dorsey writes yek, yeki, or
> ayeki vs. Haas's yeke? and ayeke? (again ? representing glottal stop).
> (Note that the form ayeki or ayeke seems to be shortened by dropping the
> initial a- on several occasions.)

Bob actually mentioned this in his corn comment, but for some reason his
text seems to have come through with most of the vowels missing, including
the e in this one.

I think that Bob's also mentioned that Biloxi has #a- < *wa-.  In Dhegiha
and in Mississippi Valley generally "crop" terms seem to have wa-
initially, e.g., OP wathaNzi 'corn (plant)' and wahaba 'corn (seed, ear)'.
I think my glosses here are somewhat off.  I seem to recall wahaba hi
specifically as 'ear of corn', so maybe wahaba alone is more like 'corn
seed'.  Think of hi here as 'stalk'.  It's a bit like oak and acorn in
English, perhaps, the plant as the plant and the plant as its fruit.

I think of this wa- as 'unpossessed' by analogy with a form like wahi
'bone', but I may be wrong in both cases.  I think Bob thinks of things
like this as fossilized classifiers from a Pre-Siouan period.