Iskousogos

[Rankin, Robert L]

It's a mystery to me too.  Looks like nothing I've ever seen.  I assume
if it's French spelling that it represents something like [iskuzogo],
with or without the final consonant.  But that doesn't give me any
bright ideas.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Koontz John E [mailto:John.Koontz at colorado.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 2:28 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: Iskousogos


On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> I was wondering if there's any chance "Iskousogos" is a Siouan
> vocable.

Well, as it stands it looks remarably unlike typical (Mississippi
Valley) Siouan forms, but this is more of a fuzzy instinct based on what
phonemes are where - call it typical morpheme patterns or canonical form
- than any outright impossibilities.  I assume the final s is to be
taken as part of the form, and not a French morpheme?

I suppose something like you could see in the initial isk- something
like ieska < i(y)e 'to speak; word(s)' + ska 'clear, white', which is
fairly widely used for translators and speakers of the local language
and sometimes as a self-designation.  But you have to assume that had
something else appended to it to account for the -usogos/usokos.