animate _wa-_

[Rory M Larson]

Hi Alfred!  Welcome to the list, and thanks for your comments!

I had a couple of thoughts on your post:

> "Tiowicukte     -  Kill In the House" (b)

>As it seems,
> (b) tiowicakte [thi-o'wicha-kte] or [thi-owi'cha-kte ??] (*_wicu_  looks
like a typo, as there are quite some mistakes in the listing)

This might be a typo, as you say, but it might also be a
case of an American English spelling convention sneaking
in.  Over here, the letter 'u' often represents a sound
about half way between schwa and [a] as in 'father' or
'Vater', as in 'cut' or 'butter'.  Some people call this
sound schwa; most language orthographies would class it
as a type of 'a' sound.  An unaccented -a at the end of
a word, as in Latin in'sula or puella usually seems to
be pronounced with this sound.  In American comic book
orthography, an open syllable of this sound is commonly
spelled "uh".  I think the IPA symbol is an inverted 'v'.
I suspect the Dakotan speaker didn't lower his jaw all
all the way to full [a], so the English-thinking recorder
may have heard this name as "Tee-oh-wee-chuck-tay", and
failed to get all the vowels converted to proper Dakotan.


> So, I'd like to imagine that (a) and (b) are 'normal' sentences following
the topic-comment pattern
>

        TOPIC                 COMMENT

 mni                  owicakte

 ti (kin/wan)         owicakte



with the comment's wica-particle in its 'regular' function.


With regard to (c) and (d), this  might be different. With no locative
indicated in the 'word',  I'm getting the impression that it might be kind
of a fossilized term with a former topic (ti) now incorporated in the
comment sentence, not much unlike in expressions as _tii'un_ [thi-i'uN]
[thi-i'yuN] (to do house-painting), where also from the word's stress put
on the second syllable one might deduce that it's a comment-sentence:

    TOPIC            COMMENT

      0       tiwicakte

      0       tikte




I'm not sure whether mni and ti qualify as topics here or
not.  They may; I'm just not sure.  In any case, they aren't
participants with the verb as either actors or objects; they
function more as qualifiers of the overall action.  Nouns
can modify other nouns in MVS just as they do in English and
German, with the modifying noun preceding the one modified;
e.g. rail-road, steam-boat, etc.  In MVS, they seem to be
able to modify verbs just as freely.  In English, this doesn't
seem to be so acceptable, except in gerunds like the ones you
listed: "house-killing", etc.  (I think it works freely in
German though, doesn't it?  "Er hat ihnen hausumgebringt" ??)

I think the difference between ti-kte and (I presume)
ti-o-kte is probably the same as that between "house-killing"
and "killing in a house" in English.  The first qualifies the
killing with a "house", which only means that the killing is
distinguished by the fact that it involves a house.  It might
be that the killer catches the victim at or in a house, or it
might mean that the killer slays his victims by picking up
houses and hurling them at them.  The second more specifically
says that the killing occurs in a house.  Given that hurling
houses at people is improbable, both versions will probably
be understood the same way by the hearers.

Regards,
Rory




                      "Alfred W. Tüting"
                      <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de>         To:       siouan at lists.colorado.edu
                      Sent by:                    cc:
                      owner-siouan at lists.c        Subject:  animate _wa-_
                      olorado.edu


                      01/06/2004 09:08 AM
                      Please respond to
                      siouan






1)
In an historical listing of family heads in "Records of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs
Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota Roll 5A: Record of Rations
Issued 1885 (http://www.primeau.org/StandingRock1885families.html) I found
the following proper names:

"Miniowicakte  -  Kill In the Water" (a)
"Tiowicukte     -  Kill In the House" (b)

2)
Buechel S.J. has in his dictionary:

tiwicakte [thi'wic^hakte]  -  a murderer, to commit murder (c)
tikte [thikte']  -  to murder (d)
and also
tiokte [thio'kte]  -  to kill in the house, commit homicide (e)

As it seems,
(a) is _mni owicakte_ [mni-o'wicha-kte] or [mni-owi'cha-kte]??,
(b) tiowicakte [thi-o'wicha-kte] or [thi-owi'cha-kte ??] (*_wicu_  looks
like a typo, as there are quite some mistakes in the listing)

Given that Dakotan namings very often refer to specific events/deeds in the
past, I'm inclined to assume that the English renderings here are not
specific enough. So, I'd translate

(a) as: "(he) has killed them in (the) water" and
(b) as: "(he) has killed them in the/a house"

with _-wica-_ refering to specific animate 3.Pl objects (which, from
context, most likely here have to be human <- enemies).
With regard to (b), I'd still tend to read _-wica-_ as a reference to
"enemies" (despite Buechel's pejorative denotation in (e) ):  Given that
Native names very often are given to honour their bearers, it would be hard
to assume that in this case someone was named by the term "Murderer").

So, I'd like to imagine that (a) and (b) are 'normal' sentences following
the topic-comment pattern


        TOPIC                 COMMENT

 mni                  owicakte

 ti (kin/wan)         owicakte



with the comment's wica-particle in its 'regular' function.


With regard to (c) and (d), this  might be different. With no locative
indicated in the 'word',  I'm getting the impression that it might be kind
of a fossilized term with a former topic (ti) now incorporated in the
comment sentence, not much unlike in expressions as _tii'un_ [thi-i'uN]
[thi-i'yuN] (to do house-painting), where also from the word's stress put
on the second syllable one might deduce that it's a comment-sentence:

    TOPIC            COMMENT

      0       tiwicakte

      0       tikte




Also, as it appears to me, the wica-part here seems to be different from
that in the 'regular' examples above. As Buechel's entry seems to suggest,
and Kostya has pointed out, it kind of indicates a nonspecific (generic)
object, here, that also might be more narrow in its 'animate' meaning,
namely referring to humans (wicasa?).

These being my amateurish considerations on the context of "house-killing"
(which - in Native society - apparably had been regarded/estimated in a way
different from "war/battle-killing" and "hunt-killing"). But, maybe, it's
all BS :(

Best regards

Alfred