Siouan and Iroquoian

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 22 May 2004, Wallace Chafe wrote:
> I was interested to see the PMV reconstruction =xti(N), because this is one
> of those intriguing resemblances between Siouan and Iroquoian, where in the
> latter there's an intensifier with the form =hji. (No nasalization, but
> Iroquoian doesn't have a nasalized I.) I guess you'd call it fossilized
> too, in the sense that it only occurs with a few established forms.
> Particularly intriguing is the combination -keN-hji, which is an Iroquoian
> stem meaning "old" as applied to a human. How widespread in Siouan is -kaN-
> "old"?

I can't think of anything like kaN 'old' in an Omaha-Ponca context, and I
didn't find anything like this under 'old' or 'mature' in the CSD files.
Maybe Bob knows of something?  Ther eis the *hkaN 'holy, sacred' root,
which might transfer via the concept of veneration.

One possibility with =xti is that the first part of it is comparable to
that *=s^i(N) adversative morpheme.  A number of intensifiers and
negatives and so on start with =s^... or =x...  However, I don't think
that the enclitics are especially well understood in comparative terms.
Reflexes of *=xti occur in Mississippi Valley and Southeastern.  It's
pretty productive in Dhegiha, where it tends to occur slmost automatically
with some kinds of adverbs (in Omaha-Ponca) and is used in various other
ways, too.  I do have the impression that it is restricted in use in
Dakotan.