Siouan and Iroquoian

[R. Rankin]

Well, *-xti is clearly proto-Siouan.  I don't have /kan/ or anything similar for
'old' (but, of course, our coverage is far from exhaustive).

Nasalization is used for further intensification in both Siouan and Muskogean
sporadically.  Perhaps other Eastern language families as well.

John's given Siouan examples.  In Muskogean you have things like Creek /cotki/
'little', /cotkosi/ 'tiny', where /-osi/ is a diminutive ending, and then,
/cooNtkosi/ 'itsy bitsy' with extra high pitch (not to be confused with the
nasal aspectual grade that signals continuative).

We have a few other cognate sets in Siouan with "intrusive" nasalization
including the verb 'give'.

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: "Siouan List" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 2:11 AM
Subject: Re: Siouan and Iroquoian


> 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.
>
>