OP u- and udhu- Verbs

Rory M Larson rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu
Sun Nov 14 22:39:36 UTC 2004


John wrote:
>> aN'guna=i 'we hunted them' 90:434.2
>
> Except for the anomalous first person example, which I omitted here,
these
> plural third person object forms all have initial accent and presumably
an
> initial long vowel for the locative or inclusive pronoun reflecting
> contraction of wa- with the initial followed by loss of w before the
> rounded vowel of u- IN or aNg- A12.  The latter counts as rounded because
> it is from *uNk- (cf. Dakotan).  If we ever conclude that there are three
> nasal vowels in OP (or Dhegiha in general), then perhaps the one in aNg-
> is back/rounded anyway.

That makes sense.  So we should parse that as:

  *wa-uNk'-o-[root]

In that case, the accent falls on the first syllable naturally,
without having to assume generalization of a rule of shifting
the accent forward to indicate underlying wa-, as I suggested
in my last posting.

In this context, it might be worth mentioning again that our
speakers insist that the sequence

  *uNk-o'-[root]

should be pronounced

  ugu'-[root],

not

  aNgu'-[root]

as Dorsey records it.  That would seem to be independent
corroboration of the conservative back/rounded nature of
OP aNg- that John proposes above.

Rory



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