verb suppletion.

[R. Rankin]

I think the pronouns in these 'eating' verbs are the
same conservative pattern you get with 'be sitting'
(ra:Nke) and 'be lying' (ruNke), verbs in which the
initial glides may be epenthetic.  The only difference
is nasality of the V.  I think John is expecting a
somewhat more innovative pattern.  As I recall, 'sit,
stand' and 'eat' are among the very few verbs with the
archaic (V-initial?) conjugation pattern.  I suppose it
may be possible to think of 'chew' as more recent in
some sense (maybe just less conservative in conjugation
pattern, but I think the /a/ vowel in some forms comes
from the 'chew' verb nonetheless.  I don't know which
dental stop Dakotan dialects have here, but it would be
interesting to look at the range of dialect data for
this verb.

The consonantism in the suppletive 'eat' works for me
in CH/WI because *ra:the 'chew' has *th, (not *ht), and
*rute 'eat' has just *t.  Fortunately or unfortunately,
both of these dentals have the reflex [d] or [j] in
Chiwere and Hochunk (voiceless in WI word finally, of
course), so the difference resides only in the V there.

Both verb stems have reflexes in all MVS subgroups but
reflexes of *rute are more specialized in Dhegiha
apparently.

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: verb suppletion.


> On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, R. Rankin wrote:
>> Isn't this just the suppletion of Mississippi Valley
>> Siouan *ra:the 'to chew, eat physically' with one or
>> more persons of *rute 'to eat, dip'?
>
> I don't think so.  While *...te and *...the might
> both yield Winnebabo
> ...c^ and IOM ...j^e (not sure why ...j^i in first
> and second persons),
> the pattern of inflection with *ra... would be A1
> *Raa-, A2 *s^raa-, A3
> *ra-, i.e., something like A1 ha-daj^i, A2 ra-sdaj^i,
> A3(ruj^e) in IOM
> (with pleonastic overlaying of the regular paradigm
> indicated before
> dashes).  And in Dakotan (e.g., Teton) *raathe would
> inflect A1 blathe, A2
> nathe, (A3 yathe), not A1 wate, A2 yate.  So, there's
> no way that
> particular pattern of suppletion could account for
> the pattern A1
> *wa-t(e), A2 *ya-t(e), A3 *ru-t(e).
>
> The other examples are all good ones, of course.
>
> The best hypothesis I could come up with for *t- ~
> *rut- 'eat' was that it
> might actually be *ut-, with the initial *r in the
> third person being
> perhaps a relict of a third person in *i-, so that
> the inflection was
> perhaps A1 *wa-(u)t-e, A2 *ya-(u)t-e, A3 (?)
> *i-(r)ut-e.  I'm not so sure
> about that third person in *i-, though.
>
>