Wo'te 'food' and Wo- 'food' in Dakota Compounds

[REGINA PUSTET]

This is the most systematic and thorough approach to the issue that we've had on the list so far -- I have nothing more to add. John's evidence goes with my initial intuition that wok'u > wa-o-k'u.

Regina


Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:
The brief summary is, I think, that there is evidence for wo'te 'food',
though normally in the context of food for animals: 'forage', 'browse',
etc. At the same time, it seems doubtful that wo'-verbs with 'food' in
the gloss derive from wol= < wo'te as an incorporand, though there may be
some influenced from wol=.

First, for the benefit of any non-Dakotanists (myself, anyway), in Dakotan
as attested for Santee and Teton in the Riggs/Williamson-Buechel
dictionary complex and in Ingham the form wo'yute is the nominal 'food',
with yu'ta 'eat (trans.)' and wo'ta 'eat (intrans.)' as the verbal forms.
For the benefit of the Dakotanists, the Omaha-Ponca pattern is somewhat
simpler: dhathe 'to eat (trans.)', wadha'the 'to eat (intrans.); food'.

It appears, however, that Dakotan wo'te 'food' does exist. Gilmore
(1977), originally printed in 1914 lists the following plant names. Note
that Gilmore's Linnaean binomials are generally out of date.

"pispiza ta wote" (prairie-dog its-food) = Boerbera papposa 'prairie-dog
fennel; fetid marigold'

"zuzecha ta wote" (snake its-food) Celastrus scandens 'Bittersweet'

"pte ta wote" (buffalo its-food) Geoprumnon crassicarpum 'Buffalo pea;
ground plum'

"h.eh.aka ta pezhuta, h.eh.aka ta wote" (elk its-medicine, elk its-food)
Monarda fistulosa 'Horsemint'

"zuzecha ta wote sapsapa" (snake its-medicine black-here-and-there)
Symphoricarpos sp. 'Coralberry; Buck brush'


Somewhat similar formations:

"maka ta omnicha" (earth its-beans) Falcata comosa 'Groundbean'

"heyoka ta pezhuta" (contrary his-medicine) Malvastrum coccineum 'Red
false mallow'

"chap' ta haza" (p' = p + apostrophe) (beaver its-grape) Ribes americanum
'Wild black currant'

In fact, a very similar set of forms occur in Buechel, etc. See, for
example, the lists of flowers, etc., in the English index to Buechel.

In most cases wote here might be better glossed as something like 'browse'
or 'forage', or perhaps just 'animal food', so it is not surprising if the
form doesn't appear as 'food'. The fact that it doesn't appear in its own
right at all may mean that it is specialized vocabulary that has been
missed or that it only occurs in longer forms at present.

Students of vocabulary and cultural contact may notice that in many cases
the English name is obviously a calque of the Dakota name.



Now, let's consider the possibility that wo- as a prefix in forms with the
gloss 'food' comes from wo'ta 'to eat (intrans.)' ~ wo'te 'food' ~ wol-
'food (combining form)'.

The hypothesis here comes from Boas & Deloria (1941:71) as far as I am
aware. They say (1941:70) "A number of nouns in abbreviated form (or
their primary stems?) are used in compounds as classifiers. The
consciousness of their derivation is not always clear as is proved by
those cases in which the noun is obscured by metathesis. Examples are:
waNsma'hi for mas-waN'hi (metal arrow tooth) 'iron arrowhead' ..." The on
p. 71 they say "wo- food; --- wo'yute 'good'; wo'(wa)k?u '(I) give food';
-- wo'aya 'to take food to a guest'; -- wo'(wa)la '(I) ask for food'."

Looking under wo- in Buechel, for example, yields:

wo 'food', cf. wo'yute (i.e., a reference for the morpheme)
wo'c^hiNpi 'begging, craving; hunger'
wo'k?u 'to give food to'
wo'la 'to beg food'
wo'las?a 'a beggar' (wo'la=s?a)
wo'luta 'the round of a beef animal when dried'
wo'soso 'meat cut in strips or strings' (maybe not?)
wo'sota 'to kill off, to kill all the game' (maybe not?)
wo'yaptapi 'leavings, fragments of food'
wo'yute 'food'

Here I've omitted any food-related form in which wo- is plainly a
locative, e.g., wo'haN 'to cook, to boil, to make a feast', i.e., 'to boil
something in something'.

The following forms actually have wol, although wo'lwota is a reduplicated
form 'to eat (repeatedly)'.

wo'lwota 'to eat'
wol=i'glus^taN 'to finish eating'
wo'l=wic^hayapi 'a banquet'
wol=ya' 'to make a feast'

This is not a large list. Unlike some other classificatory prefixes, all
examples, involve verbs, or nouns derived from verbs.

While it is tempting to regard some of the wo-not-wol as cases of wo-
derived from wol- and there seems to be no real semantic obstacle to this,
I have noticed an interesting thing. Most of the wo-forms have a
corresponding o-form with a related gloss:

wo'chiNpi ~ oc^hiN' 'to desire, beg, ask for'
wo'k?u ~ ok?u' 'to give to, e.g., food; to give a portion to'
wo'luta ~ o'lute 'thigh muscle'
wo'soso ~ oso' 'to cut open'
wo'sota ~ o'sota 'all gone, used up'
wo'yaptapi ~ oya'pta 'to leave, have over and above what one eats'
wo'yute ~ oyu'te 'eating, food'

In short, the wo'- cases are all plausibly wa-indefinite object forms
derived from an underlying locative in o. My impression is that while
wo'- as a 'food' classifier might be influenced by the existence of
wol-compounds from wo'te 'food (for animals)', what we really have
etymologically is wo'- < *wa-o'- where an indefinite object is
pragmatically a reference to food. This intepretation of wo'- is enhanced
as suggested by Regina by the accentual pattern with wo'-, though
compounds with wo'l= may also show initial accent. Different sorts of
compounds show different accentual patterns.

John E. Koontz

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