WINN TERM "FRENCH"

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Jimm GoodTracks wrote:
> There are several ethnic terms in Radin's Winnebago that challenge an
> analysis.  While I will seek some help with those at some other time, right
> now I am perplexed with the term for:

> French  =  Djimoxgemena

I can't make anything of this either.

In regard to me, there do appear to be two unusuallly shaped morphemes in
Winnebago me'(e) ~ me?e 'this near me' and ne'e ~ ne?e < niN?e 'first or
second peson (independent) pronoun'.  Since, as Bob points out, the
article -ra has the form -na (Miner writes -na with a hacek over the n)
after nasal vowels, perhaps this form involves =me'=ra.  That leave
j^imoxge to account for.

> Riggs offers:
> Was^icuNikceka   ("common white man" jgt??)

Looks good to me, Jimm.  In checking I noticed that per Riggs has Santee
has ikc^e'wic^has^ta 'Indian' (interesting syntax) comparable to
Omaha-Ponca nikkas^iNga ukke'dhiN 'Indian' = person common' and Teton has
was^ic^uNikc^eka comparable to Omaha-Ponca wa'xe ukke'dhiN 'French person'
= 'whiteman common'.

> "Everyday Crow" has:
> Isb'tchiihachkite

isbi'tchiihachkite
i-    s-        bitchii-hachk(i)-t(e)
Poss3-ALIENABLE-knife   long     those who are (?)

I had the advantage of various draft materials kindly supplied me over the
years by Randy Graczyk, notably an alphabetic index of Everyday Crow.

The is- initial is the Crow disguise of things like Dakota itha-, OP itta,
Winnebago hic^a-.  Once I remembered that from the examples with is- I was
able to recognize the combining form of bi'tchiia 'knife'.  At that point,
I looked up hachk... 'long' and found hachka in a draft word list by
Gordon & Graczyk.  It appears also in ashhachkalisu'ua 'long dance'.
>>From hachk- on I am floundering, but Randy's grammar describes a suffix
-ta 'distributive plural'.  I'm hoping that the somewhat mysterious (to
me) rules of vowel change in final position may work this out for me.

By analogy with the rest of Siouan I'd expect something like 'common' or
'real' here, i.e., "common long-knives,"  but I couldn't find a match.

As usual in dealing with Crow-Hidatsa, one discovers that it seems to be
Siouan, but well encrypted.

> I found nothing in Kanza, and Quapaw only had:  is^ta'xe  (whiteman).

I think that must be a variant on something like the Osage form iN-shta'
xiN (/i(N)s^ta' ghi/?) (LaFlesche) glossed 'yellow eyes, a whiteman'.  I
suppose xiN (N = raised n here) represents ghi '(seriously) yellow', an
augmentive sound symbolic grade of zi 'yellow'.