OP dancing

[Rory M Larson]

Hi Bryan,

I believe the c is aspirated: wac^Hi'gaghe.  We should check with the
speakers, but I would guess that this verb might be treated as a unit, or
not conjugate at all.  The term is presumably borrowed from Lakhota or a
related dialect, where wac^Hi is the word for 'dance'.  But in Omaha, this
word is a little awkward, because c^Hi is their copulatory F*** verb.  So
apparently they added -gaghe at the end to soften it and make it clear that
they were talking about dancing, and not some other social activity.  I
doubt that you could say "wac^Hi'ppaghe", as this could too easily be
misinterpreted in the way you are trying to avoid.  To say 'I dance', you
might have to resort to something awful like "wac^Hi'gaghe ppa'ghe".

Rory




                                                                           
             "Bryan Gordon"                                                
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I hope people don't mind if a barrage of questions exudes from my corner;
I'm analysing so much text that I'm running into countless issues which no
doubt many of you have encountered before.

One thing which has just struck me is:

The OP verb for dancing is "waci gaghe" (not sure if that c is aspirated or
not). I had always assumed this was a noun plus the verb "to make." Makes
sense. But Hahn (p. 54) lists this lexeme amid her explanation of
conjugation of verbs with the ga- instrumental prefix. Of course, "gaghe"
"to make" does NOT have this prefix! If it did, we would get *aaghe -
thaaghe - gaghai - aNgaghai for the conjugations, but instead of course we
get paghe - shkaghe - gaghai - aNgaghai.

So the question is, does "waci gaghe" actually use the "make" verb, or is
it actually some other verb with the ga- prefix? I have searched through
Dorsey but nothing has caught my eye.

Thanks for your insights!

- Bryan Gordon