OP dancing

[Tom Leonard]

I agree with this. The c is most defnitely aspirated, wac^Hi ga'xe , as Rory
pointed out.

In my experience this verb goes both ways - some times it's treated as a
unit and other times you'll hear it conjugated (example: wac^hi pa'xe tah
miN'ke - I'm going to dance). You'll also hear things like "wac^Hi ga'xe ama
agu di a?" - where are they dancing?". We also hear the verb "noN'te" for
"dance", as in "noN'te wa'the" or  "aN'noNte aNga'ti" - we are here dancing.
Apologies for the poor phonetics.

The "copulatory F*** verb"?! Is that an actual linguistic term? Never heard
it said that way before; that's marvelous! And, it's also true. However,
it's more likely to take the form "wa'tsi", sounding very much like the
Osage word for "dance" - a favorite old tease between the Osage and Ponca.
Jim Duncan used to ALWAYS get in trouble when he'd visit Ponca Powwow and
say "awa'tsi kom'bra" - my aunt would teasingly slap him and say
"hey.....behave yourself around here". Then they'd all bust out laughing.

Depending upon the context, sometimes it's just safer to use "noN'te".


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rory M Larson" <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: OP dancing


> 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"
>              <linguista at gmail.
>              com>                                                       To
>              Sent by:                  siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>              owner-siouan at list                                          cc
>              s.colorado.edu
>                                                                    Subject
>                                        OP dancing
>              07/04/2006 11:03
>              PM
>
>
>              Please respond to
>              siouan at lists.colo
>                  rado.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
>