More on wachi

[Rankin, Robert L]

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

> The "copulatory F*** verb"?! Is that an actual linguistic term? 

I guess it is now.  :-)

> 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.  

That would be interesting, and one more stage along the grammaticalization cline.  It is certainly conjugated as a causative in other Dhegiha dialects.  I seriously wonder if the *-re causative is productive with new concepts in any of the Dhegiha languages now.

> 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. 

The 'dance' term is common Siouan with cognates in all the Dhegiha languages (and probably all Siouan languages).  I doubt it was borrowed from Dakotan.  The /ch/ has strange and interesting correspondences in the more distant languages like Biloxi, Ofo, Crow and Hidatsa though, so I suppose some borrowing is possible somewhere along the line.  It wasn't originally homophonous with the F*** word.  The F word originally had the vowel U, and the form /chu/ or /thu/.  Siouan U became front-rounded umlaut u in Kansa and Osage, so those languages had /chi/ in 'dance' and /chu/ in 'F***', but front-rounded [u] often merges with /i/ in Osage and Kaw, and always does in Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw.  And that's where the problem arose!  

The Kaw verb /kkiighe/ is translated as Dorsey had it.  I would have expected /gi-/ also.  I need to check my own copy of Dorsey's Kaw file slips.  When I re-elicited the dictionary, I wrote directly on the slips in blue magic marker rather than in a notebook.  But my file boxes are all in big boxes in the garage since I moved my office, and I haven't gotten to them yet.  

Quapaw has a different form, /kkik-kaghe/ 'to do for oneself', with has the /kkik-/ reflexive prefix and the verb initial /k/ also.  I don't have a dative or benefactive in Quapaw, unfortunately.  

I seem to recall that John Koontz has made a study of these particular forms, so maybe he'll clear it all up for us.

Bob