More on wachi

[Carolyn Quintero]

wachu' is the copulatory term in Osage, while waachi' is 'dance'. The
copulatory F*** wachu' is also rendered wachu'e, which makes me think it may
actually be wachuu'.  I'll have to look closely at this possibility.
(waachi'  'dance' is never *waachi'e.)

 

Lots of laughs in Osage with wacu'e 'bread' vs. wachu'e "copulate". Nobody
wants to ask for the bread at dinner.:-)

 

Carolyn

 

   _____  

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Rankin, Robert L
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 12:44 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: More on wachi

 

> 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


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