s^aaN for Sioux

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006, Tom Leonard wrote:
> I think that was the point the Ponca man was trying to get across in my
> previous story - that the word s^aN for Sioux was purposefully changed to a
> two syllable word. I imagine it could all boil down to a folk etymology, but
> it was rather comical at the time.

I suppose the humor might vary in inverse proportion to the number of
Dakotas present.

However, the presence of h in all the non-Omaha-Ponca forms suggests that
the word was originally bisyllabic and that Omaha-Ponca has simply lost
the h between vowels.  There are a few other cases of this in OP, though
it's a sporadic change, and not a regular one.  I think another example is
maNa 'bank'.  It's always nice to have s^aaN (s^-a-aN) and maNa (m-aN-a)
handy as examples and test cases when thinking about OP phonology and
orthography.  :-)

> I've heard several Ponca elders translate "s^ai ethe" or "s^ahi ethe" as
> "Cheyenne", but being derived from "s^aN" (Sioux) and "ethe" (relatives) or
> "relatives of the Sioux". In light of the discussion, would you suppose this
> as a folk analysis?

Definitely.  We've discussed s^ahi and similar forms on the list in the
past, and those can be searched for, so I won't dig up the details again,
but this form (with h) is a widely attested word for 'Cree' and 'Cheyenne'
(lit. 'little Cree' or given the "sorta" origin of the Dakotan diminutive,
maybe 'so-to-speak Cree').  S^ai would have loss of intervocalic h again.
The Dakota form usually has a theme-vowel or stem-forming vowel -a (which
ablauts to e before =la) yielding *s^ahi-a > s^ahi-e=la.  Forms like
s^ahia (s^ahiya) and plain s^ahi are found in various contexts in various
Siouan languages.  OP s^a(h)iedha is an adaptation of Dakotan s^ahiela.

On the other hand, as I indicated, there is some slight possibility that
s^ahaN might mean 'behaving like a Cree' if it's *s^ah-uN, so 'related to
the Cree' or (to use the old English diminutive) 'Cree-kin', may be an
accidental (or historically persistent?) parallelism.

This hypothetical use of uN 'to do' would parallel Omaha-Ponca usage of
gaghe 'to make, to do' as 'to behave as .., to play the ...'.  Some list
members may remember the discussion of Omaha-Ponca 'make-believe whitemen'
a while back, which involved waxe gaghe 'to play the whiteman'.  Another
example would be (if I remember the phrase) gdhedaN gaghe 'to magically
change into a hawk'.  Since the person in question (in a story) then flies
up the smoke hole we have to assume that more than mere emulation or
intent is potentially indicated in the gaghe construction.

I haven't yet gotten around to seeing if I was able to elicit causatives
in dhe in 1985.  I do remember some gaghe usage, but I think it was just
one possibility.  Better check before I spread too much confusion!