"WOUND"

[Rankin, Robert L]

Our question about this verb had to do with the conservative pronominal prefixes that commonly occur with stems beginning with */?/.  These are syncopating stems in the cases we have in which the verb root has a nasal vowel, so Dhegiha *?uN: 'do, be' is conjugated /muN/, /z^uN/.  Languages that have reflexes of regular *wa+?uN, *ra+?uN are not germaine to the discussion.  
 
As John says, *?o: 'wound' is the only known case of a ?-stem with an oral vowel.  So, what was the conservative (syncopating) pronoun allomorph used before analogy yielded regularized forms?  The bottom line is that apparently we still don't know.  An educated GUESS might be that the pronominals should be oral versions of */m-/ and */y- ~ r/ in the 1st and 2nd persons, but what would those forms be?  In Dhegiha, probably /z^-/ in the 2nd person, but what about the 1st person?  And what about Dakotan?  Is the oral variant of [m] a [w] or a [b] preceding an underlying glottal stop that was lost here?  Would Dakotan have been *[bo], *[do], [bo], [no], [mo], [no] or what?  I suspect we'll never know.  The analogically regular forms are prehistoric and were never recorded as far as I know.  One of life's little mysteries. . . .
 
Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Koontz John E
Sent: Wed 5/3/2006 2:09 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: "WOUND"



On Mon, 1 May 2006, Koontz John E wrote:
> On Mon, 1 May 2006, Justin McBride wrote:
> > u, v. to wound
> >
> > awá e aú, I have wounded it (=á-u-á-ye aú ?)
> > yúa e aú, hiN, have you wounded it?

> Pursuing your logic, which starts with Dorsey's and takes it a step or two
> further, the forms here are something like
>
> A1      a-o   a e au   I should have written a-(o) a e au.  JEK
> A2   y(a)-o   a e au
> A3        o-be    au

I wondered momentarily about Ks yo anent PMV *yo 'you wound'.  However, Ks
has regular A2 ya < PDH *dha (*ra) < PMV *ra.  Ks has z^ from PDh *z^ <
PMV *y.  Ks has z^ in the second person of ?-stems like the rest of
Dhegiha, not y.  In other words, the full PS second person active pronoun
*ya and the short form *y diverge in Dhegiha and in MV generally.

I suppose it's possible, however, that the -a- bit is the old theme vowel
(-e in *oo-e), but that doesn't explain e, and we'd have to assume that
this fossil theme vowel was lost before the plural/proximate marker.

A1     a-o-a    e au
A2  y(a)-o-a    e au
A3       o=b(i) e

For what it's worth, this back and forth analysis and counter analysis of
the stuff after the verb reminds a lot of the state of Dorsey's notes on
OP.

At least I hypothesize that we will be able to figure out the ae by
comparing with "other short verbs" on the one hand and things that like a
punctual reading (like push, shove, spit, throw, etc.) on the other.