OP: coming and going

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 21 May 2006, Koontz John E wrote:
> It appears that *p- (or *b- or *w-) 'first person' comes out h before
> another stop consonant, which is normal, since clusters of stop + stop
> ending in p come out the same, e.g., *pte 'cow bison' > PDh *hte > OP
> tte.

I guess this was sloppy phrasing - I mean that *p A1 is reduced to
preaspiration before another stop.

Butthe important factor here is that appears that *k-stems behave in the
first person (only) like *p-stems in
Dhegiha in all but one case, with 'want, desire' being the only
exception,
This seems to say something about assimilation of stops in
*pk clusters, but it over-simplifies things to say that *pk >
*hp,
since we have a verb 'I want' and a noun 'turtle', in which *pk appears to
act as *hk, as in 'I want', with no assimlation.  In addition, outside of
Dhegiha and the one isolated Dakota example mentioned, *hk appears with
all known *k-stems.

              PS      Ma   PMV            Da          OP         Wi
'turtle'      *pke    pke  *hke           khe(ya)     kke        kee
'I want'      *pkuN-  +++  *hkuN-         +++         kkaN-      +++
'I come back' *pku    +++  *hpu ~ *hku    (?) phu     ppi        kuu
'I make'      *pkaghe ---  *hpaghe ~ ???  +++         ppaghe     +++
'I immitate'  *pkuNs  ---  *hpuNze        +++         ppaNze     +++
'I donate'    *pka-   +++  *hpa-          +++         ppadhe     +++
'I don't      *pkuN-  ???  *hpuN-         ???         ppaNz^iNga ???
  know how to'

+++ => the cognate form inflects by another pattern, or doesn't inflect,
or has unknown inflection, and so doesn't bear on the situation.

I think *ku 'to come back' is the only *k-stem attested in Winnebago or
Ioway-Otoe.

For that matter, *ku is the only *k-stem in Dakotan, so to speak.  But the
phu example might be the first person of u 'come', instead, even though,
as we've seen, *bu looks like a better bet for an old Dakotan form.
Normally the first persons of these stems are the regular forms waku and
wau, of course.

OP gaN-z^iNga 'to not know how to' might be 'to little desire to', in
which case it would have *p-stem first person with the same stem *gaN-
that gets the *k-stem treatment.  In that case, apart from the Dakota case
of phu 'I came back' (?), *p-stem first persons for *k-stems begins to
look like a Dhegiha idiosyncracy.

The only *t-stems, are *a...ta 'to see', *tuNp ~ *tuN- 'to see', and maybe
*ta 'wake up' (?) (cf. Te kikta 'to awaken').

*P-stems are fairly common, though most are formed with the instrumentals
*pa- and *pu-.  Perhaps any tendency to *h-p in the *k-stems is simple
analogy with *p-stems.

One further oddity about *kuN 'want'.  This stem does not palatalize in
Dakotan.

I keep collecting these oddities, and periodically I trot them out, hoping
that someone will think of something illuminating.

I haven't yet myself, but this time around I did notice that 'to want'
tends to be formed with an *o-locative.

Ma o...kuNh 'to want something' (and notice that final h!)
Te o...kuN, kuN, kuNla (only first part inflected)
OP gaN=dha (both parts inflected)
IO guNra (regular? only first part inflected?)
Wi roo...guN (regular)

But then, *(w)o- prefixes occur with other *k-stems, too, e.g., Wi wooga
'gift', wooguNs 'creator'.