"Let's See" (RE: LOOKING AT SOMETHING)

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote:
> > The form that Whitman gives is haN'da from underlying hiN-a-da.  I think
> > Jimm actually gave it, too, in his note that prompted this!
>
> Not quite, John.  Perhaps I did not write a clear analysis of the entry:
> waNda.  As I attempted to say and write it, it seemed that the entry could
> be from:
>
> wa (something) + hiN- (me) + ada' (see).

Exactly. And when I had looked up hiN + ada and discovered it came out
haNda I remembered your comment on ...aNda in waNda and realized you had
already mentioned the form.

> I cannot account for the gloss "look at s.t.", which would be more likely to
> be:
> wa + ada'.
> Nor can I account for a nasual in the word.  And as is, it appears to be
> suggesting "something that sees me."

Exactly, again.  It looks like it should be wada, not waNda, or if it is
waNda, then it should be glossed 'we see something'.  (Would 'something
that sees me' really be possible?)  Altenratively, I was wondering if
waNda ~ wawaNda might suggest that the form is really a root waNda meaning
'to see something' (like we might write ada 'to see something').  In this
hypothetical root, the initial w would be part of the root, not a trace of
wa-.  Maybe the PS form, if there was one, would be *paNta, or maybe
*waNta.

It's always a bit disconcerting the way it seems best to translate
something like waruj^e as 'he ate something' in a text, but also to
include "something" or "someone" in glossing a transitive verb in a
dictionary, e.g., ruj^e 'to eat something'.  I suppose in the dictionary
waruj^e would be 'to eat some unknown or unspecified thing'.  English
isn't exactly the perfect metalanguage for glossing Siouan languages!


> we (dual)....,haN'da  (hiN+ada)
>
> I'm still unclear how you read a "we" into the word or how the declarative
> male particle "ke" come into consideration here.
> jimm

The OP eclamation isn't a perfect match for IO, since it is something like
hiNdakhe, not haNdakhe.  But haNda is from underlying hiN-a-da.  The khe
or the initial h can be missing in the OP exclamation.  I haven't looked
to see if the the variants are random or certain people use one or the
other.

> PS:  I do not believe the word to be an exclamation, although in the light
> that I am still unable to locate any textual context to support usage, I
> cannot disclaim it.

I'll have to give some examples when I get a chance.  The way it's used is
something like "Let's see, what can he be doing?"  It's never a main verb,
and there's always some associated expression.  I don't think it ever
stands alone as "Let's see!"  If it did I think "Hmm!" wqould be a better
gloss.  It's a bit like English patterns like "And, voila, the answer
comes out of this little slot here!"  Or, if I have the expression right
in Spanish, like a bilingual person - or at least my Spanish teacher -
saying, "A ver, how will he answer this?"  (I should probably check
out that expression which surfaces from the dark depths of Spanis II some
30 years ago.)

> Also a number of the interjections from OP et.al., you mentioned, have
> eqivalents in IOM.

Yes - it's pretty amazing how consistent the exclamations are across
Siouan.  The little list of i and hiN forms fromt eh CSD that Bob cited
barely scratches the surface of this.  I suppose the similarities might be
areal, rather than inherited in a strict sense, but I don't know if anyone
has ever looked at this.

An explicitly borrowed exclamation in OP in the Dorsey texts is nawa,
which I think is the affirmative form in Pawnee.  Anyway, the notes
indicate that this is a Pawnee form.  You have to assume that the narrator
explained this to Dorsey, since (J.O.) Dorsey never studied Pawnee that I
know.

My favorite OP exclamation is wuhu or buhu, which is something like "you
don't say!"