Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

Wed Dec 12 19:06:12 UTC 2007

Some data from Crow bearing on ki-:

The Crow cognate is chi (c^), and it generally has the meaning 'again' or 'return to the previous state'.

axshe'e 'win from' chiaxshe'e 'win again'

daksakshi' 'fit into' chilaksakshi' 'go back into place'

Sometimes chi is infixed:

a'akkapaa 'frozen' a'hchikapaa 'frozen again'
a'apchi 'light a fire' a'hchipchi 'rekindle a fire'
apa'ali 'grow' a'hchipaali 'grow again'

These infixed examples suggest that the underlying form is hchi.

Before stems whose first vowel is u chi becomes ku:

du'tchi 'get, grab' kulutchi' 'take back'

kuu' 'give' kukuu' 'give back'

Chi 'again' is homophonous with chi 'possessive reflexive':

dakaschi' 'carry in one's arms' chilakaaschi' 'carry one's own in one's arms'
da'xpii 'embrace, hug' chilaxpi'i 'sit on one's own (as a hen sits on her eggs)'

Sometimes it's hard to figure out if?a stem with chi has the meaning?'again' or 'possessive reflexive':

baki'i 'beg' chiwaki'i 'pray' 'beg again (and again)'? 'beg for one's own'?

I do not find chi with the meaning 'become' in Crow.

However, things are different in Hidatsa.? I have a paper (unpublished?) by Wes Jones entitled "Phonology and semantics of the (h)ki prefixes in Hidatsa (Mandan, Dakota).? He lists several different meanings for this?prefix in Hidatsa:

1) come into the state (mutative)
2) act again (iterative)

3) move back/to one's own (vertitive)

4) act on one's own object (middle voice)

1) mutative: miicawe'ec 'I am warm' miikicawe'ec 'I'm getting warm'
2) iterative: pa'hcakic 'he cut it' kipa'hcakic 'he re-cut it'
3) vertitive: ata'aric 'he went out' kata'aric 'he went back out'
4) middle voice (possessive reflexive): rahxu'kic 'comb' kirahxu'kic 'comb one's own (e.g., hair)'

Hope this is helpful!

Randy
-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Ullrich <jfu at centrum.cz>
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Sent: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 9:59 am
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

Since we made Bob curious about the ki- issue, I asked one of my most
reliable Lakota consultants. Here is what I got from him:

kiwichas^a means 'to become a man' and not 'to become a man again' although
he said it could be used that way too, when talking about iktomi turning
into a human when he has been an animal previously. This suggests that there
simply is semantic restriction in which the "original" meaning can be used,
which led to the lexicalization of the new meaning "to become". 

But remnants of the original meaning are found elsewhere too: the speaker
said that kilakhota means "to become Lakota again, return to traditional
ways" (as an urban Indian who returns to the reservation just for the
ceremonial seasons or of people who had been attracted to the white man's
lifestyle but returned to Lakota traditions), he insisted that it does not
mean "to adopt Indian ways (as by white people)". He said it is somewhat
derogatory, but not always.

(This is further confirmed by a sentence I recorded in a speech last summer,
where a lady says about Lakota children: Lakhotiyapi unspeic'ichiyapi kte
haNtaNs^ kilakhotapi kte. - 'If they learn the Lakota language they will
become Lakotas again.')

On the other hand, when I asked about kiwas^icu he said it means 'to become
a white man, to adopt white man's ways' and not 'to become a white man
again'.

So it seems to me that the prefix was applied to many words with the meaning
"to become", while it kept its original meaning "to return to the previous
state" only in some cases which were lexically more apt for it.

The speaker did confirm that kiwas^tecaka has two meanings: 1) to be kind to
sb and 2) to become kind. But said that the first one is more common.

He strongly rejected kisni, kihanska, kiksapa, kiluzahan and kiokhate and
said that such words are "not logical". On the other hand he accepted
kithamaheca, although with some reluctance. 

Interestingly enough, as the 1st singular for kiwichas^a he instantly gave
makiwichas^a (stative) and was very confident about that. This repeated with
other ki-+noun verbs I asked later (as kiwinyan). This presents an
interesting shift, since Deloria give wakiwichas^a and since kini 'to come
back to life' still has 1s wakini.  I am going to cross check on some of
this info tomorrow with another speaker, but I have hardly ever had to
correct anything I got from this one.

It would be my guess that the shift to stativity has partly to do with the
prefix being less productive.

Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: Rankin, Robert L [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of
Rankin, Robert L
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 5:01 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

I'm sorry; I do have trouble sometimes looking at these problems from the
Lakota point of view, since Lakota is not on my list of accomplishments!  I
was looking at vertitive from the point of view of languages like Tutelo,
where 'to go home' (Sapir's translation)is gi-li, cf. Biloxi ki-di, but
Mississippi Valley Siouan *k-ri (syncope always applies)  >  Lakota gli,
Dak. hdi, etc. 'arrive back'.  I'd reconstruct all of those initial
vertitive g- (and k-) in Lakota as originally proto-Siouan *ki-, with the
vowel present in other subgroups.  Come to think of it, I guess it doesn't
"surface" in Lakota.  

Allan Taylor's article in IJAL from the early/mid '70s details some of the
interesting idiosyncracies of the motion verbs, and Linda Cumberland has
done interesting recent work on how they structure.  

This discussion of 'become'/'become again' is really interesting to me, as I
had overlooked it in Boas and Deloria and have only the very few cases in
Dhegiha.  I wonder how much I missed in Kaw from simply failing to ask the
right questions?  Now I'm really curious about how they are conjugated.  I
hope someone will ask.  

  _____  

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of REGINA PUSTET
Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:09 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

Thanks Bob, that helps a lot.

>All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive' with
verbs of motion, but >only a few seem to have generalized a relatively
productive use with non-motion verbs.

Off the top of my head, I can't come up with examples of vertitive ki- with
motion verbs in Lakota (although khi- 'separative etc.' does occur with
motion verbs, but that's probably irrelevant here, unless there is a
connection between vertitive and khi-). Which does not mean, of course, that
historically speaking, Lakota ki- 'to become' cannot be analyzed as a
vertitive.

>So the syncope rule is only productive with motion verbs, while its
(apparent) extension to >other verbs and nouns seems to involve only
invariant ki-. 

At least in Lakota, motion verbs exhibit morphological irregularities that
are not found in any other part of the grammar -- they are strcuturally
special. This might be the case in other Siouan languages as well, I just
don't have the necessary background to judge the situation. At any rate, if
motion verbs have a special status in Siouan in general, it wouldn't
surprise me if they showed idiosyncratic behavior wirh respect to
ki-syncopation.

Regina

"Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

Looking at the verb prefix templates and examples of the prefix orders in
several languages and comparing Jan's Lakota examples, it appears that the
ki- we are discussing is more closely related to the vertitive than to
either reflexive or instrumentals. The most general use of ki- I have found
(outside of Jan's and Regina's new [to me] Dakotan cases) is in Mandan,
where Mixco and others have a generalized ki- that occurs immediately
preceding the verb with the meaning 'become'. Some posit a homophonous
Mandan prefix ki- meaning 'again', but I tend to think of these as a single
affix, especially in light of Jan's observations. 

All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive' with verbs
of motion, but only a few seem to have generalized a relatively productive
use with non-motion verbs. There are one or two differences in the behavior
of these prefixes however. The ki- of kini does not seem to undergo syncopy
like the vertitive with motion verbs. Otherwise I would expect something
closer to g-ni 'recover', which does not occur in any Siouan language.
Similarly, we might expect to find g-luzahaN 'to get fast' or k-haNska 'to
get tall', neither of which occurs. So the syncope rule is only productive
with motion verbs, while its (apparent) extension to other verbs and nouns
seems to involve only invariant ki-. 

Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Jan Ullrich
Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:20 AM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Lakota ki- 'to become by itself'

I think it should be noted here that the meaning of the prefix ki- is not
"to become" but "to return to the original state". Notice kini 'to come back
to life', not 'to become alive'. The prefix is used with this meaning
throughout the text corpus. Most of the words with ki- given in Buechel's
dictionary originate in his translation of the Bible History texts (for
instance ki-sagye - 'to turn into a cane' is used in the story about Moses)
and are not attested by contemporary speakers. 

It is true that some younger speakers today use ki- with the meaning 'to
become', but its use is semantically restricted, occurs for instance in
kiwichas^a - 'to become a man'. Deloria (in her grammar) defines kiwichas^a
as 'to become a man again (like a human who in a tale had appeared in animal
shape)' and kiwiNyaN as 'to become a (respectable) woman again'

In my experience and fieldword data, the prefix is not productive. So I am a
bit surprised by some of the words in Regina's list. If the words come from
eliciting rather than texts, I would recoment caution and cross checking.

> ki-ska 'to turn white'

Deloria and a couple of my native informants give "to fade (to return to an
original white color)" See also Bushotter's sentence: ... oowa uN owapi tkha
hechunpi chan echakchala kiska s'a - 'when they painted (those things) with
colors they often faded'

> ki-suta 'to get hard'

'to become hard again' as in mazasu s^loyiN na kisuta 'The bullets he melted
became hard again'

> ki-bleza 'to become conscious'

'to become clear-minded or conscious again, come to one's senses', this is
often used for 'to sober up'

> ki-was^tecaka ye! 'behave yourself!'

This is a dative. It means "Be nice to him/her." Very common phrase.

> ki-thamahecha 'to get skinny'

> ki-haNska 'to get tall'

> ki-ksapa 'he got smart'

> ki-luzahaN 'to get fast'

> ki-'okhate 'to become warm inside, like when turning up the heat'

These are all somewhat surprising to me.

Notice also, that for instance kini 'to come back to life' is an active verb
(1s wakini), but kibleza 'to conscious again' is treated as a stative verb
(1s: makibleze). This makes me wonder whether some of the ki- words actually
originate in dative, just as akisni - 'to recover from smth, as a sickness
(1s: amakisni)' or iyokiphi 'to be pleased with' 1s: iyomakiphi). 

Regina, what does your data say on conjugating the verbs in your list?

Jan

  _____  

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