cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

[Jill Greer]

Could there be an element of light reflection/shiny involved - since
silver is called mathe-ska 'white metal', and obviously it is not
"white" at all nore transparent (forgive the th for eth here)? Bodies of
(clear) water are also highly reflective, and light rather than dark in
color...
Jill Greer



>>> Rory M Larson 02/22/11 7:49 PM >>>
Bob wrote: 
> I'm pretty sure the -ska of wazhiNska and ieska is the one 
> meaning 'clear' (also 'white'), as in the Kansas place name 
> ni hni ska 'clear spring'.. So wazhiNska would be 'clear thinker' 
> and ieska 'clear speaker' (interpreter). As for the other skas, 
> who knows? The secret is to realize it means 'clear' as well 
> as 'white'.

I agree that this makes the best sense in these contexts. I know too
that many other languages handle color terms in ways very different from
what we are used to. It's just that I have a hard time putting my head
around the commonality of 'white' with 'clear'. It would be nice to have
more examples of the latter use of ska, especially in productive usage.
I should check with our speakers, but I strongly doubt that they would
use ska to describe clear water or a transparent window glass. 


Bryan wrote: 
> What if the -ska in wazhíⁿska is not the same as "white"? 
> There are also other words, like tápuska, iyéska, which confer the 
> impression that it might be nothing more than an agent-nominaliser, 
> perhaps historically related to shkoⁿ "active/move/do" (which would 
> go some way towards explaining the apparent part-cognate-part-loanword

> set hethúshka iróska ilóⁿska where some languages have s and others
sh). 
> I think I recall hearing some words in Macy that indicated a
productive 
> use of this suffix on verbal predicates that don't show any signs of 
> taking -ska in either Dorsey or the Swetland-Stabler lexicon. 
> I've even heard an interpretation of "pahaska" (Pawhuska) as meaning 
> "person who stands forward" instead of "white head/scalp", 
> although that might be a creative back-formation.

> On the other hand, however, the Báxoje word for translator is 
> "ich^é brédhe" "speaks clearly", which hints that clarity if not
colour 
> may well have something to do with the semantics of this family 
> of concepts. I think what we need is either luck in finding a section 
> of discourse documented that confirms or rejects the hypothesis, 
> or a native speaker who has the relevant intuition.

I've toyed with the idea that the meaning of ska was extended in
pre-reservation contact times to mean "special type of [BASENOUN] that
you want to collect". Thus, moNze-ska, "white-metal", or 'silver/money';
hiN-ska, "white-animalhair", for porcupine quills and later beads;
tte-ska, "white-buffalo", for European cattle. These all arguably have
some degree of whiteness about them, but they fall more clearly into the
"collectible" class. 

I believe the ska in ttappuska definitely means 'white'. (This word is
especially interesting, and I'm thinking of giving a short paper on it
at the Siouanist conference if they still have time slots.) For ieska
and wazhiNska, I can't offer better than Bob does above, which
nevertheless requires metaphorical cross-sensory extension of a meaning
that may be hard to establish for the plain use of the word. I'm open to
the possibility that some ska's might be a different word, perhaps
related to shkoN. To make that connection, we'd have to both lose the
nasalization and do a Siouan sound-symbolic fricative ablaut shift. 

Have you looked at -shka as a suffix? Mark may have mentioned a
distinction one of our speakers explained to us recently, that wagri is
a maggot, while wagri-shka is a bug with legs. 

Also, is there an OP cognate to Báxoje brédhe ? I assume that should be
breze in Omaha and Ponka, but I'm not familiar with any such word. 

Cheers, 
Rory 
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