Teens in Chiwere.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

The meaning 'over, on top of' would be derived from the original 'sit on' meaning.  I haven't checked Jimm's dictionary to see if Chiwere has the direct descendant, agrį 'sit on'.  Nor do I know about Hochunk.  The original "teen" formative was closer to ake or aki, but Chiwere and Dhegiha both seem to use 'sit on' instead.  The a- of agrį is the locative 'on, upon' and grį is the verb root.  It comes out agðį in Omaha and Ponca, aknį in Quapaw and alį in Kansa and Osage.  It doesn't appear to be related to -gri or -gre at all.  The Chiwere details would have to come from you and Jimm.

Sorry about misleading you earlier about 'seven' containing the word for 'two'.  That's true of Dhegiha languages but not of Chiwere.  My 74 year old memory failed me for a moment.  But you have the correct cognate sets now.

Bob

> I haven’t seen a sense of “to sit on” with the term “agrį.”  The sense I am familiar with is along the lines of “over” which is what got me to thinking about the idea of it being related to that prefix “gre-“ when you mentioned the quinary counting system.  I was curious if that sense of “over” would have applied 5 digits earlier with that counting system and that maybe for some reason the term for eight was the last remnant of it.  But even with the sense of “to sit on” you mentioned, it is used with the current semi-quinary/semi-decimal counting system when the digits “roll over.”

I am curious about the sense of “to sit on” with that term, though.  Coming at it from an OM point of view, I can see how the prefix “a-“ would indicate “on” but haven’t seen anything along the lines of “grį” to mean sit.  The closest thing I can think of that sounds close to “grį” is the verb “gri” which is “to return home” (no idea if they are related or not).  Is that sense a general Siouan concept for that term or is it perhaps from the Proto-Siouan you mentioned in the other email?

Sky

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