What to make of apparent Verb+X compounds?
My ongoing work on Louis-Napoléon St Onge’s manuscript dictionary of the Central Dialect, undated but maybe from the 1890s and using earlier data, has me trying to analyze instances of the Verb kuli (‘run’) being used in adjectival-looking ways.
…when we don’t have independent evidence for the initial Verb functioning in the language as a Noun or Adjective.
Image credit: UNICEF
- kúri-tsə̍qw ‘a falls, rapids’ (as the 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary cites it)
‘run-water’ - mash-shit-sik ‘cholera’
‘eject-poop-sickness’ - etc.
This stuff is genuinely a problem for my mind.
I have nothing smart to say.
Please comment!
Bonus fact:
John Booth Good’s later, Northern Dialect cooly chuck is ‘downstream’, clearly a misprint for something like *keecooly chuck (on the same page Good has keekwilly in klatawah keekwilly ‘dive’, so having a clear sense of ‘under, below’ although not glossed as such).
