Uto-Aztecan *ps and Similar Clusters, Again

Abstract

However, in reality, things are more complicated. Specifically, in Oodham we find not only aha 'overtake; reach (a place or condition); continue until (a specified time); infect; (of time) to arrive' but also jiwia -jiia jiwa 'arrive', together with a related bound form jiwhiaand a reduplicated form jijiwhia. Under the known sound laws for Uto-Aztecan, we would have to derive aha from *asa or *hasa, and to trace jiwia and its congeners to something like *yipsia. This is because in Oodham *h disappears, *s goes to h, *p changes into w, and *y becomes j. Given these facts, it must surely follow that it is this pre-Oodham *yipsia which is related to Cahita yepsa, while pre-Oodham *hasa is presumably cognate with the Eudeve, the Guarijio, and the Nahuatl forms. We are thus dealing with two quite distinct ProtoSouthern-Uto-Aztecan (PSUA) etyma, which at a first approximation would have been something like *yipsV (with a rather trivial conditioned vowel change required to get from *yipsVto *yipsVin Oodham) vs. something like *hasV (although, as we shall see, the Nahuatl form argues for a more complex reconstruction of the latter).