an example of one-syllable word loss is t'un, thinks it

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This syllable, t'un, is the root for two words found in the New Lakota Dictionary (NLD).

One word is t'unka which means, "to be hesitant, to be slow in thinking" and one word is t'ungya which means, "to anticipate, to suspect, to have suspicions."

But, how to parse the syllables in those two words? There is no mono-syllable listed in the NLD for t'un.

So I guessed that t'un means "thinks it" and parsed t'unka as

t'un (he thinks it) ka (kind of, sort of, in a way, somewhat, always, that one, yonder)

To me, this certainly seems to fit the meaning "to be hesitant, to be slow in thinking" and kind of makes a sentence that is a picture, an image. You can see him over there picking daisies, lost in thought, a dreamer of sorts.

Then I moved on to the contracted word where the "g" could mean any (or all) of four syllables, ca, ka, ku, and kha.

So, again I guess that t'un means "thinks it" and parsed t'ungya with all the four syllables that contract to "g" as 

t'un (he thinks it) ca (he is one who does so) ka (that movement yonder) ku (ones own) kha (he chooses) ya (he sends him there)

To my mind, this is an image of someone who anticipates some danger and who chooses one of his own to go to that place yonder and investigate.

To my mind this parsing of the word is a fairly accurate description of one who, "suspects something might be happening" and "anticipates the danger by investigation"

What do you think? Does t'un mean "thinks it, thought it?

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A stem word that I guess has meanings "come for removal" or "ready for harvest" is ugna which is missing from the New Lakota Dictionary (NLD).

And so too missing from the NLD are two words which George Sword uses for which ugna is the stem.

One is ugnagicala which Delphine Red Shirt translates as "a screech owl wails at night" as follows:

ca (like) ugnagicala (a screech owl wails at night) hoton (she cries out)

Another is ugnayicala which Delphine Red Shirt translates as "like the screech owl" as follows:

ugnayicala (like the screech owl?) hotonpi (they cry out?)

This is the pattern throughout the NLD. There are words listed in it for which there are no roots or even stems.

And some words like screech owl are missing altogether.

But (stop me if you've heard this one) there are words in the NLD with that same stem ugna.

These are ugnahala: suddenly; ugnahanla: suddenly, unexpectedly; ugnahansna: sometimes, at certain times; ugnahela: suddenly, unexpectedly; and ugnas: don't you dare, take care, take warning.

George Sword did not use any of these words even one time.

He did use this word: lila (very) ungnahala (suddenly) akisapi (they shout) but only once.

I guess Sword was not a suddenly kind of guy.

And I just now got to ungnagicala which is "screech owl" in the NLD and which Delphine Red Shirt translates "as screech owls" in one of the Sword stanzas.

My previous parse of ugnagicala is hysterically funny and seems to be something I wrote in my hard copy some months ago.

When I parsed it again it is as follows:

u (they come off) gna (removal of them) gi (it is natural) ca (one which takes them) la (they are small).

This sequence makes me think of bird-like behavior when one searches for grubs and bugs in rotten logs or other loose material. I see the robins do it in a mossy area outside one of our windows. Whether or not that is how screech owls come by their nutrition I do not know, but it seems like a realistic image to me.

By the way, yi indicates terror or fear and is a characteristic cry that women use to warn others, so that may be where the "like a screech owl" interpretation comes from. Those last, hoton and hotonpi make me feel good.

By the way, both George Sword and Ella Cara Deloria use the mono-syllable gi alone by itself, and in Sword it is translated as "rust-colored" and is used in one stanza only. This is similar to the word for yellow, the mono-syllable zi. The NLD does not have gi in its listings.