Dhegiha Statives from Bob Rankin

Koontz John E John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU
Mon Mar 8 09:38:19 UTC 1999


A forward with Bob Rankin's approval of some material he sent me off-list. 
I'll try to post some Omaha-Ponca correspondences that I've located in the
near future. Although Bob mentions wanting OP data specifically, of
course, behavior in other Siouan languages would also be interesting,
perhaps even more interesting, as the Dhegiha languages are pretty similar
except wrt various details.  I did find some interesting things.   

I'm grateful to Bob for allowing me to post this list, and I think it's
clear that considering the behavior of forms like this may very well lead
to some interesting new insights into Dhegiha grammar, and perhaps into
Siouan grammar generally, if such behavior is more widespread in the
family.  Bob's Biloxi examples are suggestive in that regard.  

This is certainly not the sort of thing that I've seen anywhere before,
modulo the discussion of Dakotan deponents in Rood & Taylor's Lakota
Sketch.  I recall the deponents as covering a somewhat different, though
overlapping, semantic range. 

From: "Robert L. Rankin" <rankin at lark.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Re: Statives

I combed through my Kaw database pretty thoroughly and found a bunch more
"stative" verbs with active meanings ... I'll list them below.  The
biggest problem is that the vast majority are from lexical files and not
from texts. 

With the active meanings, it is semantically possible to interpret many
first/second person forms as impersonal 3rd person forms with only a first
or second person object, i.e., such obvious cases as a~-ne 'I ache' being
interpreted as actually being 'it hurts me'.  So I'm curious whether, in
the 1st or 2nd persons, these verbs ever show suffixed 3rd person
morphology like -(a)bi or -akha in Omaha or Ponca.  If a~-ne really is 'X
hurts me', then it seems to me we should expect the same suffixes that
occur with any other active, 3rd person form.

This argument doesn't hold with "real" semantically stative verbs like 'be
X' in Kansa or Quapaw.  Here you get a~-sceje 'I'm tall' or a~-sceje mikhe
'I'm tall (cont.)'.  Do you have evidence for the semantically active set
from Omaha?

First, I ran across one or two interesting Biloxi forms.  BI is very messy
and even after 20 years of messing with it, it's often hard to pick things
apart.  I wish Paula Einaudi had stayed in Linguistics and devoted her
life to BI.  If you check 'fall' in BI, you find that the pronouns can be
either (active) actors or (stative) experiencers.  (Recall that in Biloxi
ONLY the 2nd person really preserves the distinction.)

atoho    	'to fall on' (active conjugation)
nka-(a)toho  	'I fall on an object'
a-ya-toho  	'you fall on an object'

toho ~ taho 	'to fall down' (stative conjug.)
unk-toho  	'I fall'
i-toho    	'you fall' (this is the critical form)
toho		'he falls'

There are a couple of other interesting Biloxi usages.

hi-manki-yan	'you are (reclining?)'

This certainly seems to be the 'be lying' verb (Dak. wa~ka) but the second
person subject is stative rather than the expected active.  This is the
first time I've run across anything like this.  'You are (sitting)' seems
to be <i-nanki>, so maybe this is a stative pattern.

On to Kansa:

badakkaje	'have a fever' (also perhaps stative in BI)
a~-ba...	'I have a fever'

compare:
badakkaje	'heat by pushing'
p-padakkaje	'I heat by pushing'

all the following are conjugated with a~-, yi-.
baghi~je	'sweat, perspire'
basa~sa~	'have chills, shake with a chill'
bleza~ya	'squint, wilt, shrivel up'
gini		'recover, regain consciousness'
hagiye		'forget'
ije_ppaze	'get dizzy' (ije 'face'?)
ixobe		'lie, tell untruth'
kuya		'itch'
ne		'ache, be hurt'
ochi		'have a characteristic'
ophe		'grant one's wish'
ppaha~		'arise, get up
	ppa-a~-ha~ OR a-ppaha~!!
yukkoge		'have a cramp'

The vast majority of these are semantically 'experiencer' governing verbs. 
Interestingly, 'to lie, tell an untruth' is also stative in Crow even
though the verbs are non-cognate.  I guess it's nice to think of one's
falsehoods as 'experienced' rather than generated! :)

And the Quapaw forms, many cognate with the above, but some just
semantically alike (e.g. 'have a cramp').

akda		'suffer'
baxitte		'sweat, perspire'
dittike		'have a cramp'
ipa		'swell'
i~te		'ache, have a pain'
kakkikdattizhe	'tumble over'
kaski		'pant'
kihotta~	'convalesce, improve' (hotta~ 'good')
		(this ki- may be David's "become" in Dak.)
kikkokke	'recover, get well' (ditto)
naho~		'groan'
okima~kka	'share something'
	o-a~-ki... 'I ...'
okixpade	'lose something'
	o-a~-xpa... 'I ...'
oxpade		'fall from a height'
	o-a~-xpa... 'I ...'
tta~/tto~	'have, possess'
wakdazhi	'bend down, stoop. bow head'

That's about the lot.  The forms as they occur in texts are important now,
as we will see if any do take 3rd person suffixes.  It seems to me that
some like 'groan' would be really hard to interpret as 3rd person
impersonals without an overt causative element expresses, and there is
none as far as I can tell.  But I don't have the Kansa or Quapaw text
collection in computer-searchable form, so I can't be sure.  Any input
from Omaha would be greatly appreciated -- especially 1st and 2nd person
forms.



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