Strange use of Quapaw article/aux.

[R. Rankin]

> > di-átte-z^íka íyowí-ttaN akdániN kdí
>
> ?  di-a'tte-z^iNka e'yowe'-ttaN akda'niN kde'
>

Just z^ka, no nasality here. iyowi and kdi.  It looks fine on my screen.  I
have Netscape configured to show all the accented vowels and the Siouan font
though.

>
> Coming to the point, I'd argue that this is a khe 'evidential' (in the
> sense of 'evidently'), and that it agrees in gender with the evidence,
> i.e., the body of the wounded or killed man.  As Dorsey conceived of the ~
> khe ~ dhaN ~ ge (in order of increasing rarity) as past in such
> sentence-final contexts, that may explain the gloss.
>

Since you were discussing this earlier, I figured that what this was.  What I
find strange is the part about agreeing with "the evidence".  I think I need
to understand that a little better.

>
> E=di  ahi=bi=ama=kki,              t?e=dha=bi=khe=ama.
> There they arrived, they say when, he lay killed, they say.
> jod 1890:178.5

But it isn't an exact equivalent since the person in the horizontal position
is subject of the clause in the Omaha example, but not in the Quapaw one.

>
> Incidentally, the =ttaN 'when' is cognate with OP =daN CONTINGENT or maybe
> =daN DURING.  I think =taN occurs as 'when' in Osage, too.

Possibly, but that would depend on Quapaw accent.  Simple *t > tt only
following an accented vowel.  I suspect the Quapaw cognate is -naN 'as, time
when' (implying near simultaneity of events in the 2 clauses).  There's also a
Quapaw -taN 'when, if'.

>
> I was at first a bit puzzled as to how to explain the agreement pattern of
> the evidentials, but I'm now operating on the theory (which seems to work)
> that they agree with the evidence underlying (no pun) the conclusion.
> Sometimes that's a constituent of the sentence (object, subject, or
> something else).  Sometimes it's merely implicit.

I hope we can pin it down better than that.  See this is what happens when we
get off into discourse.  I still hope it will turn out to be more grammatical
than "merely implicit."  Too much wiggle room there.

Bob