Lakota demonstratives

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Tue Apr 3 22:48:49 UTC 2001


whither hither thither
whence hence thence
what     ?       that
which    ?       this
when    ?        then
where   here   there

>etc.   was yonder part of the first series?  But then the lexicalized
>be-yond still finds use.]

I think the earlier system was:

here, there, yonder
this, that, yon
now, then, (yore??)

I'm not certain that "yore" was really the third member of the "now-then"
series, but it fits in there somewhere. I'd like you to think I know this
from reading Shakespeare, but it really began from reading Robin Hood.

Are there good Germanic cognates for these?

Lots of languages have three terms, but their semantics often doesn't match
exactly. In marginal cases I always seemed to use "este, ese, aquel" wrong
in Spanish. In some Siouan languages the third term supposedly represents
only objects that are out of sight, but in Spanish and English they can just
be "farther away" than those objects represented by the second term.

Bob

Bob

Bob



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