Lakota demonstratives

[Jess Tauber]

It certainly would be nice if there were a compendium/database somewere on
the web of various closed-class items across languages, the way there are for
numeral sets. Typological databases don't usually cut it here. Its a finite
set, even if large. A concerted effort, perhaps as a classroom assignment by
many universities. Oh, well, one can dream.

Many demonstrative sets exhibit what I believe to be secondary
paradigmaticity of an iconic oppositional nature- probably why one sees the
*same* sub-elements used again and again, not as a survival from some
protohuman language, but as an active development in the life of a language.
Some oppositions presumably simply suggest themselves given antecedent
morphemes and their semantics, and given a variety of phonological paths to
choose from, more often than not they will change in the direction that
yields such oppositions.

It would, therefore, be interesting to catalogue the particular forms of
demonstratives versus their functions and see whether such relations as
suggested above hold statistically, beyond what can be accounted for as
historical residue. Demonstration of such secondary iconicity wouldn't very
likely sit well with lumpers, especially those with a vested interest in
long-range genetic issues.

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com
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