Ablaut (RE: Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system)

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

>> > True, but the situation may be more complicated still. In Dakotan
there
>> are
>> > two allomorphs of 'plural' (at least), -pi and -u. And they occur in
>> > well-defined environments with no intermediate forms that I know of. I
>> > suspect most Dakotanists would want to derive the -u from a vocalized
>> [p],
>> > certainly a possibility syllable-finally. But outside of MVS in the
rest
>> of
>> > Siouan there seems to be no trace of -(a)pi, and in OVS the morpheme
is
>> -tu.
>> > Go figure.

>> Well!  I took two years of Lakhota, and I don't recall ever running
>> into a pluralizing -u!  But if that's so, it provides an even easier
>> solution to our problem.  In Omaha, *pi => bi, and *u => i.  A
>> dubitative -bi comes in, and the particle i < *u becomes the
>> pluralizing particle of choice.

> Connie explains this in a subsequent letter, but -u- is essentially a
fast
> speach variant of pi.

Yes, I caught that.  By her explanation, u and several other phonological
variants of -pi appear respectively in very predictable phonological
environments, which is not the case with -bi and -i in OP.  I drop the
above "solution" like a hot potato.  Thanks, Connie!


> Most Siouan languages behave as if in the ablauting set e ~ a the e were
> basic.  Dakotan, does not, in two ways.  One is that there are also some
e
> ~ aN stems, like yatkaN 'to drink' (cf. OP dhattaN).  The other is that
a-
> and aN-final variants seem to be preferred as citation forms.

> Because some a and aN do not alternate with e, Dakotanists identify a
pair
> of morphophonemes A and AN to represent the alternations and distinguish
> these from non-alternating a and aN (and e) in writing stems.

> Siouanists more used to dealing with the other languages (e.g., Crow or
> Omaha-Ponca) tend to assert the basic status of e specifically because
> neither of these factors occur there.  In fact, in OP except for two
> rather special stems all e-final verb roots are ablauting, so it's not
> really necessary to distinguish a morphophoneme E vs. regular e.  Weird
> things do occur in the e-dominant languages, though.  One is that the
stem
> for 'go' is something like rEEhEE in Hidatsa.  In other words, the ablaut
> occurs internally as well as finally.

I'm not getting to the conclusion of what you say here from the
premises you cite.  We want to know which of the ablaut forms
represents the bare stem of the verb, and which has been
modified, presumably by an absorbed extraneous morpheme,
or part of one.

You claim that most Siouan languages seem to have -e as the
basic form, with -a the derived form.  Dakotan does not appear
to be this way for two reasons:

    1)  It has verbs that use -aN as well as ones that use -a
          in opposition to -e, while other languages have only
          -a / -e variants;

    2)  The citation form is -a in Dakotan, but -e in other languages.

Premise 1 seems to be a strong reason for favoring the -a or
-aN version as the stem in Dakotan, since if the -e version were
the stem, there would be no explanation for forking to -a or -aN
respectively depending on the verb.  The fact that other Siouan
languages do not have an -aN / -e version of ablaut is only
negative evidence, however.  It does not give us any reason
to choose -e over -a as basic in a series that uses only -a and
-e.  In fact, the Dakotan case should argue for -a as the stem
version not only for itself, but for all the other Siouan languages
that show this type of ablaut.

I assume the "citation form" is the form native speakers use
when asked to speak of the word by itself.  This seems to be
the only argument given here for favoring the -e form as basic
in the non-Dakotan languages.  But how strong is this?  It
seems to me that a native speaker, asked to cite a word in
his own language, would tend to present it in its most finite,
and least verbal, form.  This form might well be inflected, and
hence not the basic stem.

Do we have other reasons for favoring -e as the bare stem
form in non-Dakotan languages, and especially OP?


> As far as the alternations between e ~ a, there's no reason to believe
the
> e is derived from ai, though this is a change that occurs in various
> Indo-European languages.

A reduction of ai to e is a common phonetic shift that occurs
all over.  We get it in Siouan too, as in the common accented
first syllable of many verbs: we'-, from an original wa-i'-.  This
occurs in both Lakhota and Omaha.

I think you yourself mentioned ai and e, "s/he says/said", as
alternates a few weeks back.  (Or did you just mean that
these were different conjugates of the same verb?)
Tai' and te certainly seem to be allomorphic in Dorsey at
least some of the time.  We can illustrate this from the story
of HiNqpe-Agdhe.  On page 163, line 4, the second brother
has been challenged to a contest by the four bad guys.
He says:

     Eda'daN aNaN' te a?
     "What will we do (by way of a contest)?"

On page 164, line 6, HiNqpe-Agdhe, the fourth brother, has
been challenged to a contest by the same four bad guys.
He says:

     Khe', eda'daN aNaN' tai' a?
     "Come, what will we do (by way of a contest)?"

The circumstances and the wording are almost identical.
In this case, at least, tai' and te seem to be allomorphs,
presumably of an original sequence of two morphemes,
ta-i.  (Or perhaps you would argue for te-a(b)i, with
indifferent use of the pluralizing particle?)


> The iN allomorph of A and AN in Dakotan doesn't occur in all the
dialects,
> but it is found in Teton with the future =ktA.  Nothing exactly like it
is
> found elsewhere in Siouan.  Omaha-Ponca does have a form e=iN=the
> 'perhaps', which may contain the iN as a dubitative particle in what is
> otherwise just e=the 'the aforesaid' + 'the vertical'.  But iN doesn't
> occur, with the OP future =ttE, which is cognate with Dakotan =ktA.
> It appears that Teton, at least, has =iN=ktA for the future, anyway, and
> that this explains the iN ablaut pattern for its future.


Are we absolutely sure (checked with native speakers)
that that final -te in e'iNte is a -the and not a tte?
Dorsey doesn't mark the potentive particle tte any
differently from the positional the, as far as the t
goes, anyway.

Rory