Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system

[voorhis at westman.wave.ca]

> "Colloquially the terminal i of the plural pi is dropped. When it follows a
> nasalized vowel and preceding the future kta, p changes to a weak uN or a
> nasalized w.

In Dakota as spoken in Manitoba, I have never heard this uN allomorph of
plural pi; -pi kte is contracted to -pte.

> he'chi ?uNyaN'wNkte? < he'chi ?uNyaN'pikte? we will go there
> he'chi ya'wkte? < he'chi ya'pikte? they will go there

In Manitoba: he'chi ya'pte?

> In other cases, preceding a /k/ the /p/ is a mere closure of the lips
> without any release of breath.

That's how it sounds in Manitoba too, also in -pte.

> After a nasalized vowel it becomes either an
> unvoiced /m/ or a nasalized /w/.

/m/ here too, but I haven't noticed any devoicing.

The lack of the uN allomorph in a closely related Sioux dialect suggests
to me that the different treatments of -pi kte may have no very great
time depth and probably provide weak evidence for what happens in
Omaha-Ponca.
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> 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.

Again, Manitoba Dakota seems to disagree with this.  Native speakers
emphatically prefer final e-variants as citation forms and may not even
recognize a word if presented out of context in the a- or aN- final
variant.  I had assumed citation with final a or aN was strictly a
linguist's practice, due to the following.

> 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.

> It's sort of challenge to Dakotanists - one they haven't really taken up -
> or to comparative Siouanists in general - likewise - to explain how
> Dakotan came to be so different.  Why does aN alternate with e?

Just analogy?  yatkaN 'drink' joins the semantically related yuta 'eat'?

> the 7-declarative
> sometimes mentioned.  (7 = glottal stop)

Definitely present in Manitoba.

> The iN allomorph of A and AN in Dakotan doesn't occur in all the dialects,

Not in Manitoba.

> We tend to think of ablaut in terms of verbs only, but Dakotan has nominal
> ablaut, too, though it's fairly obsolescent.

Very much so here.

Paul