Silly terminological question.

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Tue Dec 4 21:59:22 UTC 2001


On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> In interlinear translations I mark these latter as INSTR.  But then what do
> I do with the former type?  It distributes like the locatives, but it isn't
> a locative.  Sometimes I've called the "instrumentive", which sounds silly
> and is confusing to boot.  I'm just revising a paper in which I have to
> solve this problem.  Anyone have an opinion??

In a general way and in terms of specific use it might be called (an/the)
applicative, it seems to me.  I can understand that this might not appeal
to everyone.  It's not an applicative in the purest sense of inducing verb
(personal) concord, but it does figure in the verb form and it does
indicate means.  In OP i- can govern an NP complement and is the vicar of
the uN construction in Dakotan.

I actually think that the i- (or some of the homophones that occupy the
same slot) does (or do) act as a locative in a general way,

I'm thinking of instances like:

i'/bahaN 'to think'
i'/dhe 'to talk of, to promise'

but one might also wonder about i- on

a) positionals (idhaN, ithe, ihe), and

b) one of the derived numeral types (i-NUMERAL and we-NUMERAL) - I forget
which (ordinal?).

Of course, like applicative, locative has narrower and wider meanings.

How about i- in idha- (cf. Da iya-) and udhu (cf. Da iyo-)?



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