Instrumental/locative.

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Wed Dec 5 21:42:43 UTC 2001


Thanks, Randy.  That's what I was looking for.  I recalled that Randy had
explained it to me, but I couldn't remember which was which, so I hedged and
just mentioned they were different in terms of length/accent.  This time
I'll save his posting!!

The situation is a bit messier than I had hoped it would be.  Because one
morpheme is long while the other is accented, they'll probably both tend to
attract accent in the MVS languages.  Oh well ... we have to leave something
for the next generation of Siouanists to do!  :-)

Bob

>Crow provides evidence for two distinct prefixes: ii (long vowel)
'instrumental', and i' (short vowel, accented) 'locative'.  Instrumental
ii is a postposition, while locative i' is a verbal prefix that patterns
with the a'- and o'- instrumentals.  The general sense of locative i'-
is 'touching, in contact with', e.g. i'hkuluu 'touching', i'kaxxi 'lean
on', i'koochi 'hang up, hang over', i'kuxxa 'equal to'.

Randy



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