From rankin at ku.edu Mon Oct 1 19:39:20 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 14:39:20 -0500 Subject: akhe Message-ID: > Did you mean "non-ablauting -a stems", or did you mean to > type "-e stems", > in your reference to Dakotan? There certainly seem to be plenty of > non-ablauting -a stems in OP, notably gaNdha, "want, wish", and udha', > "tell". Sorry, I've gotten used to calling the Ablauting stems "e-stems". That's what they all were historically and still are outside of Dakotan. Dakota generalized the -a variant to all the verbs that originally ended in unaccented -e, thus they have -a in Dakota but -e (or the local reflex of it) everywhere else. No verb that ends in -a in its unsuffixed form should ever Ablaut in Dhegiha, only those ending in -e when unsuffixed. Please give me a postal address and I'll send a copy of the Ablaut paper. Bob From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Oct 11 14:49:45 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 15:49:45 +0100 Subject: lost contact Message-ID: Siouanists one and all I haven't heard much from anyone recently. My computer was off- line for a while and that may have affected things. Equally with recent events over in America, email contact may have been affected. Hope you are all well Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From shanwest at uvic.ca Tue Oct 16 02:46:51 2001 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 19:46:51 -0700 Subject: article Message-ID: Hi. Does anyone have a copy of this article that they'd be willing to mail to me? Author(s): Smith-Evan (ed.); Zephir-Flore (ed.) Title: Proceedings of the 1992 Mid-America Linguistics Conference and Conference on Siouan/Caddoan Languages Author(s): Broadwell,-George-Aaron Title of article: Is Choctaw a Pronominal Argument Language? Interlibrary Loan is unable to get copies of proceedings for that conference for some unknown reason. If you can help, email me off list. Thanks, Shannon West Linguistics Department, University of Victoria P.O.Box 3045 Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3P4 From rlundy at huntel.net Tue Oct 16 13:27:04 2001 From: rlundy at huntel.net (Richard C. Lundy) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:27:04 -0500 Subject: article Message-ID: Ms. West, You might remember me from last year re: some Lakota translations. How's your work coming? I just wanted to pass along some of that informal perspective often only available from Native speakers. I was recently speaking with a close Sicagu friend from the Rosebud Reservation. He is a fluent Lakota (his 1st language) speaker. He had recently had conversation with a man who is identified as "Stoney Sioux" known to be Nakota. My friend referred to the Nakota speaker's sound as not so much "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It was reportedly difficult (not impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible conversation. He heard "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." sound. (lacking your linguistic terminology; a soft or even aspirated "J"). I'm curious (as a Lakota speaker/instructor familiar also with the "D" of the Santee) what feedback you might be willing to share re: this observation. Thank you. Be well! Richard Lundy Nebraska Indian Community College Shannon West wrote: > Hi. Does anyone have a copy of this article that they'd be willing to mail > to me? > > Author(s): Smith-Evan (ed.); Zephir-Flore (ed.) > Title: Proceedings of the 1992 Mid-America Linguistics Conference and > Conference on Siouan/Caddoan Languages > Author(s): Broadwell,-George-Aaron > Title of article: Is Choctaw a Pronominal Argument Language? > > Interlibrary Loan is unable to get copies of proceedings for that conference > for some unknown reason. > > If you can help, email me off list. > > Thanks, > > Shannon West > Linguistics Department, > University of Victoria > P.O.Box 3045 > Victoria, B.C. > Canada > V8W 3P4 From shanwest at uvic.ca Tue Oct 16 21:02:18 2001 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 14:02:18 -0700 Subject: article In-Reply-To: <3BCC35A7.8CF7DCAC@huntel.net> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: Richard C. Lundy [mailto:rlundy at huntel.net] > Sent: October 16, 2001 6:27 AM > > Ms. West, > You might remember me from last year re: some Lakota > translations. I sure do. Your help was invaluable. Ake, pilamayaye. How's your > work coming? Slowly, but surely. You know any Assiniboine's that wanna talk? I just wanted to pass along some of that > informal perspective often > only available from Native speakers. I was recently speaking > with a close > Sicagu friend from the Rosebud Reservation. He is a fluent > Lakota (his 1st > language) speaker. He had recently had conversation with a > man who is identified > as "Stoney Sioux" known to be Nakota. My friend referred to > the Nakota speaker's > sound as not so much "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It > was reportedly > difficult (not impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible > conversation. He > heard "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." > sound. (lacking your > linguistic terminology; a soft or even aspirated "J"). I'm > curious (as a Lakota > speaker/instructor familiar also with the "D" of the Santee) > what feedback you > might be willing to share re: this observation. Oh, that's very interesting. I've never heard Stoney (though I'd love to at some point), so I can't comment too much on that. I do know that Stoney seems to be quite different than the rest of the Dakotan languages, likely split first from the others (right Bob?). I work on Assiniboine. As for phonetic drift, it doesn't surprise me, but for any evaluation that makes sense, you'll have to ask one of the phonology experts. :) Shannon. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Thu Oct 18 03:26:24 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:26:24 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" Message-ID: This is another discussion of OP egaN, in reply to two of the messages posted by John Koontz on September 22. First, I'd like to summarize John's model as I understand it: Two different conjunctions exist, both pronounced egaN. The first means "having". It can be accented on either the first syllable or the second, depending on where it would best fit to extend an alternating accent pattern from the last accented syllable of the preceding verb. If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, an -i/-bi particle is added between the verb and the conjunction. In the case of the "having" egaN, the particle chosen is -bi. Here, the [i] is generally elided, giving us b=egaN. Then, if the last syllable of the verb is accented, the accent will be b=egaN'; but if the penultimate syllable of the verb is accented, we will have b=e'gaN. The second form of egaN means "so", "as" or "because". It is always accented on the first syllable. If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, the -i/-bi particle chosen is -i. John, is this a fair statement of your position? My model is as follows: There is just one word egaN, which is a compound of e, "that", or "the preceding", and gaN, "so", "thus", "like", or "in such manner". The first element captures the preceding idea and feeds it into the second, which makes it an abstraction if it is a noun or a verb, or an affirmation of the whole idea under discussion if the preceding is discourse. Used as a conjunction, egaN ranges in meaning between the sequentiality implied in our English word "having", and the causation implied in our English words "so", "as" and "because". It tends to mean that the foregoing clause is/was a prerequisite for the following clause. It does not necessarily mean that the foregoing clause is *the* necessary and sufficient explanation of the following clause, but it does imply that the following clause would not or could not have happened had the foregoing clause not been in place first. Used as a conjunction, the accent on egaN is normally, but not always, on the second syllable; otherwise it normally falls on the first syllable. Use of the particles -bi or -i depends entirely upon the semantics of the preceding clause; this usage is completely independent of the conjunction egaN that follows the clause. The particle -bi signals that the foregoing clause is based on hearsay, while the particle -i may be used when the speaker is making a personal assertion. The latter is the normal mode of speech, and sometimes appears in short stretches even where -bi ought properly to be used. Since a myth is based on hearsay, narrative clauses are normally qualified by -bi. Dialogue clauses, on the other hand, usually represent the character's personal assertion, and therefore usually use -i when appropriate. This is why I stress that we need to partition the narrative statements from the dialogue statements when analysing this issue. I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the existence or utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy in OP. (John was explaining it to me here a couple of months ago. He offered a formula and a made-up example to illustrate it, with the suggestion that I try it and see if it didn't correspond to what I found in Dorsey. I've tried it and I still don't get it. The formula seems not to cover large areas of the language, the number of possible obviative statements seems minuscule, and when I do find a third person statement with an "obviative" subject that takes dhiNkhe' or thaN or whatever, it seems as likely to take a clause-final -bi as any other narrative statement. I asked for the practical semantic difference between "The Omaha saw the Pawnee " and "The Omaha saw the Pawnee ", and was referred to Ardis, who did not take the bait.) Until I am shown some compelling evidence in Dorsey for the proximate/obviative distinction, I can't take this model seriously as a factor in the current analysis. I had offered some examples of egaN used as a conjunction, with and without preceding -bi, from the short story "How the Rabbit Killed the Giant", pp. 22-25. I pointed out that egaN in the narrative statements were preceded by -bi at the end of the preceding clause, while in two dialogue statements that used conjunctive egaN there was no preceding -bi. John critiqued my argument last month, offering his interpretation of the -bi-less cases. >> Rory: >> Finding compound third-person dialogue statements is >> difficult, but I found two of them in the story, >> "How the Rabbit Killed a Giant", pages 22 - 25. The >> first is on page 23, line 10-11. When the giant demands >> to know which of them had had the audacity to cut up the >> deer they had shot, the two frightened men admit that the >> Rabbit made them do it: >> >> She' akha' MashtshiN'ge-iN' akha' pa'de wa'gazhi egaN' >> aNpa'dai ha -- "That one, the Rabbit, bade us cut it up, >> so that's why we cut it up". >> >> Here the accusation arises from personal experience, and >> the men do not precede egaN' with -bi. > John: > The first example is 'having', and should have =bi if it is > proximate, but it is evidently (consistent with the context) > obviative and has neither =i nor =bi. I had understood before that proximate statements were marked by =i or =bi at the end, and subjects that took akha' or ama' as articles; while obviative statements had no =i or =bi at the end, and had subjects that did not take akha' or ama' as articles, but rather such "object" articles as dhiNkhe' or thaN. Here we have a clause that has no =i or =bi at the end, but has a subject that takes akha' as its article. Am I misunderstanding the criteria for distinguishing proximate from obviative? > Note also that Rory has reglossed 'having' as 'so' in > [this] case. Dorsey glosses this egaN' as 'having' in the interlinear; I offered a free translation without including the interlinear. Dorsey's own free translation on page 25 is as follows: "That one, the Rabbit, commanded us to cut it up, and so we cut it up," said the two. This uses 'so', the causative translation of egaN, as I did. And in fact, 'having' really doesn't work very well in this case. If you have been disobeying your supervisor's standing orders at work, at the insistence of your charismatic co-worker Steve, and have just been called on the carpet by your fire-breathing boss, do you explain yourself: "Steve having insisted that we do it his way, that's what we did" which would sound like a history professor lecturing on the progress of Caesar through Gaul? Or would you not rather say: "Steve insisted that we do it his way, so that's why we did it that way" which clearly places the blame where it belongs? In the story, the men are trying to justify themselves to an outraged authority figure, not to give an impartial history of their actions. Despite the interlinear gloss of 'having', any sensible English translation needs to use a conjunction of causation, not of sequentiality. But if we accept that egaN' in this case should really be translated as 'so' or 'because' rather than 'having', the accent on the second syllable of egaN' seems to contradict the criteria given for the egaN of causation: > But i before e'=gaN 'as, because, so'. > > This conjunction always has initial stress. unless we assume that the rule for initial stress on the 'as, because, so' conjunction egaN works only if the preceding clause is proximate. >> Rory: >> The second is on page 23, line 17-18. As the giant >> proceeds to maul him, the Rabbit declares the difference >> between himself and the craven men: >> >> Dhe'ama naN'dhiphai' egaN' a'dhikhi'dha-bazhi'-hnaN'-i; >> wi' naN'wipha ma'zhi egaN' a'wikhi'bdha ta' miNkhe. -- >> "These ones fear you, so they don't attack you; >> I fear you not, so I will attack you". >> >> Here again we have no -bi in front of egaN' in either >> of the two places it appears. The first one has -i, >> which can be construed as the plural particle. The >> second has only the first person negator ma'zhi, but >> can't be counted in this test since its subject is not >> third person. > John: > The second example has two intances of egaN which were > glossed 'because' in the original, cf. 'as', fairly > reglossed as 'so', As we are dealing with the 'as', > and the first case is a third person plural it predictably > has =i, while the second case is a first person singular > and so lacks both =i and =bi. Here we have two instances of egaN', accented on the second syllable, glossed in the interlinear as 'because', glossed as 'so' in Dorsey's translation, and accepted by John as the 'as' version of egaN. This definitely contradicts the rule that this version of egaN is always accented on the first syllable, unless that rule was meant to apply only in case the preceding was third-person singular proximate. But if egaN 'having' can be accented on either syllable, and egaN 'as, because, so' can also be accented on either syllable, then we have no phonological basis left for distinguishing the two. We are left with only a presumed semantic bifurcation that depends on Dorsey's glosses. In other words, Dorsey's choice of a suitable English equivalent for egaN in various contexts makes the OP word egaN into two distinct words to separately match the functionality of the English morphemes we depend on to translate it. This is as if a German linguist analyzing English were to conclude that the English word 'but' is actually three distinct homophonous words: one signifying 'aber'; another meaning 'doch'; and yet another that equates to 'sondern'. > In dealing with Dorsey's texts one has to be cautious > about his glosses, but one ignores them at one's peril. > Thus, he spuriously glosses many =bi markers as 'they say', > working from a false conclusion as to the relation > of =bi=ama to the gloss 'they said', but a careful > consideration of the evidence suggests that it may > provisionally be taken as an error. I have not yet > regretted making that provisional assumption, and so > I stick with it. On the other hand the consistent > pattern of 'having' vs. 'as' does reflect something > very real, if easily overlooked, since it corresonds to > something real in meaning, morphology, and phonology. > Dorsey's very tendency to consistency in glossing makes > the one practice a probable error and the other an > important distinction. There is nothing spurious about Dorsey's gloss of the =bi markers as 'they say'. I am fairly confident by now that every active, non-fossilized instance of =bi in Dorsey carries the functional meaning: "The foregoing is based upon something that has been said; it is not my current personal assertion." We have no good English equivalent of this morpheme. Our word 'suppose' comes close, as in: 'supposing X', 'supposedly X' or 'supposed to do X', though even this doesn't capture the sense of =bi that the supposition is based on something said. In the narrative statements of a myth, the meaning of =bi and ama', 'they say', are almost equivalent. They do not fill the same syntactic slots, and they are functionally different otherwise, but at that point their meaning is so close that they tend to merge into a single word. When =bi comes alone at the end of a narrative clause to let the listener know that the statement is based on hearsay, rather than being an assertion upon which the narrator is staking his personal honor, what better English gloss can we find than 'they say'? I agree that one needs to deal judiciously with Dorsey's glosses, especially when beginning to learn the language. But I also think that following the glosses slavishly without learning to grasp the meaning directly from the Omaha-Ponca language behind them can lead us into errors of our own making. In particular, I object to the assumption that seems to be buried in some of John's arguments, that there must be some sort of one-to-one match between English words and Omaha words semantically. It seems if we find two different English glosses for the same Omaha word, then either the Omaha word is really two separate words to match our English functional paradigm, or else Dorsey has made an error. This is unfair to Dorsey, who was a magnificent scholar, and it needlessly throws sand in our own eyes. The functional morphemes in Omaha need not translate precisely into corresponding functional morphemes in English. The range of a particular Omaha word might overlap the territory of several different English words, depending on context, or it might have no good English translation at all. In this case, why would the glossing of that word not be "inconsistent"? That "inconsistency" would not be Dorsey's fault; it would simply be inherent in the nature of translation. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 18 15:05:25 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:05:25 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > First, I'd like to summarize John's model as I understand it: > > Two different conjunctions exist, both pronounced egaN. > > The first means "having". Or can usually be rendered that way, I think it implies simple sequencing or association of events, as opposed to causation or implication or the more specific temporal connections covered by 'when' in English, etc. > It can be accented on either > the first syllable or the second, depending on where it > would best fit to extend an alternating accent pattern > from the last accented syllable of the preceding verb. Or, putting it another way, it behaves as an enclitic - a part of the accentual domain (word) with the preceding verb. > If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, an Or any person plural. > -i/-bi particle is added between the verb and the conjunction. > In the case of the "having" egaN, the particle chosen is -bi. After your last letter I looked further and found a few cases with =i, leading me to decide that I would have to agree with you that =bi (as opposed to =i) indicates indirect experience (or something like that). I suspect that probably also accounts for the variability of =i vs. =bi before =the. It certainly explains why it's always =bi=the=ama and =bi=khe=ama when the/khe/... and ama co-occur. If you argue as I was that it's the following morpheme that conditions =bi, then here you'd probably have to say that the influenced of =ama was extending through the =the/=khe, since it seems that =the and =khe don't consistently condition =bi. But if =the or =khe occur with =ama then it's plainly an indirect experience (as well as being a conclusion from evidence): "they say that apparently ..." > Here, the [i] is generally elided, giving us b=egaN. > Then, if the last syllable of the verb is accented, the > accent will be b=egaN'; but if the penultimate syllable > of the verb is accented, we will have b=e'gaN. > > The second form of egaN means "so", "as" or "because". > It is always accented on the first syllable. If the > preceding clause is third-person proximate, the -i/-bi > particle chosen is -i. It seems like there should be the potential for =bi as well, but I don't at the moment know of any examples. It may be that there is something of a clash in pragmatics between categoprizing something as hearsay and then taking it as causal to something else. But more likely I just haven't seen the examples yet. > John, is this a fair statement of your position? I elaborated as needed, including the required concession on the nature of the =bi ~ =-i opposition. > My model is as follows: > > There is just one word egaN, which is a compound of > e, "that", or "the preceding", and gaN, "so", "thus", > "like", or "in such manner". ... I agree with this, too, of course, in an etymological sense. That is, the two egaN function words both derive from this e'=gaN 'to be like that'. > Used as a conjunction, the accent on egaN is normally, > but not always, on the second syllable; otherwise it > normally falls on the first syllable. I think that seeing the two egaN functions might clear this up. > Use of the particles -bi or -i depends entirely upon the > semantics of the preceding clause; this usage is > completely independent of the conjunction egaN that > follows the clause. The particle -bi signals that the > foregoing clause is based on hearsay, while the particle > -i may be used when the speaker is making a personal > assertion. ... I think I've come around to this. It certainly looks like it makes sense of some of the difficult cases I was facing. Naturally =bi would be very regular in front of =ama, which marks something that is close to being the same thing.. > I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the > existence or utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy > in OP. ... I think we're still waiting for Ardis to rise to the bait, though I may have to see what I can do. I'll try to address the rest later. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 18 15:05:41 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:05:41 -0600 Subject: article In-Reply-To: <3BCC35A7.8CF7DCAC@huntel.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Richard C. Lundy wrote: > ... My friend referred to the Nakota speaker's sound as not so much > "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It was reportedly difficult (not > impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible conversation. He heard > "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." sound. ... Perhaps the n was somewhat palatalized (more like ny)? If it was actually less n-like, and more dy or j (dzh) like, this would not be unexpected on the assumption that nina (or jina) has a non-nasal vowel in the initial syllable (cf. lila in Teton). That is, perhaps for this speaker (or their community) there is some denasalization of sonorant n before oral vowels. Of course, one might then expect jida (with the second n also denasalized), but the diminutive =la of Teton corresponds to =daN (after an oral vowel) alternating with =na (after a nasal vowel) in Santee, as far as I know, so the nasality of the diminutive varies across dialects and we can't assume that nina (or jina) has an oral vowel in the second syllable. Actually, given cases like that we'd have to be careful in assuming that any vowel in any form was consistently nasal or oral across the several dialects! ==== Things one might look for further if one were curious and had the opportunity would be: What happens with other n that matches l before e or i or iN, e.g., in words matching Teton leks^i or le? Do these also sound like j, or is it just this one word? Is there any tendency of n matching other Teton l's before a, o, u, aN, and uN to appear as something like d? What about regular t or th or t? before e or i or iN? I notice that was^te is not described as was^c^e or was^je. ==== By way of background, it is noted that Dakotan dialects, like other Siouan languages, contrast oral vowels (aeiou) with nasal ones (aN iN uN), with uN sounding more like oN to many people. In addition, most of the dialects contrast non-nasal and nasal versions of the dental sonorant, with the non-nasal variant differing across the dialects - some (called Teton) have l vs. n, while others (called Santee-Sisseton and Yankton-Yanktonais) have d vs. n. A number (called Assiniboine and Stoney) have just n, though David Rood has mentioned that some people report at least some dn for n in Stoney in contexts I'm not sure were specified. (I would guess before nasal vowels or after oral ones?) In addition, b in y-stem first person inflections and some *pr (or *wr?) roots like 'lake' cf. Teton ble appears as m in these same dialects (Assiniboine and Stoney dialects). And we know that in some limited cases m appears for b in nasalized y-stems in other dialects, too, e.g., the famous case of mniN=kte in Teton (not bliN=kte). These same cases tend to confirm the assessment that l precedes oral vowels and n precedes nasal vowels. To forestall complaints, note that in Stoney dialects mn in the inflection of y-stems is generally simplified to m, so it's muha 'I have/hold it' instead of mnuha. The simple solution is to think something like this: the distinction of nasality occurs primarily, or underlyingly, in vowels, and in the Teton, Santee-Sisseton, and Yankton-Yanktonais dialects nasality spreads forward from a nasal vowel to nasalize l or d to n and bl or bd to mn. In Assiniboine and Stoney the sonorant is already n, however, instead of l or d, and so the spreading in more or less undetectable. This doesn't explain mn (or m), of course. It also leaves the issue, in fact, the existence, of things like =daN unexplained. Why is =daN even possible if the vowel is nasal? An alternative that works a bit better is to assume that that nasality is an underlying property of some vowels, and of all the dental sonorants and labial-dental sonorant clusters. In that case, it's orality that spreads forward from oral vowels in Teton, Santee-Sisseton, and Yankton-Yanktonais to produce l and bl (or d and bd). But, in Assiniboine and Stoney it doesn't spread, and these remain n and mn (or m) in all cases. Or maybe it does spread sometimes and you get the occasional d (or j before e, i. and iN?). This has the additional advantage of explaining things like the md (for bd) that Riggs et al. report for Santee. In that case (i.e., in the place and time they were working) the orality didn't spread quite far enough to oralize the m to b. (I gather that nobody today says mde, etc.?) This still doesn't explain =daN, of course. But if we go a step further and allow orality to spread outward from the preceding vowel to a following sonorant n, then that would account for =daN. And it's consistent with =na after nasal vowels, too. But then one would probably want to claim that in Teton orality spreads so far that the vowel itself is oralized, producing =la. The problem is that this won't explain =la after nasal vowels, where I think it is still =la. Possibly relevant here is the tendency for a number of other enclitics to have final nasal vowels in Santee, but not in Teton, e.g., =xti(N), and, I think =s^i(N). I haven't addressed another issue, and that is the tendency of n and m to occur before nasal vowels and y and w to occur before oral ones in cases where we're pretty sure that l ~ d ~ n or b ~ m aren't historically involved. These tendencies also have their notorious exceptions. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Oct 19 23:21:05 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 17:21:05 -0600 Subject: Evidentials Message-ID: Note: Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:52:10 +0200 From: Mullen John Subject: review of Palmer, Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Palmer, Frank R. (2001) Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, hardback ISBN 0-521-80035-8, xxi+236pp, $64.95, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (1st ed. 1986; paperback ISBN 0-521-80479-5). ... The first part of the book attempts to clarify basic concepts. He begins with the distinction between Realis and Irrealis - unmarked forms and modalized forms - and the distinction between propositional modality (where different types of desire/will/capacity are expressed) and event modality (where different information about the truth of a proposition is given). These last two categories are broader than the traditional categories of "modality of action" and "modality of knowledge, and the following chapter look in great detail at the different sub-types of modality which are marked in different languages. As an example of different types of event modality, we could mention that different forms are used in Central Pomo to signify a) It rained b) It rained (that's an established fact) c) It rained (I saw it) d) It rained (I heard it) e) It rained (I was told) f) It rained (everything is wet). ==== Koontz: Of course, neither this classical Pomo example (Pomo forms omitted in review) nor Palmer are exactly terra nova, but it's perhaps useful to put Siouan matters in a more general perspective. The last of these (f) is what I've been somewhat awkwardly calling 'the evidential' in Omaha-Ponca - the the/khe/dhaN/ge particle that occurs at the end of various clauses in the sense of 'evidently, apparently'. What Siouanists call a declarative is more like (c). A quotative is somewhere in the range of (d) or (e), possibly (b). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 20 02:21:58 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:21:58 -0600 Subject: Evidentials In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Koontz John E wrote: I neglected to make it clear that the Palmer review was from the Linguist list. > Palmer, Frank R. (2001) Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge University > Press, hardback ISBN 0-521-80035-8, xxi+236pp, $64.95, Cambridge > Textbooks in Linguistics (1st ed. 1986; paperback ISBN 0-521-80479-5). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 20 09:01:19 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 03:01:19 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the existence or > utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy in OP. ... > The formula seems not to cover large areas of the language, the number > of possible obviative statements seems minuscule, and when I do find a > third person statement with an "obviative" subject that takes dhiNkhe' > or thaN or whatever, it seems as likely to take a clause-final -bi as > any other narrative statement. It's true that there are comparatively few obviative examples. Speaking for Ardis, she notes that OP proximate/obviative systems seem to be rather different from Algonquian ones, in that a number of references can be "proximate" at once. She suggested an analogy with staging of a play, in which characters center stage are "proximate," while characters offstage or perhaps in the wings are "obviative." I think she suggested that onstage and offstage might be more apropriate terms, but we seem to have stuck to proximate/obviative. As in many cases in linguistics, or rather, grammar-writing, terminology is usually recycled in an approximate sort of way rather than carefully reinvented for each language. Ayway, the converse of the prevalence of proximates is the paucity of obviatives. > I asked for the practical semantic difference between "The Omaha saw > the Pawnee " and "The Omaha saw the Pawnee ", > and was referred to Ardis, who did not take the bait.) I guess Ardis decided to let me do my own work. Drat. (Actually, I think she was pretty much e-incommunicado most of the Summer.) OK, keep in mind that it's the Omaha who would be the proximate and obviative referent in the two hypothetical sentences. The Pawnee would be (formally) obviative in both cases, since objects aren't marked proximate (as indicated by the use of obviative, alternatively object articles with them when articles are appropriate). I guess if you use the staging metaphor you'd have to characterize objects as upstaged, as opposed to offstage. The guy with the lines or the business (the subject) is the center of attention, as actors all know. I can attempt to characterize the difference as follows: as described by Omaha speakers whom Dorsey consulted in the editing of the texts (George Miller and Samuel Freemont), the difference would be that when proximate the action is of the subject (the Omaha)'s own accord (Dorsey 1891:28) or "voluntary action" (Dorsey 1891:58), whereas when obviative the subject is acting "by request or permission" (Dorsey 1891:29) or the action is an "involuntary action" (Dorsey 1891:58). Alternatively an obviative description might occur because the speaker did not see the subject act (Dorsey 1891:29). These seem to me to be essentially ways of saying that the subject has been upstaged or is offstage. Somewhere - I've momentarily lost the reference - LaFlesche says that a verb 'to die' that's given in proximate form was probably intended to be obviative, as the subject probably did not die deliberately (or words to that effect). Notice that the idea of "not seeing" the action is consistent with interpreting =i as some sort of declarative, but, the conception of involuntary or permitted/directed action is described as interchangeable, and is not consistent with that, and, moreover, the characterization applies to the use of the articles akha and ama as opposed to dhiNkhe, etc., as well as to the use of =i and =b(i) (e.g., p. 28-29) both, and is restricted to third persons singular. As far as inconsistencies of marking (between articles and verbal enclitics) Dorsey discusses the semantics of the distinction specifically in connection with such errors, as they are corrected by the consultants. I don't think he and they caught all the problems. I've noticed that the ones they comment on all involves cases of the first refernce bewing obviative and the second proximate. My suspicion is that in repeating material for Dorsey (or perhaps just in formulaitng long periods) the speakers shifted references from obviative to proximate, or brought them mentally onstage, resulting in mixed, grammatically incorrect (or less felicitous) sentences. > Until I am shown some compelling evidence in Dorsey for the > proximate/obviative distinction, I can't take this model seriously as > a factor in the current analysis. Technically I ought to follow this up with some nice text, carefully analyzed to show the aptness of the interpretations, but maybe not here and now. I do have a paper on this that I will try to dig out and send Rory. It's not great as a text analysis, but I do have a few examples, and, if I can get Ardis to send him her more recent effort, that goes further as a text analysis (of a different text). === In addition, I mentioned that Dorsey had some canned examples. These are in the National Anthropological Archives Dorsey Papers Dhegiha (3.2) [5] (preceding crossed out) 120 "Envelope marked "C/egiha Grammatical Notes. Not copied on slips Nov/93". A.D. Approx. 30 L. and slips with 6 large verb charts." (If I have not messed the associations in my files.) There are two columns, one is "By consent or command." and the other is "Without consent or command." That is, obviative vs. proximate. The two examples are: (1) The horse eats or ate the corn (complete action). (2) The horse is eating the corn (continuous or incomplete action). That is, punctual vs. continuative. A, if standing (col. 1 vs. col. 2) (obviative vs. proximate) (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe'=e ha (aiee! the e) vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhatha'=i ha (as opposed to the i) (2) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe thaN ha vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhathe akha ha The extra e is marked with a breve, as is the e in khe and the a in ha. I've inserted aspiration, recode c to sh, etc., added the =-signs. For B, if moving, change all thaN to dhiN and all akha to ama. For C, if sitting, change all than to dhiNkhe, and no column 2 exampls are given (because there's just akha and ama for proximate articles, and JOD's analogized those to thaN and dhiN). For D, if reclining, change thaN to khe, and again, no column 2. For E, if standing, past time; action occuring then, not now: (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe shathe dhaN=shti vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhata=i dhaN=shti (2) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe thaN dhaN=shti vs. (line, to indicate no analog?) For F, if standing, past time (present time not excluded): (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe the ha vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhatha=i the ha (2) (not given) I'd maintain that E includes a time particle dhaN=shti, but thatmay well be the dhaN-form of the evidential particle (plus, shti 'too'), and that F is the the form of the evidential particle. A-D are essentially (column 1) the obviative forms (in the various positional genders) and (column 2) the proximate forms (in the two positional genders/numbers). At the bottom of the page is the hand annotation "All in the dicty; not yet in the Gr./86." The next page appears to be the handwritten notes for the page just described (thaN exx. only) and says of the proximate example "of his own accnt, not (scribble) [=by?] command, what he had no business to eat", and of the obviative example "his regular meal, given to him." Another example inerted to the side is: nuzhiNga akha najiN akha ha [the man (prox) is standing] "of his own accnt" "but" nazhiN thaN ha [(he) stood] "because commanded to stand" After some more of the horse eating there's the comment "See chart on desk for all the distintions." I suppose this might refer to the preceding page. === By the way, attached to the end of this stack of sheets is a brief summary sheet entitled "SUDDEN ACTION" with a short list of 'suddenly' auxiliaries: The first part, glossed, combines the motion verb thi with the motion positional dhe (and its vertitive gdhe), unreduplicated and reduplicated, except that the first is a causative of dhe, and the last a causative of gi. dhedhe 'send off' thidhe 'to pass on' thidhedhe thigdhe 'to come and go, to appear and disappear suddenly (once)' thigdhagdha 'to come and go repeatedly' gidhe 'to send this way (suddenly)' Then follows an unglosed list (actually arranged tabularly): idhaN, idhaNdhaN, ihe, ihaha, ithe, ithatha, khidhaN, khidhaNdhaN, khihe, khihaha, khithe, khithatha, thidhaN, thidhaNdhaN, thihe, thihaha, thithe, thithatha, gdhidhaN, gdhidhaNdhaN, gdhihe, gdhihaha, gdhithe, gdhithatha. This is basically some of the motion verbs (i, khi, thi, gdhi) combined with the positionals (dhaN, he, the), unreduplicated and reduplicated. === I still didn't get to the disputed examples. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Oct 22 22:23:06 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:23:06 -0600 Subject: Suddenly and Frequently Auxiliaries in Omaha-Ponca Message-ID: Without thinking I appended a list of suddenly and frequently auxiliaries from Dorsey's mms. to the end of a discussion of "OP bi vs. i with egaN." It occurred to me later that some folks might be interested in that but not the proximate/obviative marking and egaN issues. See the end of my second response to Rory, on bi vs. i, dated Oct 20, 2001. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Oct 23 06:37:06 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 00:37:06 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Warning! This is probably going to be more interesting to students of Dhegiha morphology and syntax than Siouanists generally! I'm using the Macy Schools Orthography, more or less, in this. I'm starting here to address Rory's specific comments. Note that I have conceded that =bi vs. =i marks indirect vs. direct experience on the part of the speaker, so I won't address examples that simply confirm this elucidation of Rory'ss. However, I have not conceded that =bi ~ =i vs. [nil] doesn't also mark proximate vs. obviative in the third person singular (and plural vs. singular otherwise). This example is awkward because the form of the definite article suggests that the sentence is proximate (Rory's catch, my mistake), but the the verb is apparently obviative. On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > John critiqued my argument last month, offering his interpretation of > the -bi-less cases. > > >> Rory: > >> She' akha' MashchiN'ge-iN' akHa' pa'de wa'gazhi egoN' > >> oNpa'dai ha -- "That one, the Rabbit, bade us cut it up, > >> so that's why we cut it up". > > John: > > The first example is 'having', and should have =bi if it is > > proximate, but it is evidently (consistent with the context) > > obviative and has neither =i nor =bi. > Rory: > I had understood before that proximate statements were marked > by =i or =bi at the end, and subjects that took akha' or ama' > as articles; while obviative statements had no =i or =bi at > the end, and had subjects that did not take akha' or ama' as > articles, but rather such "object" articles as thiNkHe' or > tHoN. Here we have a clause that has no =i or =bi at the > end, but has a subject that takes akha' as its article. Am I > misunderstanding the criteria for distinguishing proximate > from obviative? No, you're quite right. My screw-up. This is proximate, as shown by the article akHa, but it lacks the expected =i or =bi. As it does seem to be direct experience I'd have to expect =i, not =bi. So this is not a case I can explain. I'm not sure how it would fit into Rory's analysis either. Possibilities that occur to me as I grope: Dorsey might have missed =i after the final i of wa'gazhi 'he ordered us' (from a'gazhi 'to order someone to')? That would be convenient, maybe a bit too convenient, but he doesn't do that consistently, cf. ...gazhi=i in 90:52.1, 52.12, 53.2, 53.11, ... so that's at best a weak possibility. Alternatively, it could be a mistaken use of akHa in an obviative clause. That seems even less likely. Finally, it could be a situation not previously encountered, so, casting about for other examples, i.e., searching for something like [~B][~I] EG in the Siouan Archive version of the texts in my text editor: 17.3 zhu'ga bthu'ga thishpa'shpa=xti=egoN 'they having pulled his whole body to pieces' Here it's actually a plural missing =(b)i. The context might be phonology. 63.6 noNbe'=the gitoN'be=egoN 'he having seen his own hand' This could actually be obviative, but the reference is proximate immediately before and after. Perhaps the obviativity arises from a lack of deliberation in seeing his hand. He notices it, rather than deliberately looking at it. 72.14 waga'zhi=egoN 'he having told them' Again the referent is proximate immediately before and after an obviative reference. 85.18 a'higi toN'ga t?e'=wathe=egoN 'they having killed a great many of them' This would seem to need a plural. (Note that a'higi toN'ga modifies the PRO-argument wa-.) 90.5/6 ugi'ne moNthiN=egoN 'they (or he/she?) having walked seeking their own' This might be a plural and it might be a singular proximate. It might be obviative. It's hard to say from the context. It should be a =bi, not an =i, if not obviative, in any event. 117.18/19 wahu'toNthiN i'bahoNzhi=egoN 'he having not known the gun' This might be obviative. It's hard to say immediately, from the context. 163.15 nu'zhiNga=thiN waki'depi he'gazhi=egoN 'the boy having been such a good marksman' This clearly is obviative, as indicated by the use of thiN with the subject of the clause, and is included just to show that does actually happen! (Searching for example stopped at this point.) === So, there seem to be some anomalous cases where no plural or proximate-marking =bi or =i is present. In some cases this might be argued to be due to phonological context (after =i(N)), but not always. I cannot account for these cases. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 25 14:46:20 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:46:20 -0600 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, modest and scholarly, through this channel. Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond either to the list or to me personally. -------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT From: EvolPub at aol.com To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list ... I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at most). ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] Tony Schiavo Evolution Publishing 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 Bristol PA 19007 USA www.evolpub.com From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Thu Oct 25 17:08:26 2001 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark Awakuni-Sweltand) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:08:26 -0700 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: 25 October 2001 ZhiNtheho John: Personally, I'd rather see book announcements coming as recommendations from someone on the list who has already checked out the contents. For example, I've been asked to look at the 2000 Watts Library (Grolier) publication by Madelyn Klein Anderson "The Omaha". Fortunately for the SiouanList, this 63 page book has little Omaha language (e.g., Hoo-Thu-Ga). Unfortunately for anyone wanting to use it as an introductory text in a grade school, it contains several questionable or misleading descriptions and photographs, and some outright errors. I cannot determine from the author's "note on sources" whether she actually entered Nebraska or the Omaha Reservation, or visited with Omaha people, during her research. I am in the process of preparing an email letter to the Grolier folks detailing my concerns. It is this sort of engaged information that I would find useful should anyone wish to offer it. Otherwise, I would rather take a pass on the marketing announcements. best uthixide Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Lecturer Anthropology/Native American Studies University of Nebraska Bessey Hall 132 Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 402-472-3455 mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 7:46 AM Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond > either to the list or to me personally. > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > From: EvolPub at aol.com > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > ... > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at > most). > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > Tony Schiavo > Evolution Publishing > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > Bristol PA 19007 > USA > www.evolpub.com From munro at ucla.edu Thu Oct 25 15:40:44 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:40:44 -0700 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I agree with you, John. Vehemently. Pam -- Pamela Munro Professor, Department of Linguistics, UCLA UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 USA http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From kdshea at ku.edu Thu Oct 25 22:30:03 2001 From: kdshea at ku.edu (Kathleen Shea) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:30:03 -0500 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I agree with you, John. I would rather not receive commercial announcements on the Siouan list, unless it's a recommendation from someone on the list. Besides, I already receive Evolution Publishing's catalogue in paper (as a result of their buying SSILA or LSA's mailing list?), and for me receiving it on the Siouan list would be double handling. Kathy Shea ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 9:46 AM Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond > either to the list or to me personally. > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > From: EvolPub at aol.com > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > ... > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at > most). > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > Tony Schiavo > Evolution Publishing > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > Bristol PA 19007 > USA > www.evolpub.com From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Oct 26 01:52:20 2001 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 20:52:20 -0500 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: John! I agree with Kathy or as Mark suggests on a review of something and offer comment, then that's fine. Or like when you referred me to the book on LaFlesche Family. Otherwise, no commerials needed. Jimm On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:30:03 -0500 "Kathleen Shea" writes: > I agree with you, John. I would rather not receive commercial > announcements > on the Siouan list, unless it's a recommendation from someone on the > list. > Besides, I already receive Evolution Publishing's catalogue in paper > (as a > result of their buying SSILA or LSA's mailing list?), and for me > receiving > it on the Siouan list would be double handling. > > Kathy Shea > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Koontz John E" > To: > Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 9:46 AM > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > > > > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and > that I > > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better > alternative. > > > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they > thought. > > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of > submission. > > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, > too > > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however > apt, > > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that > wouldn't > > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and > asking me > > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to > respond > > either to the list or to me personally. > > > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > > From: EvolPub at aol.com > > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > > > ... > > > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language > list and > was > > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that > are > > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of > Native > > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents > which > the > > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all > of our > > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo > and > Saponi > > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per > month at > > most). > > > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > > > Tony Schiavo > > Evolution Publishing > > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > > Bristol PA 19007 > > USA > > www.evolpub.com > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 27 23:10:09 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 17:10:09 -0600 Subject: Interesting Example of Raising in Omaha Message-ID: (Example in Macy Schools Orthography) I stumbled across this example: xta=wikHithe 'I love you for it', with the dative causative. The sentence is: "KHage'=ha, wape'= kHe xta'=wikHithe itha'noNhiN a," a'=bi=ama friend VOC weapon the I love you for it I truely EXCL he said QUOTE I love yours ni'kashiNga=akHa. "Wi'bthiNwiN=te?" a'=bi=ama. man the I buy yours FUT he said QUOTE JOD 90:109.3/4 "Friend, I truely love you for the weapon (I really admire your weapon)," said the man. "May I buy it from you?" he said. The translations with 'love you for it' are from Dorsey and probably originally his story teller or translation helper. In this case the verb (underlyingly xta=the 'to love') appears to agree with the possessor of the notional object requiring the use of the "dative" causative version of the verb (xta=kHithe 'to love on account of, to love someone's'). John From rankin at ku.edu Mon Oct 1 19:39:20 2001 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 14:39:20 -0500 Subject: akhe Message-ID: > Did you mean "non-ablauting -a stems", or did you mean to > type "-e stems", > in your reference to Dakotan? There certainly seem to be plenty of > non-ablauting -a stems in OP, notably gaNdha, "want, wish", and udha', > "tell". Sorry, I've gotten used to calling the Ablauting stems "e-stems". That's what they all were historically and still are outside of Dakotan. Dakota generalized the -a variant to all the verbs that originally ended in unaccented -e, thus they have -a in Dakota but -e (or the local reflex of it) everywhere else. No verb that ends in -a in its unsuffixed form should ever Ablaut in Dhegiha, only those ending in -e when unsuffixed. Please give me a postal address and I'll send a copy of the Ablaut paper. Bob From bi1 at soas.ac.uk Thu Oct 11 14:49:45 2001 From: bi1 at soas.ac.uk (bi1 at soas.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 15:49:45 +0100 Subject: lost contact Message-ID: Siouanists one and all I haven't heard much from anyone recently. My computer was off- line for a while and that may have affected things. Equally with recent events over in America, email contact may have been affected. Hope you are all well Bruce Dr. Bruce Ingham Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies SOAS From shanwest at uvic.ca Tue Oct 16 02:46:51 2001 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 19:46:51 -0700 Subject: article Message-ID: Hi. Does anyone have a copy of this article that they'd be willing to mail to me? Author(s): Smith-Evan (ed.); Zephir-Flore (ed.) Title: Proceedings of the 1992 Mid-America Linguistics Conference and Conference on Siouan/Caddoan Languages Author(s): Broadwell,-George-Aaron Title of article: Is Choctaw a Pronominal Argument Language? Interlibrary Loan is unable to get copies of proceedings for that conference for some unknown reason. If you can help, email me off list. Thanks, Shannon West Linguistics Department, University of Victoria P.O.Box 3045 Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3P4 From rlundy at huntel.net Tue Oct 16 13:27:04 2001 From: rlundy at huntel.net (Richard C. Lundy) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:27:04 -0500 Subject: article Message-ID: Ms. West, You might remember me from last year re: some Lakota translations. How's your work coming? I just wanted to pass along some of that informal perspective often only available from Native speakers. I was recently speaking with a close Sicagu friend from the Rosebud Reservation. He is a fluent Lakota (his 1st language) speaker. He had recently had conversation with a man who is identified as "Stoney Sioux" known to be Nakota. My friend referred to the Nakota speaker's sound as not so much "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It was reportedly difficult (not impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible conversation. He heard "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." sound. (lacking your linguistic terminology; a soft or even aspirated "J"). I'm curious (as a Lakota speaker/instructor familiar also with the "D" of the Santee) what feedback you might be willing to share re: this observation. Thank you. Be well! Richard Lundy Nebraska Indian Community College Shannon West wrote: > Hi. Does anyone have a copy of this article that they'd be willing to mail > to me? > > Author(s): Smith-Evan (ed.); Zephir-Flore (ed.) > Title: Proceedings of the 1992 Mid-America Linguistics Conference and > Conference on Siouan/Caddoan Languages > Author(s): Broadwell,-George-Aaron > Title of article: Is Choctaw a Pronominal Argument Language? > > Interlibrary Loan is unable to get copies of proceedings for that conference > for some unknown reason. > > If you can help, email me off list. > > Thanks, > > Shannon West > Linguistics Department, > University of Victoria > P.O.Box 3045 > Victoria, B.C. > Canada > V8W 3P4 From shanwest at uvic.ca Tue Oct 16 21:02:18 2001 From: shanwest at uvic.ca (Shannon West) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 14:02:18 -0700 Subject: article In-Reply-To: <3BCC35A7.8CF7DCAC@huntel.net> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: Richard C. Lundy [mailto:rlundy at huntel.net] > Sent: October 16, 2001 6:27 AM > > Ms. West, > You might remember me from last year re: some Lakota > translations. I sure do. Your help was invaluable. Ake, pilamayaye. How's your > work coming? Slowly, but surely. You know any Assiniboine's that wanna talk? I just wanted to pass along some of that > informal perspective often > only available from Native speakers. I was recently speaking > with a close > Sicagu friend from the Rosebud Reservation. He is a fluent > Lakota (his 1st > language) speaker. He had recently had conversation with a > man who is identified > as "Stoney Sioux" known to be Nakota. My friend referred to > the Nakota speaker's > sound as not so much "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It > was reportedly > difficult (not impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible > conversation. He > heard "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." > sound. (lacking your > linguistic terminology; a soft or even aspirated "J"). I'm > curious (as a Lakota > speaker/instructor familiar also with the "D" of the Santee) > what feedback you > might be willing to share re: this observation. Oh, that's very interesting. I've never heard Stoney (though I'd love to at some point), so I can't comment too much on that. I do know that Stoney seems to be quite different than the rest of the Dakotan languages, likely split first from the others (right Bob?). I work on Assiniboine. As for phonetic drift, it doesn't surprise me, but for any evaluation that makes sense, you'll have to ask one of the phonology experts. :) Shannon. From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Thu Oct 18 03:26:24 2001 From: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu (rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:26:24 -0500 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" Message-ID: This is another discussion of OP egaN, in reply to two of the messages posted by John Koontz on September 22. First, I'd like to summarize John's model as I understand it: Two different conjunctions exist, both pronounced egaN. The first means "having". It can be accented on either the first syllable or the second, depending on where it would best fit to extend an alternating accent pattern from the last accented syllable of the preceding verb. If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, an -i/-bi particle is added between the verb and the conjunction. In the case of the "having" egaN, the particle chosen is -bi. Here, the [i] is generally elided, giving us b=egaN. Then, if the last syllable of the verb is accented, the accent will be b=egaN'; but if the penultimate syllable of the verb is accented, we will have b=e'gaN. The second form of egaN means "so", "as" or "because". It is always accented on the first syllable. If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, the -i/-bi particle chosen is -i. John, is this a fair statement of your position? My model is as follows: There is just one word egaN, which is a compound of e, "that", or "the preceding", and gaN, "so", "thus", "like", or "in such manner". The first element captures the preceding idea and feeds it into the second, which makes it an abstraction if it is a noun or a verb, or an affirmation of the whole idea under discussion if the preceding is discourse. Used as a conjunction, egaN ranges in meaning between the sequentiality implied in our English word "having", and the causation implied in our English words "so", "as" and "because". It tends to mean that the foregoing clause is/was a prerequisite for the following clause. It does not necessarily mean that the foregoing clause is *the* necessary and sufficient explanation of the following clause, but it does imply that the following clause would not or could not have happened had the foregoing clause not been in place first. Used as a conjunction, the accent on egaN is normally, but not always, on the second syllable; otherwise it normally falls on the first syllable. Use of the particles -bi or -i depends entirely upon the semantics of the preceding clause; this usage is completely independent of the conjunction egaN that follows the clause. The particle -bi signals that the foregoing clause is based on hearsay, while the particle -i may be used when the speaker is making a personal assertion. The latter is the normal mode of speech, and sometimes appears in short stretches even where -bi ought properly to be used. Since a myth is based on hearsay, narrative clauses are normally qualified by -bi. Dialogue clauses, on the other hand, usually represent the character's personal assertion, and therefore usually use -i when appropriate. This is why I stress that we need to partition the narrative statements from the dialogue statements when analysing this issue. I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the existence or utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy in OP. (John was explaining it to me here a couple of months ago. He offered a formula and a made-up example to illustrate it, with the suggestion that I try it and see if it didn't correspond to what I found in Dorsey. I've tried it and I still don't get it. The formula seems not to cover large areas of the language, the number of possible obviative statements seems minuscule, and when I do find a third person statement with an "obviative" subject that takes dhiNkhe' or thaN or whatever, it seems as likely to take a clause-final -bi as any other narrative statement. I asked for the practical semantic difference between "The Omaha saw the Pawnee " and "The Omaha saw the Pawnee ", and was referred to Ardis, who did not take the bait.) Until I am shown some compelling evidence in Dorsey for the proximate/obviative distinction, I can't take this model seriously as a factor in the current analysis. I had offered some examples of egaN used as a conjunction, with and without preceding -bi, from the short story "How the Rabbit Killed the Giant", pp. 22-25. I pointed out that egaN in the narrative statements were preceded by -bi at the end of the preceding clause, while in two dialogue statements that used conjunctive egaN there was no preceding -bi. John critiqued my argument last month, offering his interpretation of the -bi-less cases. >> Rory: >> Finding compound third-person dialogue statements is >> difficult, but I found two of them in the story, >> "How the Rabbit Killed a Giant", pages 22 - 25. The >> first is on page 23, line 10-11. When the giant demands >> to know which of them had had the audacity to cut up the >> deer they had shot, the two frightened men admit that the >> Rabbit made them do it: >> >> She' akha' MashtshiN'ge-iN' akha' pa'de wa'gazhi egaN' >> aNpa'dai ha -- "That one, the Rabbit, bade us cut it up, >> so that's why we cut it up". >> >> Here the accusation arises from personal experience, and >> the men do not precede egaN' with -bi. > John: > The first example is 'having', and should have =bi if it is > proximate, but it is evidently (consistent with the context) > obviative and has neither =i nor =bi. I had understood before that proximate statements were marked by =i or =bi at the end, and subjects that took akha' or ama' as articles; while obviative statements had no =i or =bi at the end, and had subjects that did not take akha' or ama' as articles, but rather such "object" articles as dhiNkhe' or thaN. Here we have a clause that has no =i or =bi at the end, but has a subject that takes akha' as its article. Am I misunderstanding the criteria for distinguishing proximate from obviative? > Note also that Rory has reglossed 'having' as 'so' in > [this] case. Dorsey glosses this egaN' as 'having' in the interlinear; I offered a free translation without including the interlinear. Dorsey's own free translation on page 25 is as follows: "That one, the Rabbit, commanded us to cut it up, and so we cut it up," said the two. This uses 'so', the causative translation of egaN, as I did. And in fact, 'having' really doesn't work very well in this case. If you have been disobeying your supervisor's standing orders at work, at the insistence of your charismatic co-worker Steve, and have just been called on the carpet by your fire-breathing boss, do you explain yourself: "Steve having insisted that we do it his way, that's what we did" which would sound like a history professor lecturing on the progress of Caesar through Gaul? Or would you not rather say: "Steve insisted that we do it his way, so that's why we did it that way" which clearly places the blame where it belongs? In the story, the men are trying to justify themselves to an outraged authority figure, not to give an impartial history of their actions. Despite the interlinear gloss of 'having', any sensible English translation needs to use a conjunction of causation, not of sequentiality. But if we accept that egaN' in this case should really be translated as 'so' or 'because' rather than 'having', the accent on the second syllable of egaN' seems to contradict the criteria given for the egaN of causation: > But i before e'=gaN 'as, because, so'. > > This conjunction always has initial stress. unless we assume that the rule for initial stress on the 'as, because, so' conjunction egaN works only if the preceding clause is proximate. >> Rory: >> The second is on page 23, line 17-18. As the giant >> proceeds to maul him, the Rabbit declares the difference >> between himself and the craven men: >> >> Dhe'ama naN'dhiphai' egaN' a'dhikhi'dha-bazhi'-hnaN'-i; >> wi' naN'wipha ma'zhi egaN' a'wikhi'bdha ta' miNkhe. -- >> "These ones fear you, so they don't attack you; >> I fear you not, so I will attack you". >> >> Here again we have no -bi in front of egaN' in either >> of the two places it appears. The first one has -i, >> which can be construed as the plural particle. The >> second has only the first person negator ma'zhi, but >> can't be counted in this test since its subject is not >> third person. > John: > The second example has two intances of egaN which were > glossed 'because' in the original, cf. 'as', fairly > reglossed as 'so', As we are dealing with the 'as', > and the first case is a third person plural it predictably > has =i, while the second case is a first person singular > and so lacks both =i and =bi. Here we have two instances of egaN', accented on the second syllable, glossed in the interlinear as 'because', glossed as 'so' in Dorsey's translation, and accepted by John as the 'as' version of egaN. This definitely contradicts the rule that this version of egaN is always accented on the first syllable, unless that rule was meant to apply only in case the preceding was third-person singular proximate. But if egaN 'having' can be accented on either syllable, and egaN 'as, because, so' can also be accented on either syllable, then we have no phonological basis left for distinguishing the two. We are left with only a presumed semantic bifurcation that depends on Dorsey's glosses. In other words, Dorsey's choice of a suitable English equivalent for egaN in various contexts makes the OP word egaN into two distinct words to separately match the functionality of the English morphemes we depend on to translate it. This is as if a German linguist analyzing English were to conclude that the English word 'but' is actually three distinct homophonous words: one signifying 'aber'; another meaning 'doch'; and yet another that equates to 'sondern'. > In dealing with Dorsey's texts one has to be cautious > about his glosses, but one ignores them at one's peril. > Thus, he spuriously glosses many =bi markers as 'they say', > working from a false conclusion as to the relation > of =bi=ama to the gloss 'they said', but a careful > consideration of the evidence suggests that it may > provisionally be taken as an error. I have not yet > regretted making that provisional assumption, and so > I stick with it. On the other hand the consistent > pattern of 'having' vs. 'as' does reflect something > very real, if easily overlooked, since it corresonds to > something real in meaning, morphology, and phonology. > Dorsey's very tendency to consistency in glossing makes > the one practice a probable error and the other an > important distinction. There is nothing spurious about Dorsey's gloss of the =bi markers as 'they say'. I am fairly confident by now that every active, non-fossilized instance of =bi in Dorsey carries the functional meaning: "The foregoing is based upon something that has been said; it is not my current personal assertion." We have no good English equivalent of this morpheme. Our word 'suppose' comes close, as in: 'supposing X', 'supposedly X' or 'supposed to do X', though even this doesn't capture the sense of =bi that the supposition is based on something said. In the narrative statements of a myth, the meaning of =bi and ama', 'they say', are almost equivalent. They do not fill the same syntactic slots, and they are functionally different otherwise, but at that point their meaning is so close that they tend to merge into a single word. When =bi comes alone at the end of a narrative clause to let the listener know that the statement is based on hearsay, rather than being an assertion upon which the narrator is staking his personal honor, what better English gloss can we find than 'they say'? I agree that one needs to deal judiciously with Dorsey's glosses, especially when beginning to learn the language. But I also think that following the glosses slavishly without learning to grasp the meaning directly from the Omaha-Ponca language behind them can lead us into errors of our own making. In particular, I object to the assumption that seems to be buried in some of John's arguments, that there must be some sort of one-to-one match between English words and Omaha words semantically. It seems if we find two different English glosses for the same Omaha word, then either the Omaha word is really two separate words to match our English functional paradigm, or else Dorsey has made an error. This is unfair to Dorsey, who was a magnificent scholar, and it needlessly throws sand in our own eyes. The functional morphemes in Omaha need not translate precisely into corresponding functional morphemes in English. The range of a particular Omaha word might overlap the territory of several different English words, depending on context, or it might have no good English translation at all. In this case, why would the glossing of that word not be "inconsistent"? That "inconsistency" would not be Dorsey's fault; it would simply be inherent in the nature of translation. Rory From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 18 15:05:25 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:05:25 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > First, I'd like to summarize John's model as I understand it: > > Two different conjunctions exist, both pronounced egaN. > > The first means "having". Or can usually be rendered that way, I think it implies simple sequencing or association of events, as opposed to causation or implication or the more specific temporal connections covered by 'when' in English, etc. > It can be accented on either > the first syllable or the second, depending on where it > would best fit to extend an alternating accent pattern > from the last accented syllable of the preceding verb. Or, putting it another way, it behaves as an enclitic - a part of the accentual domain (word) with the preceding verb. > If the preceding clause is third-person proximate, an Or any person plural. > -i/-bi particle is added between the verb and the conjunction. > In the case of the "having" egaN, the particle chosen is -bi. After your last letter I looked further and found a few cases with =i, leading me to decide that I would have to agree with you that =bi (as opposed to =i) indicates indirect experience (or something like that). I suspect that probably also accounts for the variability of =i vs. =bi before =the. It certainly explains why it's always =bi=the=ama and =bi=khe=ama when the/khe/... and ama co-occur. If you argue as I was that it's the following morpheme that conditions =bi, then here you'd probably have to say that the influenced of =ama was extending through the =the/=khe, since it seems that =the and =khe don't consistently condition =bi. But if =the or =khe occur with =ama then it's plainly an indirect experience (as well as being a conclusion from evidence): "they say that apparently ..." > Here, the [i] is generally elided, giving us b=egaN. > Then, if the last syllable of the verb is accented, the > accent will be b=egaN'; but if the penultimate syllable > of the verb is accented, we will have b=e'gaN. > > The second form of egaN means "so", "as" or "because". > It is always accented on the first syllable. If the > preceding clause is third-person proximate, the -i/-bi > particle chosen is -i. It seems like there should be the potential for =bi as well, but I don't at the moment know of any examples. It may be that there is something of a clash in pragmatics between categoprizing something as hearsay and then taking it as causal to something else. But more likely I just haven't seen the examples yet. > John, is this a fair statement of your position? I elaborated as needed, including the required concession on the nature of the =bi ~ =-i opposition. > My model is as follows: > > There is just one word egaN, which is a compound of > e, "that", or "the preceding", and gaN, "so", "thus", > "like", or "in such manner". ... I agree with this, too, of course, in an etymological sense. That is, the two egaN function words both derive from this e'=gaN 'to be like that'. > Used as a conjunction, the accent on egaN is normally, > but not always, on the second syllable; otherwise it > normally falls on the first syllable. I think that seeing the two egaN functions might clear this up. > Use of the particles -bi or -i depends entirely upon the > semantics of the preceding clause; this usage is > completely independent of the conjunction egaN that > follows the clause. The particle -bi signals that the > foregoing clause is based on hearsay, while the particle > -i may be used when the speaker is making a personal > assertion. ... I think I've come around to this. It certainly looks like it makes sense of some of the difficult cases I was facing. Naturally =bi would be very regular in front of =ama, which marks something that is close to being the same thing.. > I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the > existence or utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy > in OP. ... I think we're still waiting for Ardis to rise to the bait, though I may have to see what I can do. I'll try to address the rest later. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 18 15:05:41 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 09:05:41 -0600 Subject: article In-Reply-To: <3BCC35A7.8CF7DCAC@huntel.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Richard C. Lundy wrote: > ... My friend referred to the Nakota speaker's sound as not so much > "N" as such but more "J" sounding. It was reportedly difficult (not > impossible) to hold a mutually intelligible conversation. He heard > "Jina waste." rather than the expected "Nina waste." sound. ... Perhaps the n was somewhat palatalized (more like ny)? If it was actually less n-like, and more dy or j (dzh) like, this would not be unexpected on the assumption that nina (or jina) has a non-nasal vowel in the initial syllable (cf. lila in Teton). That is, perhaps for this speaker (or their community) there is some denasalization of sonorant n before oral vowels. Of course, one might then expect jida (with the second n also denasalized), but the diminutive =la of Teton corresponds to =daN (after an oral vowel) alternating with =na (after a nasal vowel) in Santee, as far as I know, so the nasality of the diminutive varies across dialects and we can't assume that nina (or jina) has an oral vowel in the second syllable. Actually, given cases like that we'd have to be careful in assuming that any vowel in any form was consistently nasal or oral across the several dialects! ==== Things one might look for further if one were curious and had the opportunity would be: What happens with other n that matches l before e or i or iN, e.g., in words matching Teton leks^i or le? Do these also sound like j, or is it just this one word? Is there any tendency of n matching other Teton l's before a, o, u, aN, and uN to appear as something like d? What about regular t or th or t? before e or i or iN? I notice that was^te is not described as was^c^e or was^je. ==== By way of background, it is noted that Dakotan dialects, like other Siouan languages, contrast oral vowels (aeiou) with nasal ones (aN iN uN), with uN sounding more like oN to many people. In addition, most of the dialects contrast non-nasal and nasal versions of the dental sonorant, with the non-nasal variant differing across the dialects - some (called Teton) have l vs. n, while others (called Santee-Sisseton and Yankton-Yanktonais) have d vs. n. A number (called Assiniboine and Stoney) have just n, though David Rood has mentioned that some people report at least some dn for n in Stoney in contexts I'm not sure were specified. (I would guess before nasal vowels or after oral ones?) In addition, b in y-stem first person inflections and some *pr (or *wr?) roots like 'lake' cf. Teton ble appears as m in these same dialects (Assiniboine and Stoney dialects). And we know that in some limited cases m appears for b in nasalized y-stems in other dialects, too, e.g., the famous case of mniN=kte in Teton (not bliN=kte). These same cases tend to confirm the assessment that l precedes oral vowels and n precedes nasal vowels. To forestall complaints, note that in Stoney dialects mn in the inflection of y-stems is generally simplified to m, so it's muha 'I have/hold it' instead of mnuha. The simple solution is to think something like this: the distinction of nasality occurs primarily, or underlyingly, in vowels, and in the Teton, Santee-Sisseton, and Yankton-Yanktonais dialects nasality spreads forward from a nasal vowel to nasalize l or d to n and bl or bd to mn. In Assiniboine and Stoney the sonorant is already n, however, instead of l or d, and so the spreading in more or less undetectable. This doesn't explain mn (or m), of course. It also leaves the issue, in fact, the existence, of things like =daN unexplained. Why is =daN even possible if the vowel is nasal? An alternative that works a bit better is to assume that that nasality is an underlying property of some vowels, and of all the dental sonorants and labial-dental sonorant clusters. In that case, it's orality that spreads forward from oral vowels in Teton, Santee-Sisseton, and Yankton-Yanktonais to produce l and bl (or d and bd). But, in Assiniboine and Stoney it doesn't spread, and these remain n and mn (or m) in all cases. Or maybe it does spread sometimes and you get the occasional d (or j before e, i. and iN?). This has the additional advantage of explaining things like the md (for bd) that Riggs et al. report for Santee. In that case (i.e., in the place and time they were working) the orality didn't spread quite far enough to oralize the m to b. (I gather that nobody today says mde, etc.?) This still doesn't explain =daN, of course. But if we go a step further and allow orality to spread outward from the preceding vowel to a following sonorant n, then that would account for =daN. And it's consistent with =na after nasal vowels, too. But then one would probably want to claim that in Teton orality spreads so far that the vowel itself is oralized, producing =la. The problem is that this won't explain =la after nasal vowels, where I think it is still =la. Possibly relevant here is the tendency for a number of other enclitics to have final nasal vowels in Santee, but not in Teton, e.g., =xti(N), and, I think =s^i(N). I haven't addressed another issue, and that is the tendency of n and m to occur before nasal vowels and y and w to occur before oral ones in cases where we're pretty sure that l ~ d ~ n or b ~ m aren't historically involved. These tendencies also have their notorious exceptions. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Oct 19 23:21:05 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 17:21:05 -0600 Subject: Evidentials Message-ID: Note: Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:52:10 +0200 From: Mullen John Subject: review of Palmer, Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Palmer, Frank R. (2001) Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, hardback ISBN 0-521-80035-8, xxi+236pp, $64.95, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (1st ed. 1986; paperback ISBN 0-521-80479-5). ... The first part of the book attempts to clarify basic concepts. He begins with the distinction between Realis and Irrealis - unmarked forms and modalized forms - and the distinction between propositional modality (where different types of desire/will/capacity are expressed) and event modality (where different information about the truth of a proposition is given). These last two categories are broader than the traditional categories of "modality of action" and "modality of knowledge, and the following chapter look in great detail at the different sub-types of modality which are marked in different languages. As an example of different types of event modality, we could mention that different forms are used in Central Pomo to signify a) It rained b) It rained (that's an established fact) c) It rained (I saw it) d) It rained (I heard it) e) It rained (I was told) f) It rained (everything is wet). ==== Koontz: Of course, neither this classical Pomo example (Pomo forms omitted in review) nor Palmer are exactly terra nova, but it's perhaps useful to put Siouan matters in a more general perspective. The last of these (f) is what I've been somewhat awkwardly calling 'the evidential' in Omaha-Ponca - the the/khe/dhaN/ge particle that occurs at the end of various clauses in the sense of 'evidently, apparently'. What Siouanists call a declarative is more like (c). A quotative is somewhere in the range of (d) or (e), possibly (b). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 20 02:21:58 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:21:58 -0600 Subject: Evidentials In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Koontz John E wrote: I neglected to make it clear that the Palmer review was from the Linguist list. > Palmer, Frank R. (2001) Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge University > Press, hardback ISBN 0-521-80035-8, xxi+236pp, $64.95, Cambridge > Textbooks in Linguistics (1st ed. 1986; paperback ISBN 0-521-80479-5). From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 20 09:01:19 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 03:01:19 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > I am not yet convinced (though open to being so) of the existence or > utility of the proximate/obviative dichotomy in OP. ... > The formula seems not to cover large areas of the language, the number > of possible obviative statements seems minuscule, and when I do find a > third person statement with an "obviative" subject that takes dhiNkhe' > or thaN or whatever, it seems as likely to take a clause-final -bi as > any other narrative statement. It's true that there are comparatively few obviative examples. Speaking for Ardis, she notes that OP proximate/obviative systems seem to be rather different from Algonquian ones, in that a number of references can be "proximate" at once. She suggested an analogy with staging of a play, in which characters center stage are "proximate," while characters offstage or perhaps in the wings are "obviative." I think she suggested that onstage and offstage might be more apropriate terms, but we seem to have stuck to proximate/obviative. As in many cases in linguistics, or rather, grammar-writing, terminology is usually recycled in an approximate sort of way rather than carefully reinvented for each language. Ayway, the converse of the prevalence of proximates is the paucity of obviatives. > I asked for the practical semantic difference between "The Omaha saw > the Pawnee " and "The Omaha saw the Pawnee ", > and was referred to Ardis, who did not take the bait.) I guess Ardis decided to let me do my own work. Drat. (Actually, I think she was pretty much e-incommunicado most of the Summer.) OK, keep in mind that it's the Omaha who would be the proximate and obviative referent in the two hypothetical sentences. The Pawnee would be (formally) obviative in both cases, since objects aren't marked proximate (as indicated by the use of obviative, alternatively object articles with them when articles are appropriate). I guess if you use the staging metaphor you'd have to characterize objects as upstaged, as opposed to offstage. The guy with the lines or the business (the subject) is the center of attention, as actors all know. I can attempt to characterize the difference as follows: as described by Omaha speakers whom Dorsey consulted in the editing of the texts (George Miller and Samuel Freemont), the difference would be that when proximate the action is of the subject (the Omaha)'s own accord (Dorsey 1891:28) or "voluntary action" (Dorsey 1891:58), whereas when obviative the subject is acting "by request or permission" (Dorsey 1891:29) or the action is an "involuntary action" (Dorsey 1891:58). Alternatively an obviative description might occur because the speaker did not see the subject act (Dorsey 1891:29). These seem to me to be essentially ways of saying that the subject has been upstaged or is offstage. Somewhere - I've momentarily lost the reference - LaFlesche says that a verb 'to die' that's given in proximate form was probably intended to be obviative, as the subject probably did not die deliberately (or words to that effect). Notice that the idea of "not seeing" the action is consistent with interpreting =i as some sort of declarative, but, the conception of involuntary or permitted/directed action is described as interchangeable, and is not consistent with that, and, moreover, the characterization applies to the use of the articles akha and ama as opposed to dhiNkhe, etc., as well as to the use of =i and =b(i) (e.g., p. 28-29) both, and is restricted to third persons singular. As far as inconsistencies of marking (between articles and verbal enclitics) Dorsey discusses the semantics of the distinction specifically in connection with such errors, as they are corrected by the consultants. I don't think he and they caught all the problems. I've noticed that the ones they comment on all involves cases of the first refernce bewing obviative and the second proximate. My suspicion is that in repeating material for Dorsey (or perhaps just in formulaitng long periods) the speakers shifted references from obviative to proximate, or brought them mentally onstage, resulting in mixed, grammatically incorrect (or less felicitous) sentences. > Until I am shown some compelling evidence in Dorsey for the > proximate/obviative distinction, I can't take this model seriously as > a factor in the current analysis. Technically I ought to follow this up with some nice text, carefully analyzed to show the aptness of the interpretations, but maybe not here and now. I do have a paper on this that I will try to dig out and send Rory. It's not great as a text analysis, but I do have a few examples, and, if I can get Ardis to send him her more recent effort, that goes further as a text analysis (of a different text). === In addition, I mentioned that Dorsey had some canned examples. These are in the National Anthropological Archives Dorsey Papers Dhegiha (3.2) [5] (preceding crossed out) 120 "Envelope marked "C/egiha Grammatical Notes. Not copied on slips Nov/93". A.D. Approx. 30 L. and slips with 6 large verb charts." (If I have not messed the associations in my files.) There are two columns, one is "By consent or command." and the other is "Without consent or command." That is, obviative vs. proximate. The two examples are: (1) The horse eats or ate the corn (complete action). (2) The horse is eating the corn (continuous or incomplete action). That is, punctual vs. continuative. A, if standing (col. 1 vs. col. 2) (obviative vs. proximate) (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe'=e ha (aiee! the e) vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhatha'=i ha (as opposed to the i) (2) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe thaN ha vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhathe akha ha The extra e is marked with a breve, as is the e in khe and the a in ha. I've inserted aspiration, recode c to sh, etc., added the =-signs. For B, if moving, change all thaN to dhiN and all akha to ama. For C, if sitting, change all than to dhiNkhe, and no column 2 exampls are given (because there's just akha and ama for proximate articles, and JOD's analogized those to thaN and dhiN). For D, if reclining, change thaN to khe, and again, no column 2. For E, if standing, past time; action occuring then, not now: (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe shathe dhaN=shti vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhata=i dhaN=shti (2) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe thaN dhaN=shti vs. (line, to indicate no analog?) For F, if standing, past time (present time not excluded): (1) shaNge thaN wahaba khe dhathe the ha vs. shaNge akha wahaba khe dhatha=i the ha (2) (not given) I'd maintain that E includes a time particle dhaN=shti, but thatmay well be the dhaN-form of the evidential particle (plus, shti 'too'), and that F is the the form of the evidential particle. A-D are essentially (column 1) the obviative forms (in the various positional genders) and (column 2) the proximate forms (in the two positional genders/numbers). At the bottom of the page is the hand annotation "All in the dicty; not yet in the Gr./86." The next page appears to be the handwritten notes for the page just described (thaN exx. only) and says of the proximate example "of his own accnt, not (scribble) [=by?] command, what he had no business to eat", and of the obviative example "his regular meal, given to him." Another example inerted to the side is: nuzhiNga akha najiN akha ha [the man (prox) is standing] "of his own accnt" "but" nazhiN thaN ha [(he) stood] "because commanded to stand" After some more of the horse eating there's the comment "See chart on desk for all the distintions." I suppose this might refer to the preceding page. === By the way, attached to the end of this stack of sheets is a brief summary sheet entitled "SUDDEN ACTION" with a short list of 'suddenly' auxiliaries: The first part, glossed, combines the motion verb thi with the motion positional dhe (and its vertitive gdhe), unreduplicated and reduplicated, except that the first is a causative of dhe, and the last a causative of gi. dhedhe 'send off' thidhe 'to pass on' thidhedhe thigdhe 'to come and go, to appear and disappear suddenly (once)' thigdhagdha 'to come and go repeatedly' gidhe 'to send this way (suddenly)' Then follows an unglosed list (actually arranged tabularly): idhaN, idhaNdhaN, ihe, ihaha, ithe, ithatha, khidhaN, khidhaNdhaN, khihe, khihaha, khithe, khithatha, thidhaN, thidhaNdhaN, thihe, thihaha, thithe, thithatha, gdhidhaN, gdhidhaNdhaN, gdhihe, gdhihaha, gdhithe, gdhithatha. This is basically some of the motion verbs (i, khi, thi, gdhi) combined with the positionals (dhaN, he, the), unreduplicated and reduplicated. === I still didn't get to the disputed examples. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Oct 22 22:23:06 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:23:06 -0600 Subject: Suddenly and Frequently Auxiliaries in Omaha-Ponca Message-ID: Without thinking I appended a list of suddenly and frequently auxiliaries from Dorsey's mms. to the end of a discussion of "OP bi vs. i with egaN." It occurred to me later that some folks might be interested in that but not the proximate/obviative marking and egaN issues. See the end of my second response to Rory, on bi vs. i, dated Oct 20, 2001. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Oct 23 06:37:06 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 00:37:06 -0600 Subject: Omaha-Ponca bi vs. i with "egaN" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Warning! This is probably going to be more interesting to students of Dhegiha morphology and syntax than Siouanists generally! I'm using the Macy Schools Orthography, more or less, in this. I'm starting here to address Rory's specific comments. Note that I have conceded that =bi vs. =i marks indirect vs. direct experience on the part of the speaker, so I won't address examples that simply confirm this elucidation of Rory'ss. However, I have not conceded that =bi ~ =i vs. [nil] doesn't also mark proximate vs. obviative in the third person singular (and plural vs. singular otherwise). This example is awkward because the form of the definite article suggests that the sentence is proximate (Rory's catch, my mistake), but the the verb is apparently obviative. On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote: > John critiqued my argument last month, offering his interpretation of > the -bi-less cases. > > >> Rory: > >> She' akha' MashchiN'ge-iN' akHa' pa'de wa'gazhi egoN' > >> oNpa'dai ha -- "That one, the Rabbit, bade us cut it up, > >> so that's why we cut it up". > > John: > > The first example is 'having', and should have =bi if it is > > proximate, but it is evidently (consistent with the context) > > obviative and has neither =i nor =bi. > Rory: > I had understood before that proximate statements were marked > by =i or =bi at the end, and subjects that took akha' or ama' > as articles; while obviative statements had no =i or =bi at > the end, and had subjects that did not take akha' or ama' as > articles, but rather such "object" articles as thiNkHe' or > tHoN. Here we have a clause that has no =i or =bi at the > end, but has a subject that takes akha' as its article. Am I > misunderstanding the criteria for distinguishing proximate > from obviative? No, you're quite right. My screw-up. This is proximate, as shown by the article akHa, but it lacks the expected =i or =bi. As it does seem to be direct experience I'd have to expect =i, not =bi. So this is not a case I can explain. I'm not sure how it would fit into Rory's analysis either. Possibilities that occur to me as I grope: Dorsey might have missed =i after the final i of wa'gazhi 'he ordered us' (from a'gazhi 'to order someone to')? That would be convenient, maybe a bit too convenient, but he doesn't do that consistently, cf. ...gazhi=i in 90:52.1, 52.12, 53.2, 53.11, ... so that's at best a weak possibility. Alternatively, it could be a mistaken use of akHa in an obviative clause. That seems even less likely. Finally, it could be a situation not previously encountered, so, casting about for other examples, i.e., searching for something like [~B][~I] EG in the Siouan Archive version of the texts in my text editor: 17.3 zhu'ga bthu'ga thishpa'shpa=xti=egoN 'they having pulled his whole body to pieces' Here it's actually a plural missing =(b)i. The context might be phonology. 63.6 noNbe'=the gitoN'be=egoN 'he having seen his own hand' This could actually be obviative, but the reference is proximate immediately before and after. Perhaps the obviativity arises from a lack of deliberation in seeing his hand. He notices it, rather than deliberately looking at it. 72.14 waga'zhi=egoN 'he having told them' Again the referent is proximate immediately before and after an obviative reference. 85.18 a'higi toN'ga t?e'=wathe=egoN 'they having killed a great many of them' This would seem to need a plural. (Note that a'higi toN'ga modifies the PRO-argument wa-.) 90.5/6 ugi'ne moNthiN=egoN 'they (or he/she?) having walked seeking their own' This might be a plural and it might be a singular proximate. It might be obviative. It's hard to say from the context. It should be a =bi, not an =i, if not obviative, in any event. 117.18/19 wahu'toNthiN i'bahoNzhi=egoN 'he having not known the gun' This might be obviative. It's hard to say immediately, from the context. 163.15 nu'zhiNga=thiN waki'depi he'gazhi=egoN 'the boy having been such a good marksman' This clearly is obviative, as indicated by the use of thiN with the subject of the clause, and is included just to show that does actually happen! (Searching for example stopped at this point.) === So, there seem to be some anomalous cases where no plural or proximate-marking =bi or =i is present. In some cases this might be argued to be due to phonological context (after =i(N)), but not always. I cannot account for these cases. JEK From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Thu Oct 25 14:46:20 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:46:20 -0600 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, modest and scholarly, through this channel. Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond either to the list or to me personally. -------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT From: EvolPub at aol.com To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list ... I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at most). ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] Tony Schiavo Evolution Publishing 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 Bristol PA 19007 USA www.evolpub.com From mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu Thu Oct 25 17:08:26 2001 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu (Mark Awakuni-Sweltand) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:08:26 -0700 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: 25 October 2001 ZhiNtheho John: Personally, I'd rather see book announcements coming as recommendations from someone on the list who has already checked out the contents. For example, I've been asked to look at the 2000 Watts Library (Grolier) publication by Madelyn Klein Anderson "The Omaha". Fortunately for the SiouanList, this 63 page book has little Omaha language (e.g., Hoo-Thu-Ga). Unfortunately for anyone wanting to use it as an introductory text in a grade school, it contains several questionable or misleading descriptions and photographs, and some outright errors. I cannot determine from the author's "note on sources" whether she actually entered Nebraska or the Omaha Reservation, or visited with Omaha people, during her research. I am in the process of preparing an email letter to the Grolier folks detailing my concerns. It is this sort of engaged information that I would find useful should anyone wish to offer it. Otherwise, I would rather take a pass on the marketing announcements. best uthixide Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Lecturer Anthropology/Native American Studies University of Nebraska Bessey Hall 132 Lincoln, NE 68588-0368 402-472-3455 mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 7:46 AM Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond > either to the list or to me personally. > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > From: EvolPub at aol.com > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > ... > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at > most). > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > Tony Schiavo > Evolution Publishing > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > Bristol PA 19007 > USA > www.evolpub.com From munro at ucla.edu Thu Oct 25 15:40:44 2001 From: munro at ucla.edu (Pamela Munro) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:40:44 -0700 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I agree with you, John. Vehemently. Pam -- Pamela Munro Professor, Department of Linguistics, UCLA UCLA Box 951543 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 USA http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/munro/munro.htm From kdshea at ku.edu Thu Oct 25 22:30:03 2001 From: kdshea at ku.edu (Kathleen Shea) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:30:03 -0500 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: I agree with you, John. I would rather not receive commercial announcements on the Siouan list, unless it's a recommendation from someone on the list. Besides, I already receive Evolution Publishing's catalogue in paper (as a result of their buying SSILA or LSA's mailing list?), and for me receiving it on the Siouan list would be double handling. Kathy Shea ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 9:46 AM Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and that I > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better alternative. > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they thought. > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of submission. > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, too > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however apt, > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that wouldn't > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and asking me > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to respond > either to the list or to me personally. > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > From: EvolPub at aol.com > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > ... > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language list and was > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that are > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of Native > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents which the > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all of our > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo and Saponi > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per month at > most). > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > Tony Schiavo > Evolution Publishing > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > Bristol PA 19007 > USA > www.evolpub.com From jggoodtracks at juno.com Fri Oct 26 01:52:20 2001 From: jggoodtracks at juno.com (Jimm G GoodTracks) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 20:52:20 -0500 Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) Message-ID: John! I agree with Kathy or as Mark suggests on a review of something and offer comment, then that's fine. Or like when you referred me to the book on LaFlesche Family. Otherwise, no commerials needed. Jimm On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:30:03 -0500 "Kathleen Shea" writes: > I agree with you, John. I would rather not receive commercial > announcements > on the Siouan list, unless it's a recommendation from someone on the > list. > Besides, I already receive Evolution Publishing's catalogue in paper > (as a > result of their buying SSILA or LSA's mailing list?), and for me > receiving > it on the Siouan list would be double handling. > > Kathy Shea > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Koontz John E" > To: > Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 9:46 AM > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list (fwd) > > > > I received this enquiry. I told Mr. Schiavo only announcements of > > publications on Siouan languages would be really appropriate and > that I > > was personally of the opinion that it would be better to keep book > > announcements out entirely. I recommended SSILA as a better > alternative. > > > > However, I thought I should ask the list subscribers what they > thought. > > I don't think it's so much an issue of volume or length of > submission. > > We probably err in all directions already - too much, too little, > too > > long, too short, depending on who and when ... For me it's more a > > question of whether you want direct commercial attention, however > apt, > > modest and scholarly, through this channel. > > > > Perversely, if someone reposted an announcement or a review that > wouldn't > > bother me. It's the difference between somebody coming up and > asking me > > if I'd like to buy a book and an acquaintance recommending one. > > > > If you have views on this that you'd like to express, feel free to > respond > > either to the list or to me personally. > > > > -------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 09:03:24 EDT > > From: EvolPub at aol.com > > To: John.Koontz at colorado.edu > > Subject: Posting book announcements on the Siouan list > > > > ... > > > > I understand that you are the moderator for the Siouan language > list and > was > > wondering if you permitted postings of new book announcements that > are > > relevant to the subject matter of the list. We publish a series of > Native > > American language vocabularies extracted from historical documents > which > the > > readers of your list would likely find interesting. While not all > of our > > books deal specifically with Siouan languages, we have two Tutelo > and > Saponi > > vocabularies that are due within the next year. Our posts would be > > informational, relevant, tasteful, and infrequent (perhaps 1 per > month at > > most). > > > > ... [an included sample announcing an Oneida vocabulary] > > > > Tony Schiavo > > Evolution Publishing > > 10 Canal Street, Suite 231 > > Bristol PA 19007 > > USA > > www.evolpub.com > From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Sat Oct 27 23:10:09 2001 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 17:10:09 -0600 Subject: Interesting Example of Raising in Omaha Message-ID: (Example in Macy Schools Orthography) I stumbled across this example: xta=wikHithe 'I love you for it', with the dative causative. The sentence is: "KHage'=ha, wape'= kHe xta'=wikHithe itha'noNhiN a," a'=bi=ama friend VOC weapon the I love you for it I truely EXCL he said QUOTE I love yours ni'kashiNga=akHa. "Wi'bthiNwiN=te?" a'=bi=ama. man the I buy yours FUT he said QUOTE JOD 90:109.3/4 "Friend, I truely love you for the weapon (I really admire your weapon)," said the man. "May I buy it from you?" he said. The translations with 'love you for it' are from Dorsey and probably originally his story teller or translation helper. In this case the verb (underlyingly xta=the 'to love') appears to agree with the possessor of the notional object requiring the use of the "dative" causative version of the verb (xta=kHithe 'to love on account of, to love someone's'). John