Interesting Example of Raising in Omaha

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Sat Oct 27 23:10:09 UTC 2001


(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



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