PL and 'future'

[Rankin, Robert L]

>I'm pretty certain that iNktE is a compound of two morphemes, one the
more or less widely attested *kte irrealis or future, which takes the
e-grade in Dakotan (where it doesn't take the iN grade) and Dhegiha, the
other the *iN that leads to the iN grade and which I suspect provides the iN
in OP(e)=iN=the 'perhaps'.

There's more on this in the archives of the list. I recall discussing it
last year.

> The future marker was discussed above.  As for the plural, there is a
> noun modifier (=adjective or stative verb?), apparently meaning 'more
> than one', found in the published texts, whose pronunciation is
> probably wi: or wi.  That seems to be a possible cognate with the >
pluralizer *-pi, but there is no good evidence that it had an initial >
vowel.

> How interesting and somewhat awkward!  So, like the iN in the iNkte
> future, the a in the api plural would have to have a secondary origin.

While that's always possible, w/p correspondences between Siouan and Catawba
are not established. The for the most part the only ones that are
established are one to one with allowances for the d~r alternations, etc. It
seems premature to claim an irregular Catawba cognate for a morpheme that
doesn't even occur in Crow/Hidatsa, Mandan (?) or OVS.

The overall meaning of kte is much closer to 'irrealis' than 'future'. I
tend to agree w/ Blair that the semantics is a bit dicey here.

Bob