akhe

[Rankin, Robert L]

>Furthermore articles generally pattern as verbs in several ways in
Omaha-Ponca: morphologically (for obviative animates) and syntactically
(post demonstrative, clause final).  And they serve as or bind pretty
closely with (as here) existential predicates.

I guess I'm shocked and surprised to find that my analysis of these
constructions is actually more abstract than other Siouanists. :-) To me the
so-called articular verbs (the conjugated 'progressives') are always AUX's
and not main verbs. In existential cases the real verb however is most often
"zero", and the de-article AUX is all that is left overt. I think
essentially that we're saying the same thing here though.

> >Here I'm using Dorsey's glosses.
>
> 90:63.11
> Is^ti'niNkhe akh=e akha,    a'=bi=ama
> I.           is    the one  said they they say

>Well, as I indicated, the segmenting into words is Dorsey's.  I do agree
that syntactically the e is outside [Is^ti'niNkhe(=)akha], serving as the
"clefting" predicate (and so marking the NP as focussed).  The second akha
is an imperfective auxiliary on e.  The whole is embedded under a'=bi=ama.
... the e is clearly strongly enclitic to the final element of
Is^ti'niNkhe akha, and, I'd add, from exposure to spoken Omaha and to
Dorsey's manuscript comments on his orthographic "aka'" being promounced
"ak" that the first akha, like all Omaha articles, I think, is an
enclitic of the preceding noun.

OK, you're just marking a phonological boundary where I wouldn't. In Kaw I
had lots of examples where I'd have actually written a pause (comma) between
the subject and the /e/, which was part of the predicate.  If Omaha speakers
drop the final V of akha and appear to cliticize the following /e/, I'd
consider that a fast-speech phenomenon and let it go as that.

[[[[Is^ti'niNkhe=akh]=e] akha] a'=bi]=ama

It looks from this as though you're basing your syntactic parsing on your
phonological parsing. Grammatically, /e/ just doesn't go with the 1st NP
except maybe in the surface phonology.

> >90:143.14
> wiga'xdhaN ga'=akh=e             a'=bi=ama
> my wife    that one lying is she said he, they say

>There's no trace of gaa in Omaha except in cases like this.  I'm certain
Dorsey has simply misunderstood the form.

I tend to doubt that. I haven't looked up the context, but IF there is any
evidence at all that the wife was in a horizontal position, then you just
can't escape having /khe/ as the morpheme. Ga is the third member of the
deictic trio, dhee, shee, gaa, and it should probably have a long V if it
was accented (although as we've noted many times, we don't understand the
length alternations). The next example is even clearer in favor of /khe/,
because here both subjects are dead (i.e., lying down).

> >90:311.4
> wadhaxu'xughe naN'ba t?e  akh=e         a'dha  u
> racoon        two    dead the two (lie) indeed halloo

>The breaking up into words, as I emphasized in the original posting is
strictly Dorsey's.  The akh is just akha=e as pronounced.  It is never
akhae.

OK, that's just the usual Siouan V1V2 > V2, but it isn't the issue. Nor, I
think is Dorsey's word boundaries, which I agree are often problematic. I
still see the problem as being your enclitic boundary (=) between kh and e
in the horizontal positional. I guess the semantics is primary to me; if
reclining is a part of the translation, then khe is clearly a unit. The only
way to contradict Dorsey on the semantics is to check it with speakers (and
even then folk analyses are possible, unfortunately).

> Why not start off by segmenting the obvious (!) /khe/ and they try to
> analyze the remainder.

>I did.  I came back to akh=e.

Well, at least in the examples I've seen that still looks perverse. I'm
unconvinced that this is contributing to our understanding of the several
7ee's. I guess time and work will sort them out....

bob