Information / nouns vs. verbs

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Fri Dec 13 15:57:56 UTC 2002


>However, I would like to know the evidence that Lakhota thípi is still a
verb in all uses (of course it can certainly be a main verb expressing
'they live').

Thipi fills the technical bill as a verb, but I wonder if you don't tend to
get some additional derivation when it REALLY functions as the V in the
sentence.  In other Siouan languages at least one might tend to get the
local equivalent of o-thi-pi "they live IN it" or some other locative
prefix.  And the expression that means 'they are alive' would call for an
entirely different verb.

I have to admit though, that, after the Siouan syntax meeting a year ago, I
began to wonder if there were ANY hard and fast lexical classes in Siouan
languages.  For example, Lakhota is conjugated, la-ma-khota, la-ni-khota,
etc.  Can it also be possessed?  That I don't know.

Just to muddy the water. . . .

Bob



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