Mixed stative and Whorf.

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Thu Dec 19 16:43:12 UTC 2002


On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, R. Rankin wrote:
> I think John's examples illustrate nicely my point that languages with
> stative verbs have morphology (or other mechanisms) that allow them to
> show the concomitant action, etc.

On reflection, I didn't actually provide examples, but I can if anyone is
interested.

> > Here's a fun OP verb I noticed while looking into this:  u..hi' 'to have
> > grown, been raised' The first person is ua'hi 'I grew' (active), but the
> > second is udhi'hi 'you grew, were raised' (stative).  This is the only
> > mixed active/stative verb I can recall.  I may have managed to forget some
> > examples provided by Dorsey.

> That's really interesting, given that Siouan languages don't tend to
> be "fluid-S" languages.  Are these examples from Dorsey 1890?

It was, and there were two cases of each person.  I didn't search under
possible forms of the stem, so I have only forms glossed "grew."  Since
there were two cases of each person I'd say this wasn't fluid-S (S in
agent or patient form as required by semantics, I assume) but a mixed
paradigm, in which the first person is always active (agent pronominal)
and the second always stative (patient pronominal).  I don't know the
other persons' forms.

> Carolyn gave me another example from her Osage speakers.
>
> OS form of 'be' (Carolyn Quintero, personal comm.)
> 1s  briN
> 2s    niN  OR $ciN
> 3s    ðiN  OR maybe just ðí
> BUT
> 1pl  wa-ðiN-pe  with a stative pronominal, wa- 'us, 1pl patient'.
> E.g., Scéce waðiNpe 'we are tall'

For what it's worth, the OP cognate of this verb (Os sce'ce : OP snede')
is not inflected with the aid of an auxiliary or copula.

I assume this inclusive example isn't dhiN, the animate motion positional?
Of course, that would be expected to be active in form in the inclusive,
too.  (I think it's (?) aNgadhiNhe in OP, but I don't trust my memory on
the =he coauxiliary.)

Of course, with or without a positional, in OP the verb would be inflected
- wasneda=i 'we are long;  we are tall'. I do recall that this is a verb
for which speakers were uncomfortable with the first person.  I was told
it was boastful.  I can think of some possible reasons for this that I
didn't think to investigate at the time.

It's interesting that n- occurs in the second person of Os dhiN 'be'.
This is normal in OP (niN < s^niN), but I thought the variants of the
second person with dh-stems in Osage were something like s^c^- ~ sc-?

JEK



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