Mixed stative and Whorf.

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> We seem to have elicited a couple more of these from our Omaha speakers.
...
>   dhishkade     you play
...
>   dhini'uwoN    you swim

It's interesting to note that in these examples and udhihi, it's the
always second persons that are stative in form.

> In these two examples, the dhi- could be the emphatic/independent pronoun
> rather than the affixed you-object pronoun.  That would seem especially
> likely in the "swim" case.

That's certainly possible, and I can think of some parallels around
Siouan, e.g., consistent use of the independent first person plural in the
stative paradigm in Crow, or etti 'his house' in Omaha-Ponca.  Still, I
think this is just what it seems, an unexpected stative second person.

> But compare the word for "crawl", which seems
> to be entirely stative(!):
>
>   mide'         crawl
>   oN'mide       I crawl
>   dhi'mide      you crawl

I don't think I'd ever run across this!

> I don't know if I have the accent correct on the last two.  Perhaps they
> had to emphasize the first syllable to convince me that that was what
> they really meant!

More likely, for some reason pronominals are long with this stem.

> Also, what about the word for die/dead?  We have two separate words for
> this in our language, but they seem to handle the distinction by treating
> the same word as either active or stative, don't they?
>
>   at?e'         I die
>   oNt?e'        I am dead

I now recall you pointing this out before.  And I think this occurs in
Dakotan, too.  However, as far as I can recall Dorsey always has active
forms for this stem.  This would be more like the fluid-S pattern Bpb
Rankin mentioned.