do/done auxiliary

[R. Rankin]

> In Osage certainly -naN / -noN appears post-verb-root
and is imperfective,
> 'habitually, always, usually, continually'.    It
very often appears in
> 'past' contexts 'was always verb-ing; always used to
verb' .  Most often
> followed by -pe, (from api 'pluralizer' dhe
'declarative' )in 3rd person
> sentences.  Is there another -naN that is 'past' or
'perfective'?  How is it
> used?

For Osage, I'm not sure, because the problem here is
one of homophony.  The 'habitual' /naN/ is a
phonologically reduced form of common Dhegiha *-$naN.
In Kaw this morpheme reduced to /hnaN/, but in Osage,
apparently it lost all trace of the fricative.  This
leaves it merged with reflexes of *?uN and my guess is
that something had to "give" in the system.  Like I
said, none of us has ever systematically investigated
what's become of the various reflexes of ?uN in the
various languages.  It would make a nice doctoral
dissertation for some ambitious young linguist.

Bob