transitivity, locative prefixes & the pronomin. argument hypothesis.

R. Rankin rankin at ku.edu
Fri Sep 27 18:47:38 UTC 2002


I'm currently working with Carolyn Quintero and her
Osage lexical materials and we have a question or two.

1.  What is your judgment of the transitivity of a
sentence like "John is standing on the floor" in a
typical Siouan language?  Something like "John
floor-the anazhiN."

Does the fact that the locative a- is a part of the
verb nazhiN 'stand' render the word 'floor' the direct
object of the verb?  In English we would take 'on the
floor' to be something quite different from the direct
object, but what about anazhiN?  Is 'the floor' the DO
in Siouan or not?

2.  Likewise the reciprocal prefix *hki(k)-.  Is it the
direct object of the verb in, for example,
a-hkih-toMpe 'they look after each other, where atoMpe
is 'look after'.  Even if you believe in the pronominal
argument hypothesis, is -hkih- the pronominal here or
is it a voice marker?

Bob



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