double inflection

Pamela Munro munro at ucla.edu
Mon Aug 4 02:33:14 UTC 2003


You interpreted what I said correctly, John. I believe that Muskogrean
grade formation is derivational, though perhaps (since it is aspectual)
not everyone would agree with me. In Chickasaw it is unpredictable both
in terms of its occurrence and, often, its meaning. But of course these
are tricky questions. Pam

Koontz John E wrote:

>On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Pamela Munro wrote:
>
>
>>Agreed, absolutely. I should have said that. The same would be true of
>>the Siouan forms. That's what makes these so interesting to me. If the
>>morphology does not have a long enough base to do its thing it can look
>>ahead to inflection and borrow something.
>>
>>
>>>What interests me about this case is that it shows grade formation
>>>operating in some sense, anyway) after (perosnal) inflection.  That's like
>>>the way that dative formation operates after (personal) inflection in
>>>Omaha-Ponca.  Theorists generally hold that inflection follows derivation.
>>>
>>>
>
>I'm not sure if I worded this clearly.  Were you agreeing that it looked
>like - in this case - the grade formation process would have to be said to
>follow inflection in the process of creation of the form?  That was the
>only way I could get the case of the Omaha-Ponca dative to make sense to
>me.  In other words, while my instincts agree with my education here, and
>I'd expect all derivation to precede all inflection, the grade formation
>process you describe here, and at least the case of the OP reduplication of
>'to say' look like they require one derivation to follow inflection.
>
>The Omaha-Ponca dative is actually a better example, because it's
>pervasive, and not an isolated case, but it could be argued that dative is
>an inflectional process, rather than a derivational one, though I think
>the instincts of most Siouanists would be that it is derivational, or at
>least "stem forming."  The problem in Omaha-Ponca is just that it's
>difficult to explain the forms exhibited by applying inflection to the
>dative "stem."  In some cases the merger of the locative or pronominal or
>sequence of them with gi- seems to skip syllables that precede its
>ostensible location.
>
>I haven't been able to come up with any arguments that OP dative is
>derivational as opposed to inflectional.  It seems pretty productive, and,
>though there are a couple of cases where the English verbs expressing the
>base and the dative forms are different - e.g., gaNze/giaNze
>'demonstrate/teach', I don't know that these are especially unpreditable
>and idiomatic.
>
>JEK
>
>
>
>

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