Dhegiha Plurals and Proximates

[Rory M Larson]

>> I've looked at the short collection of Osage sayings
>> at the end of the dictionary, which I understand are
>> supposed to be basically correct, and not from
>> La Flesche.  There is one case in which =i appears,
>> in the tta=i tHe form which is common in Omaha, and
>> which in the context indicates a very certain future.
>> There are also two or three cases in which =bi is
>> used for what is singular in the translation.  Both
>> =azhi and =bazhi are used for the negative plural.
>> If this material is valid, it seems unlikely to me
>> that Osage =pi was simply a pluralizer at the time
>> it was collected.  It is certainly true, though, that
>> =bi (=pi) occurs in many places where we would find
>> =i in 19th century Omaha.

> The occurrence of =tta=i=the for the 'future of
> certainty' or future + evidential is interesting,
> and may point out an environment in which Osage
> does have an =i, perhaps suggesting the source
> environment of =i in OP.  This environment has
> another unusual thing about it, which is that the
> i- and non-i-variants (in Omaha-Ponca) are =tta=the
> and tta=i=the, i.e., there is ablaut of =tte before
> =the.

Yes!  That's a very interesting point.  It appears
that all the cases of future + positional cause the
tte to ablaut to tta.

  tta miNkHe      I-future

  tta niNkHe      you-future

  tta tHe         constrained future

  tta akHa        s/he-future-of-their-own-free-will

  tta ama         they-future-of-their-own-free-will

  ttoNgatHoN      we-future  ( < tta oNgatHoN (?) )

What's especially interesting to me here is that the
a-grade ablaut occurs, not just before (probably)
every positional, but even before the conjugated form
of each positional.

Wouldn't this suggest that what is causing ablaut is
not the passive front end of a particle that happened
to begin with a- (e.g. an aboriginal *=api), but rather
a separate particle *=a- that once stood regularly in
front of particles of a definite grammatical class?

Rory