More plural.

[Rory M Larson]

John wrote:
> Dhegiha has pluralizing positionals in its progressive (or continuative?)
> forms en lieu of the plural enclitics, and some positionals
> (interestingly, I think) start with a-, e.g., ama (and singular akha),
> which seem potentially to be from simpler *ma and *kha, cf. =ma 'animate
> obviative collective' and =khe 'inanimate or animate obviative supine'.
> In addition, the inclusive of positionals like thaN 'animate obviative
> standing' or dhiN 'animate obviative moving' have a sort of extra or
> "locative" a, e.g., aNgathaN, showing another trace of an a-prefix on
> positionals.  Whatever this a- is, it might elucidate the a of the
plural.
> If progressives tended to generalize into aspectually unmarked forms, a
> progressive with a positional *=a=pi or *a=tu or *=a=kre might end up an
> ablauting plural marker.  Of course, I still don't know why or what the
> -a-.  I have at times considered that it might be some sort of
> nominalizer.  Progressives might reasonably derive from noun forms,
> essentially 'his going'.

These are some very interesting ideas.  One possibility
that occurs to me for that -a- is that it might signal
something like active responsibility or intention on the
part of the actor.  That certainly seems to be a big
feature of the /akha/ and /ama/ positionals at any rate.
Also, the -e final verbs they use always seem to go to
a-grade ablaut.  Compare the two sentences from the
Dorsey dictionary /akha/ entry that I posted earlier:

  ShoNge akha wahaba khe dhatha'=i ha.
  The horse ate the corn of his own accord.

  ShoNge thoN wahaba khe dhathe'=e ha.
  The horse ate the corn given him to eat.

In the first sentence, both the positional /akha/ and
the declarative =i take a leading a-, while in the
second sentence the positional is plain and the
declarative becomes =e without leading a-.

If this were the case, we'd have to suppose that the
"will" forms of the future imply intent, as opposed
to the passive potentiality of /tte/.  Command
particles would also imply intent.  The only case
that would be problematic to this idea would be the
"not" forms, which always cause a-grade ablaut, but
which today at least can be used for stative verbs
as well as active ones.  Perhaps these are just a
generalization on earlier active-only forms?

Rory