OP stative verb ablaut?

R. Rankin rankin at ku.edu
Sat Feb 14 15:50:22 UTC 2004


These are all really interesting paradigms (bize 'be dry') and it's nice to have
the examples so clearly presented.

I think one difficulty with the forms below is that "animacy" is a flexible
concept, or, at least, a continuum on which nominals can reside.  It would be
interesting to check with an extensive list of nouns.  'Wind, water', and
'snow', although not animate in the western sense, are still potentially
"actants" in that they can cause damage, move objects, etc., so they may qualify
for -akha on that basis.  On the other hand, animacy may not be involved at all.
This is  a project in which the text collection(s) might show the way too.

Bob

> The akha' is definitely not restricted to animate beings.
> The speakers spontaneously gave me two sentences using the
> word for 'deep' (s^ku'be):
>
>     Ni' akha' s^ku'ba.      Ma' akha' s^ku'ba.
>     Water the it's deep.    Snow the  it's deep.
>     The water is deep.      The snow is deep.



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