Causative with P12 in Osage (RE: WA- once more.)

Rory M Larson rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu
Sat Jan 17 23:44:13 UTC 2004


John wrote:
> I found "ni a-dsi wa-kshi tha" 'permit us to cross this water', for which
> I tentatively offer:
>
> niN   aci  wa-ks^idha
> water ???  cause us
>
> This lacks the extra a- of a-wa- in the same way that it is missing in
the
> speech of the contemporary Osage speakers with whom Carolyn has worked.

> The 'aci' form might be a locative, with =cu (~ =ci?) 'in'.  In any event
> it seems that the gloss LaFlesche offers is far from literal here.

You mean it might be the "at/in location" postposition?
I.e. it might transcribe into OP as:

  ni'adi wakhi'dha   ?

If so, that ought to translate as "cause us/them to (be) in water".

In another note, John points out that the -awa- form for P12
seems to occur in conjunction with an incorporated prefix.
Perhaps it is not causative per se that does it, but only the
"tightness" of the preceding element, which in the case of a
postpositional phrase is too loosely bound to force/preserve
-awa-, even if the following verb is a causative.

Rory




                      Koontz John E
                      <John.Koontz at colorad        To:       siouan at lists.colorado.edu
                      o.edu>                      cc:
                      Sent by:                    Subject:  Causative with P12 in Osage (RE: WA- once more.)
                      owner-siouan at lists.c
                      olorado.edu


                      01/17/2004 12:02 AM
                      Please respond to
                      siouan






On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Koontz John E wrote:
> I'll have to see if I can turn up some examples of the right category in
> the Dorsey or LaFlesche ritual texts.

I found "ni a-dsi wa-kshi tha" 'permit us to cross this water', for which
I tentatively offer:

niN   aci  wa-ks^idha
water ???  cause us

This lacks the extra a- of a-wa- in the same way that it is missing in the
speech of the contemporary Osage speakers with whom Carolyn has worked.

I'm not sure the osrit* files in the Siouan Archives are the whole set of
LaFlesche Osage ritual texts, but this is almost the only example of 'us'
in them.

The 'aci' form might be a locative, with =cu (~ =ci?) 'in'.  In any event
it seems that the gloss LaFlesche offers is far from literal here.

Osage has ks^ for kh before i.  I'm fairly certain of the causative, in
spite of LaFlesche's word boundary between ks^i and dha.



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