Non-wa Nominalizations

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> > i'...e 'speak; speech, unit of speech, e.g., word'
> > hi'...gaN 'tell traditional story; traditional story'
>
> Is there any particular reason we don't have an epenthetic dh in i'e
> (not i'dhe) ?  Is this word completely "normal"?

I've wondered about that myself and I have no explanation except that
there is a word idhe 'to speak of, to promise'.  Dakota has iye, where y,
like dh is from *r - but maybe not in this word? - and some folks like to
write iye in OP, but I figure this is awkward because (a) the y is quite
automatic and (b) y only occurs in this sort of epenthetic environment.

As a verb ie is quite regular and it's a good MVS set at least.

> > I don't believe you can prefix wa to these forms, which are active
> > intransitives and taken no patient.

> What about the thing spoken?  Wouldn't a language fill this
> slot?

Well, the language might be oblique, as it is, I think, in Russian.  For
example, I wonder if the i-prefix doesn't govern the language.  I actually
don't know how to say 'to speak Omaha' off the top of my head, oddly
enough.  I do think there is a place in the texts where they might say 'to
speak Mandan'.  I'll check when I can.

> For a while, I was trying to build classroom sentences on
> lines of:
>
>       X UmoN'hoN ie a' ga!  ("Say X in Omaha!)
>
> The speakers recently corrected me.  I should have been
> phrasing that:
>
>       X UmoN'hoN ia' ga!

Yeah, but that's just an ablaut issue:  i'...E, with E > a /__ IMPERATIVE.
They apparently liked your complementation.

> This would seem to mean that the verb ie can take a patient.

At least the language is clearly some sort of argument.  We can't test
with the usual non-third or animate plural object tests.  What does wi'e
or maybe wee mean?

Things said and quoted often behave rather atypically for objects.  For
example, I think the 'to say' verbs always incorporate a demonstrative -
sometimes fairly obscure in the morphology - because this is
co-referential with the thing quoted.  'To think' verbs are similar.  If
it's not a demonstrative with verbs of saying or talking, it's i or u, as
in i'e or udha'.

> I wonder if ie isn't primarily a verb.  Like any other verb or verb
> phrase, it can be turned into a noun describing the action, in the way
> we might say "the speaking".  The term we-e, however, if it existed,
> would mean "the thing used for speaking", if we suppose that wa is a
> head-marker, or "(something) used for saying things", if we suppose that
> wa is a patient marker.  As implement terms, these words may just never
> have been coined.

The i-locative - or forms homophonous with it - aren't always
instrumental.  I don't see how examples like ibahaN could be, anyway.