Non-wa Nominalizations

[Rory M Larson]

>> 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.

I don't follow.  Ablaut generally affects only the end
verb of the chain before the imperative particle.  In
this case, both examples are ablauted before ga.

In the first sentence, I was understanding ie as a noun
equivalent to English 'speech' or 'language.  I was
seeing it as the head of a noun phrase "UmoN'hoN ie",
"Omaha speech" or "Omaha language".  Then I was
employing that NP as an adverbial noun to modifiy
the verb e', 'to say', which ablauted to a' before ga.
So I figured:

  X [UmoN'hoN ie] a' ga!
  X [(in) Omaha language] say IMP
  Say X in the Omaha language!

The speakers apparently preferred treating ie as an
instrumental verb in which the central meaning was
still 'say'.

  X UmoN'hoN i-a' ga!
  X Omaha INST-say IMP
  Say X by means of Omaha!

The aim in either case, of course, is to say "Say X
in Omaha!" in Omaha!

Rory