Complementation of i'e

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Wed Jan 21 08:00:28 UTC 2004


I looked, but couldn't find any examples of 'speak (a language)' in the
texts.  In fact, I could find any examples of i'e with a complement.  The
sense of 'speak' with a complement seems to use ukkie or some derivative
thereof, e.g., aNg-u-dhi-kkie 'we speak to you'.  Unfortunately the texts
only go so far as a source of examples.

I did notice that 'we speak of', from i=...dhe 'speak of' is i=aNdha=i,
showing the i there is a preverb, not the instrumental locative.  On the
other hand, 'we speak' from i'...e is aNdhaNa=i, in which aNdhaN is the
typical inclusive + i-locative result.  (Actually, for various
morphophonemic reasons, it appears that the inclusive aN follows the
locative i, subversive as that may seem from a Dakotanist point of view.)
Anyay, subversion aside, it does appear that i'e begins with the
instrumental locative.

I've thought of another consideration relative to i'e appearing as i'e and
no *i'dhe.  I think this may have been Bob's point earlier, actually.  As
it happens epenthetic dh in "preverbal strings" occurs only between the
elements of the preverbal string, e.g., between locatives and between
locatives and pronominals.  There are no cases of it occurring between the
string and the verb initial that are coming back to me at the moment.  Of
course, you do find epenthetic dh in the causative's dh, and the paradigm
of 'father' is Ps1 iNdadi, Ps2 dhiadi, Ps3 idhadi, Voc dadi=ha(u), in
which Ps3 built on adi shows epenthetic dh in i-dh-adi.  For some reason
Ps2 built on -adi does not.  Ps1 and the vocative are from another stem,
-dadi.  (Siouan has both the ata and tata versions of the generic human
'father' word.)



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