Lexical and syntactic compounding in Dakota

Kyle, John H jkyle at ku.edu
Sat May 29 16:03:31 UTC 2004


While reviewing the data on lexical vs. syntactic compounds in Dakota I
came across a form which has me scratching my head.  Lexical compounds
are formed by the concatenation of roots and contain one stressed
syllable (peninitial).  Syntactic compounds concatenate 'words', each
with their own stress (the second stressed syllable is reduced)  One of
the classic examples given to show the difference between the two types
of compounds is:

c^he'Ga zi'   (yellow kettle)(syntactic compound)
c^hexzi'     (brass kettle) (lexical compound)

In the L compound, the c# root (c^ex  or c^eG) directly attaches to zi.
In the S compound the root undergoes stem formation (epenthetic final
vowel and initial stress) before concatenating.  My question concerns
the following classic example:


s^ka'l o ma'ni (he goes playing about) (syntactic compound)and
s^kal o' mani   (he goes about in order to play) (lexical compound)

What is the nature and behavior of s^kal ?  Why doesn't it appear as
s^ka'la in the syntactic compound.  Is it considered a C# root?  And
does anyone have examples of its use in other constructions?  Thanks.

John Kyle
jkyle at ku.edu



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