Benefactive Reflexives

REGINA PUSTET pustetrm at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 17 21:29:24 UTC 2004


 [John]
>I think really that the essential

>thing is that the verb continues to take (at least implicitly) its

>normal

>sort of object or patient and that the presence of the reflexive

>indicates

>that the subject and beneficiary are one.



>> In fact, it now occurs to me that ic'i-forms are the ONLY forms that

I

>> have managed to elicit so far when benefactive reflexives were at

issue.



>I'm afraid I got lost here!

What I meant (I should have made that more explicit) is that by the building-block logic of person marking in Lakota, one might expect that benefactive reflexives are coded by means of reflexive ic'i-forms plus the benefactive/possessive marker ki-, which would yield something like ic'ici- for third person singular benefactive reflexive. Today's Lakota session has revealed that such forms do, however, not exist. At least my speaker and me haven't been able to produce such an example.



[Jan/David]

>

> k'u is also used with ic?i in both reflexive and reflexive

benefactive:

>

> Phezhi etaN' ii'c?ikcupi na owiN'shthuNpi.

>

> They took some grass for themselves and spread it to sleep on

>

>

>

> Unki'yepi etaN'haN xeya'b ii'c?ikcu.

>

> She has taken herself away from us.



>both of these examples are of icu, not k'u; that verb takes an

>unexpected

>extra -k- before the -c- in the suus forms and (apparently) with the

>reflexive, too.

Right. But the examples are very nice and illustrate the patientive/benefactive ambiguity of ic'i-forms. Here is another one with icu 'take':

peanuts  etaN   i-mic'i-kcu

peanuts  some  take-1SG.RFL-take

'I got myself some peanuts'

Regina



		
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