FW: possessive constructions in siouan

Sun Feb 6 00:09:06 UTC 2005

-- Russians normally use structures like ???-?? ? ????-?? ???? (there is smth. at
smb.) or ???-?? ???-?? ???? (there is smth. somewhere) to express possession. -- I think Russian falls into both categories here, because there is also the verb "imyet' " (to have or possess), which takes direct object, e.g. "ya imyeyu koshku", as well as "u menya koshka".

-- Another thing that is problematic for me is the fact that, in some grammars of Siouan languages, a verb is featured which is constantly glossed as a transitve 'have'- item; the Lakota verb 'yuka' and the Biloxi verb ''ita' are cases in point. -- This is good for me to know too!  Dorsey translates "ta" and "ita" as "have" in his dictionary, although it doesn't seem to be used as a transitive verb, at least as far as I can see so far.  One way of saying someone has something in Biloxi is by saying something "moves" or "sits" (exists?), as in Dorsey's examples: "conki ktak ande" (dog his/her moves) and "conki ktak nanki" (dog his/her sits).  (Not sure exactly what the "ktak" is here!)

Are you looking into Polynesian languages too?  Hawaiian, and apparently other Polynesian languages, are among the only languages in the world where possession can bounce between alienable and inalienable (represented by the type of possessive pronoun used).

Dave

"Alfred W. Tüting" <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de> wrote:
Dear all,

Leon's query to me is quite interesting so it stirred up some reflective
thoughts on my side ;-)

> My project concerns the expression of (alienable) predicative
possession in the languages of the world. To put it rather bluntly, I am
interested in the various ways in which a sentence of the type "The man
has a house/car/ horse" (or whatever things one may alienably possess in
the society at issue) is formally encoded. As is already known in the
literature (e.g. Heine 1998), there are a number of frequently recurring
patterns for such sentences, such as

a) the Have pattern, featuring a transitive verb, with the possessor as
the subject and the possessed item as the direct object; English is of
course an example;
b) the Locative Possessive, of the type "To/at/near the man, a/his horse
is/exists"
c) the Topic-possessive, of the type "The man, a/his horse exists"
d) With-Possessive, of the type "The man exists/is with a/his horse"
(...) <<

More generally speaking, there are two groups of language patterns,
namely "to have" languages and "to be" languages:

"To have" languages are mostly European languages such as English,
German and French. They use the verb "to have" to express an idea of
possession, as in "I have a car" or "He has a brother".

"To be" languages are presented by Russian, Japanese and others which
say about possession as quality or even location. For instance, Russians
normally use structures like ???-?? ? ????-?? ???? (there is smth. at
smb.) or ???-?? ???-?? ???? (there is smth. somewhere) to express
possession. A possessor is passive in the languages of a "to be" group.

E.g.
Russian: U menya yest koshka ? ???? ???? ????? (I have a cat)
U sestry yest koshka ? ?????? ???? ????? (the sister has a cat)
(to-me/the sister's exists - a - cat)

Hungarian: (Nekem) van házam/házam van. (I have a house)
Szomszédomnak háza van. (My neighbour has a house)
(Neki) van háza/háza van. (S/he has a house)
(I/neighbour-my/he-dative exists house-my/his)

Hebrew: Yesh li bait (I have a house)
Ein li kesef (I don't have money)
(exists/lacks to-me house/money)
Ein lanu zman (we don't have time)
(lacks to-us time)
Yesh la-ish sus (the man has a horse)
(exists to-the-man horse)
Ein la-student kesef (the student has no money)
(lacks to-the-student money)

Latin Mihi domus est (I have a house)
(I-dative is/exists house)

The "to-have" languages are well-known.

> Another thing that is problematic for me is the fact that, in some
grammars of Siouan languages, a verb is featured which is constantly
glossed as a transitve 'have'- item; the Lakota verb 'yuka' and the
Biloxi verb ''ita' are cases in point. Now, as far as my sample goes,
North America is not really a place to have original transitive
HAVE-verbs; in fact, Lakota and Biloxi would stand alone on the
continent if they had this feature. Therefore my question is: is it
possible that these 'have'-items are in fact the products of reanalysis
from an erstwhile positional verb such as 'to stand, to lie' etc. ? (...) <<

I think it should be _yuha'_ (instead of _*yuka_ ).
As far as I can judge this, it actually seems to be a transitive
"to-have" verb like in most European languages!
I don't know the etymology of Dakotan _yuha'_ (i.e. where the root -ha
derives), but most strikingly the prefix yu- seems to be denoting
"hand"-action.

In Spanish, "to have" is expressed by "tener" (tengo etc.) Latin
_tenere_ (to hold - with the hand), and going into the etymology of
German "haben", interestingly also yields results pointing in this
direction: durativum to germanic *haf-ja- (German "heben"=to hold/grasp
with the hand). Interestingly, German "heben" is said to be related to
ig. (indoeuropean) *kap- -> Latin "capio" (I take/seize) -> e.g.
mancipatio (the legal act of "taking by/with the hand i.e. take
possession of [e.g. a slave]).

But modern Chinese (Putonghua) too is a "to-have" language!
E.g. _you3_ (to have/there is): "Wo you qian." (I have money). In this
use, it clearly is transitive! (although there are other functions too,
e.g. "you ren shuo..." - there are men saying -> men say/it is said...,
yet, this doesn't matter in this context).
Interestingly that the character's etymology also points into the
direction elaborated on above: the modern version depicts a hand (sic)
above the moon (or maybe also meat), whereas the ancient character just
displayed a hand as such. So, here again, (and far off the European
linguistic influence) the idea of "to have/possess" is expressed by "to
hold in the hand/grasp with the hand".

All this said, I am not at all surprized to find _yuha'_ in Dakotan.
Anyhow, on a continent like America there are so many very different
native tongues, why not also this type of "to-have" language.
(If you're interested, here's a maybe provocative opinion

http://members.tripod.com/~kajJ/images2/Dakota.html

that could make this matter still more plausible ;-) )

Alfred

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