Titles, Mark 7

[David Kaufman]

> May I add one or two comments too? >
   
  I'm glad you did!  
   
  > There may be some Muskogean influence here. >
   
  Or, based on Pam's comment, Biloxi influence on Choctaw?  But then, if that were the case, where did Biloxi get this construction if it's not otherwise known in Siouan?
   
  > Among Siouan languages Dakota is the only one, as far as I know, that has dropped the instrumentive prefix i- but kept the meaning 'use' ( = do with) >
   
  There are other Biloxi verbs that have the instrumental prefix i- or iN-, such as 'inixi' to play roughly WITH something, and 'iNk(i)theoNni' to hit WITH something.  I'm not sure what the difference is between using this prefix and using the independent oN(ha) form as an instrumental.  But the Biloxi oN form meaning 'use' is apparently suffixless (like the Dakota form?).
   
  Dave

"Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:
  May I add one or two comments too?

> (a) how noNpa 'two' has developed into a comitative marker; what I'd need is a complete clause that shows the syntactic structures involved. A numeral as the source of an adposition is quite sensational to document since this represents a very infrequent grammaticalization channel for adpositions.

There may be some Muskogean influence here. Choctaw has a construction that, although basically a DUAL is often translated with a comitative. They use the expression /itta-toklo/, approximately 'the two (of us) together' with verbs to signal dual participants. Toklo is 'two'. At the moment I can't be more specific than that. Pam probably has a better handle on this than I do. All my Muskog. reference materials are in boxes in my garage at the moment.

(b) how oN(ha) developed into an instrumental marker. The very same process is indeed going on with Lakota uN 'to use'. again, I'd appreciate clauses showing the usage of the marker. Do you have any idea what the -ha is doing here?

There is a pan-Siouan verb /i-?uN/ transparently meaning 'to do with' (?uN 'do', i- 'with', right?) Among Siouan languages Dakota is the only one, as far as I know, that has dropped the instrumentive prefix i- but kept the meaning 'use' ( = do with). That's all I can add, but it's at least suggestive of a trajectory for the grammaticalization.

(c) if saNhiN is a noun -- this is what your translation seems to imply. Could this element function as an adverb as well? And again, if you happen to have examples of the usage of saNhiN that illustrate its development into a case marker, that would be great.

Reminds me of the uses of Turkish /taraf/ 'side', borrowed from Arabic.

Bob


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