OP: coming and going

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Sun May 21 07:00:41 UTC 2006


On Fri, 19 May 2006, Rory M Larson wrote:
> I see; that makes sense!  And that fills in the A1 for gi, s^ki as well.

You meant A2, right?

> So the (Pre?)Proto-Dhegihan forms might look like:
>
> stem        (h)u 'come'      ku 'come back'   hi 'arrive there
>
> A1          p-(h)u           p-ku             p-hi
> A2          s^-(h)u          s^-ku            s^-hi
>
> with pku -> hpu when double stop consonants were leveled, and u ->
> u-umlaut?

That's more or less what I assume.  It's not clear what's going on with
*s^-h or *p-k, but presumably those are something like the PMV or PS
forms.  Those are the "logical" forms.  However, I think that for PDh,
given the correspondences, I'd opt for *s^-u and *s^-i (without h)  in the
second person of the h-stems and, by the same argument, for *p-ku I'd opt
for *h-pu, since we get OP ppi, Os hpu, etc.

For PDh *kaN-dha 'to want' the fisrt person might be *h-kaN=p-ra, cf. OP
kkaN'=bdha.  The Dhegihanists will recognize that 'to want' is the only
k-stem (or g-stem) that has "kk" in the first person.  The others have
"pp," like OP ga'ghe 'to make':  A1 ppa(a)'ghe, A2 s^ka(a)'ghe.  There
aren't many k-stems, of course, but it's about 5 to 1 in favor of "pp,"
which is PDh *hp.  It appears that *p- (or *b- or *w-) 'first person'
comes out h before another stop consonant, which is normal, since clusters
of stop + stop ending in p come out the same, e.g., *pte 'cow bison' > PDh
*hte > OP tte.

How far the *h-p treatment of the first persons of *k-stems goes is an
interesting question.  I actually have a published article in IJAL
discussing a pair of forms from Buechel (pp. 449, 465), pointed out to me
by Allan Taylor, which suggest that Teton may have had A1 phu, A2 s^ku for
the first and second person of ku until fairly recently.  These are the
regular Teton reflexes of *hpu and *s^ku, and that suggests that the
*hpu/*s^ku pattern for *ku goes back to Proto-Mississippi Valley.

> Do we have evidence that pHi is/has been used in historical OP for 'I
> came', rather than ppi?

Yes, though, of course, it doesn't mean 'I came', but 'I arrived there' or
some other more componential meaning which would be translated
contextually as 'I came' (if the speaker sees themself [!] as at the point
of arrival, but the hearer as not.  Or it could be translated 'I arrived',
etc.

Returning to the place where a relative is lying near death.)

90:147.9-10:

... eathaN s^ki=a?                 ...
... why    you came back QUESTION  ...

... i'wippahaN=tt=       egaN      ppi                ...
... I know you IRREALIS  CONJUNCT  I headed back here ...

'... why did you come back here?  ... I came back so I would know what
happened) to you ...'

Hero boy arrives to rescue maiden:

90:122.7-10

ea'thaN s^i'=a?  ... QUESTION
why     have you come

ahi=bi=ama  nu'z^iNga=akha
he had come boy       the


Buzzard explains to Haghige that he has been over to the camp of the
watermonsters to doctor the young of the monsters:

90:254.4-5

... a'daN      ze'=wadhe      phi'=                  ha ...
    therefore  to doctor them I went (arrived there) DECL

... s^i'=         the=di a'wa=th=e=giz^aN=s^naN=a ...
    you got there the (place) at

I think I've gotten all three contrasts here, and in ways that show the
stem involved.  I'm not sure that the standard glossing of u and dhe as
'be en route here' and 'be en route there' works here.  "Set out for ..."
doesn't seem much more promising.  It may be focus - whether the arrival
or the direction is more salient.



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