Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'
Clive Bloomfield
cbloom at ozemail.com.au
Mon Dec 17 00:31:25 UTC 2007
ALAN R. TAYLOR's IJAL paper, appeared in Vol. 42. (4) : 287-296, in
October 1976.
I will try to summarize some relevant parts of it, since I have a
couple of questions of my own to put to List members about the odd
detail.
Naturally one realizes that most (if not all) of the information
given will be "old news" to scholars here!
Major attention is given to Dakota, Dhegiha, Winnebago, Chiwere,
Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Biloxi, and Ofo. (Data from Tutelo & Catawba
are lacking.)
After stating that : "most of the Siouan languages have four basic
motion stems", Taylor represents these stems schematically :
ARRIVING MOTION : Stem 1 (HERE); Stem 3
(THERE);
MOTION PRIOR TO ARRIVAL : Stem 2 (HERE); Stem 4 (THERE).
He then goes on to say : "In all of the languages, stems 1 & 3 refer
only to the end-point of the motion, i.e. arrival.
Depending on the language, stems 2 & 4 refer either to inception of
motion, to motion underway, or to both." (p.287).
"All of the languages add several different prefixes to these basic
stems to form various additional transitive & intransitive stems.
One such prefix, found in most (or all) of the languages, has the
underlying shape k.
Stems derived by this prefix relate the motion to one's home, or TO
AN EARLIER LOCATION ."(p.288)
Taylor calls stems of this latter variety 'Vertative', and remarks in
passing that although the term was first coined by Kaufman, its first
appearance in print was by Robert C. Hollow, Jr., in his unpublished
Mandan Dictionary (Ph.D. diss., Uni Calif., 1965).
In his discussion of the Dakota dialects, Taylor firstly nominates
the four basic stems (corresponding vertatives bracketed) :
ARRIVING MOTION : hi [gli] - (HERE); i [khi] -
(THERE);
MOTION UNDERWAY : u [ku] - (HERE); yA [glA] - (THERE);
Next, Taylor lists the following compound verb-stems (vertatives
bracketed) :
DEPARTING MOTION : hiyu [glicu] (HERE); iyayA [khiglA] (THERE);
PASSING BY MOTION : (??) (HERE): hiyayA [gliglA]
(THERE).
Question 1 : What happened to the missing pair of stems meaning ;
"pass by on the way coming here [home]"?
Or have I got myself into another fine
(logical) mess?
Now, perhaps of greater relevance to David's email below, on pp.
289-290, Taylor goes on to make the following fascinating (to me)
observations regarding
"PHONOLOGICAL CHANGES IN THE SHAPES OF THE BASIC STEMS", entailed by
the addition of the vertative k prefix :
"(The resultant changes) give some clues as to the underlying form of
the simple stems.(......)
Note that only ' u ' seems to have the same underlying and surface
forms.
' i ' becomes ' hi ' when the vertative prefix is added, while ' hi '
and ' ya ' have ' l ' as their initial consonant when the vertative
prefix is present.
Underlying stem forms derivable from the comparison of the vertative
and non-vertative sets are ' Li ' (to arrive here), ' u' (to be
coming), ' hi ' (to arrive there), and ' LA ' (to be going).
(The symbol ' L ' represents an unspecified liquid.)
Consideration of additional related and other morphological forms
shows, however, that some of these suggested underlying forms need
further refinement.
Morphophonemic alternations involving the Lakhota liquid, ' l ' , are
of two kinds.
On the one hand, there is a frequent and regular alternation of / l /
and / y / , an example of which is the ' yA : glA ' pair we have just
seen.
On the other hand, there is the exceedingly rare interchange of / l /
and / h / which is seen in the pair ' hi : gli '.
' L ' in the two stems ' Li ' and ' LA ' could possibly represent the
same underlying liquid, since the following vowels are different, but
' L ' might also represent different liquids in those two stems. For
the moment, we will consider that the two ' L's ' are identical,
although one may have to be changed on the basis of comparative
evidence.
The suggested underlying form ' u ' also proves inadequate when the
inflection of the verb is consulted. Although the stem ' u ' has a
perfectly regular inflection today, a now obsolete, apparently
regular paradigm for this verb shows ' phu ' in the first person
singular. The earlier underlying form of this stem has to be ' hu '
in order to yield this paradigmatic form."
Question 2 : Does this obsolete ' phu ' form explain such variants as
' (wa)hibu' (in add. to the more common 'wahiyu') from 'hiyu'?
Regards,
Clive.
P.S. What an immense loss to North-American linguistic scholarship
the tragic & premature loss of this dazzling scholar, Alan Taylor, was!
May I pay my own small meed of posthumous tribute to him here :
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescas in pace.
On 14/12/2007, at 1:02 AM, ROOD DAVID S wrote:
>
> I'm going to side with Bob on this one. It seems to me that the
> basic meaning of the vertatives is not 'toward home' but 'back
> (again)'. Over and over in the texts we read "i na gli na...." --
> 'went there and came back and...' without the concept of 'home'
> anywhere around.
>
> Allan had an explanation for khi but I've forgotten it -- and I
> can't put my hands on the paper right now, either. Bob?
>
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu
>
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Jan Ullrich wrote:
>
>> Regina,
>>
>> I fully agree with this conclusion. I have always been under the
>> impression that the vertitives are possessive forms of the
>> "non-vertitive" verbs.
>>
>> u -> ku
>> hi -> gli
>> ya -> gla
>> i -> khi
>>
>> The only one that doesn't fit in (synchronically) is khi 'to
>> arrive back
>> there', but I am sure there is some diachronical explanation for the
>> aspiration in it. Could some one elaborate on that?
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>> [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of REGINA PUSTET
>> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:54 AM
>> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>> Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'
>>
>>
>> (quoting Bob)
>>> Mississippi Valley Siouan *k-ri (syncope always applies) > Lakota
>>> gli,
>> Dak. hdi, etc. 'arrive >back'. I'd reconstruct all of those initial
>> vertitive g- (and k-) in Lakota as originally proto->Siouan *ki-,
>> with
>> the vowel present in other subgroups. Come to think of it, I guess it
>>> doesn't "surface" in Lakota.
>>
>> Now I understand. The reason I didn't make that mental connection is
>> that I thought that the ki-prefix, which indeed doesn't really
>> surface
>> in Lakota motion verbs such as gli 'have arrived at home', gla 'go
>> home', and ku 'come home' but whose historical presence somehow
>> imposes
>> itself when you deal with these verbs systematically, is acually the
>> POSSESSIVE ki-. Wouldn't that make sense? All these verbs imply
>> 'home,
>> place where one belongs', i.e. a location that you are possessively
>> attached to, as the destination of the act of moving. I haven't
>> immersed
>> myself into historical studies regarding this issue tho, so
>> chances are
>> that this analysis can be ruled out on the basis of comparative data.
>> Regina
>>
>>
>> "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I'm sorry; I do have trouble sometimes looking at these problems from
>> the Lakota point of view, since Lakota is not on my list of
>> accomplishments! I was looking at vertitive from the point of view of
>> languages like Tutelo, where 'to go home' (Sapir's translation)is
>> gi-li,
>> cf. Biloxi ki-di, but Mississippi Valley Siouan *k-ri (syncope always
>> applies) > Lakota gli, Dak. hdi, etc. 'arrive back'. I'd
>> reconstruct all
>> of those initial vertitive g- (and k-) in Lakota as originally
>> proto-Siouan *ki-, with the vowel present in other subgroups. Come to
>> think of it, I guess it doesn't "surface" in Lakota.
>>
>> Allan Taylor's article in IJAL from the early/mid '70s details
>> some of
>> the interesting idiosyncracies of the motion verbs, and Linda
>> Cumberland
>> has done interesting recent work on how they structure.
>>
>> This discussion of 'become'/'become again' is really interesting
>> to me,
>> as I had overlooked it in Boas and Deloria and have only the very few
>> cases in Dhegiha. I wonder how much I missed in Kaw from simply
>> failing
>> to ask the right questions? Now I'm really curious about how they are
>> conjugated. I hope someone will ask.
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of REGINA PUSTET
>> Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:09 PM
>> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>> Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'
>>
>>
>> Thanks Bob, that helps a lot.
>>
>>> All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive'
>>> with
>> verbs of motion, but >only a few seem to have generalized a
>> relatively
>> productive use with non-motion verbs.
>>
>> Off the top of my head, I can't come up with examples of vertitive
>> ki-
>> with motion verbs in Lakota (although khi- 'separative etc.' does
>> occur
>> with motion verbs, but that's probably irrelevant here, unless
>> there is
>> a connection between vertitive and khi-). Which does not mean, of
>> course, that historically speaking, Lakota ki- 'to become' cannot be
>> analyzed as a vertitive.
>>
>>> So the syncope rule is only productive with motion verbs, while its
>> (apparent) extension to >other verbs and nouns seems to involve only
>> invariant ki-.
>>
>> At least in Lakota, motion verbs exhibit morphological irregularities
>> that are not found in any other part of the grammar -- they are
>> strcuturally special. This might be the case in other Siouan
>> languages
>> as well, I just don't have the necessary background to judge the
>> situation. At any rate, if motion verbs have a special status in
>> Siouan
>> in general, it wouldn't surprise me if they showed idiosyncratic
>> behavior wirh respect to ki-syncopation.
>>
>> Regina
>>
>> "Rankin, Robert L" wrote:
>>
>> Looking at the verb prefix templates and examples of the prefix
>> orders
>> in several languages and comparing Jan's Lakota examples, it appears
>> that the ki- we are discussing is more closely related to the
>> vertitive
>> than to either reflexive or instrumentals. The most general use of
>> ki- I
>> have found (outside of Jan's and Regina's new [to me] Dakotan
>> cases) is
>> in Mandan, where Mixco and others have a generalized ki- that occurs
>> immediately preceding the verb with the meaning 'become'. Some
>> posit a
>> homophonous Mandan prefix ki- meaning 'again', but I tend to think of
>> these as a single affix, especially in light of Jan's observations.
>>
>> All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive'
>> with
>> verbs of motion, but only a few seem to have generalized a relatively
>> productive use with non-motion verbs. There are one or two
>> differences
>> in the behavior of these prefixes however. The ki- of kini does
>> not seem
>> to undergo syncopy like the vertitive with motion verbs. Otherwise I
>> would expect something closer to g-ni 'recover', which does not
>> occur in
>> any Siouan language. Similarly, we might expect to find g-luzahaN 'to
>> get fast' or k-haNska 'to get tall', neither of which occurs. So the
>> syncope rule is only productive with motion verbs, while its
>> (apparent)
>> extension to other verbs and nouns seems to involve only invariant
>> ki-.
>>
>> Bob
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Jan Ullrich
>> Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:20 AM
>> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>> Subject: RE: Lakota ki- 'to become by itself'
>>
>>
>>
>> I think it should be noted here that the meaning of the prefix ki- is
>> not "to become" but "to return to the original state". Notice kini
>> 'to
>> come back to life', not 'to become alive'. The prefix is used with
>> this
>> meaning throughout the text corpus. Most of the words with ki-
>> given in
>> Buechel's dictionary originate in his translation of the Bible
>> History
>> texts (for instance ki-sagye - 'to turn into a cane' is used in the
>> story about Moses) and are not attested by contemporary speakers.
>>
>> It is true that some younger speakers today use ki- with the
>> meaning 'to
>> become', but its use is semantically restricted, occurs for
>> instance in
>> kiwichas^a - 'to become a man'. Deloria (in her grammar) defines
>> kiwichas^a as 'to become a man again (like a human who in a tale had
>> appeared in animal shape)' and kiwiNyaN as 'to become a (respectable)
>> woman again'
>>
>> In my experience and fieldword data, the prefix is not productive.
>> So I
>> am a bit surprised by some of the words in Regina's list. If the
>> words
>> come from eliciting rather than texts, I would recoment caution and
>> cross checking.
>>
>>
>>
>>> ki-ska 'to turn white'
>>
>>
>>
>> Deloria and a couple of my native informants give "to fade (to
>> return to
>> an original white color)" See also Bushotter's sentence: ... oowa uN
>> owapi tkha hechunpi chan echakchala kiska s'a - 'when they painted
>> (those things) with colors they often faded'
>>
>>
>>
>>> ki-suta 'to get hard'
>>
>>
>>
>> 'to become hard again' as in mazasu s^loyiN na kisuta 'The bullets he
>> melted became hard again'
>>
>>
>>
>>> ki-bleza 'to become conscious'
>>
>>
>>
>> 'to become clear-minded or conscious again, come to one's senses',
>> this
>> is often used for 'to sober up'
>>
>>
>>
>>> ki-was^tecaka ye! 'behave yourself!'
>>
>>
>>
>> This is a dative. It means "Be nice to him/her." Very common phrase.
>>
>>
>>
>>> ki-thamahecha 'to get skinny'
>>
>>> ki-haNska 'to get tall'
>>
>>> ki-ksapa 'he got smart'
>>
>>> ki-luzahaN 'to get fast'
>>
>>> ki-'okhate 'to become warm inside, like when turning up the heat'
>>
>>
>>
>> These are all somewhat surprising to me.
>>
>>
>>
>> Notice also, that for instance kini 'to come back to life' is an
>> active
>> verb (1s wakini), but kibleza 'to conscious again' is treated as a
>> stative verb (1s: makibleze). This makes me wonder whether some of
>> the
>> ki- words actually originate in dative, just as akisni - 'to recover
>> from smth, as a sickness (1s: amakisni)' or iyokiphi 'to be pleased
>> with' 1s: iyomakiphi).
>>
>> Regina, what does your data say on conjugating the verbs in your
>> list?
>>
>>
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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