obviation

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Bryan Gordon wrote:
> Back to the main topic:

A few  observations on proximate/obviative as I used it in regard to 
Omaha-Ponca:

1)  It was not a felicitous choice of words.  Ardis' terminology is 
probably better, on the whole.  It certainly has the virtue of not 
confusing things with irrelevant details of Algonquian grammar.

2)  As I used to make a point of saying, in using the terms proximate and 
obviative I was drawing an analogy between comments made by Omaha-Ponca 
speakers with whom Dorsey worked and comments made by Kickapoo speakers in 
a Kickapoo language project grammar of Kickapoo that I had run into. 
Both groups of speakers described certain (more) obviative forms as 
applying to

a) actions by unseen actors
b) actions where the actor was acting on the instructions of someone else

As far as I can determine, the Kickapoo examples so described were not the 
classical Algonquian obviative, but something peculiar to the Fox group in 
Algonquian, called a second obviative.  The authors of the Kickapoo 
grammar used the terms proximate and obviative only for this distinction 
and ignored the (primary) proximate and obviative entirely, as far as I 
can recall.  In itself that was interesting.

In this context, the unseen, but reported actor and the instructed actor 
are logically, but not grammatically, more remote (obviative, off the 
path) than a typical (proximate, near by) actor.

I believe that the primary proximate/obviative distinction of Algonquian 
is a grammaticalized scheme for distinguishing two third persons in order 
of the internal logic of a sentence or at least a set of related clauses, 
and rather a different thing.

I will not try to recover what my authorities (Paul Voorhis and Ives 
Goddard) had to say about second obviatives, but it seemed to fit the 
case.  My recollection is that a secondary obviative has to apply to the 
subject.  (That should rouse the somewhat quiescent Algonquianists to full 
explanatory power.)

3) So, in applying this logic to Omaha-Ponca et al., consider that 
Omaha-Ponca third person animate subjects are almost always proximate, and 
third person objects are absolutely always obviative.  But sometimes a 
sentence has a subject that is more remote than the incoming set of agents 
and patients, and then such subjects are marked as obviative.

The usual markings of a proximate are the plural enclitic with the 
punctual verb, the plural a-prefix with motion verbs, and the akha/ama 
articles with a definite subject.  To indicate obviativity, use singular 
marking with the verb, and switch from the akha/ama articles to the set 
usually used with animate objects.

For convenience I use the term proximate article with the akha/ama 
articles, and obviative article with the dhiNkhe/thaN/dhiN/ma and 
sometimes khe set used with objects and obviative subects.

I've mentioned before that I suspect plural marking applies to proximates 
in Omaha-Ponca because Siouan plural marking is historically a sort of 
focus marker.  It signalized that the subject was the pre-eminent one 
among several possible ones.  Not so much "they did it" as 'It was he 
among them all who did it."  So omitting the "plural marker" in 
Omaha-Ponca doesn't so much reduce things to "he did it," as to "someone 
did it."

Following this logic, Dakotan pluralized nominals like thi'=pi would not 
historically be 'they live there' but 'a certain one lives there; he lives 
there'.  A plural subject used to forground the object would either be a 
subsequent development, or a relict case of =pi being used to focus the 
object instead of the subject.