obviation in Siouan languages

[willemdereuse at unt.edu]

Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input.  I was thinking that 
chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke.  Cha is 
'and so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean 
something like 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any 
thoughts about this?

Quoting REGINA PUSTET <pustetrm at yahoo.com>:

>  (quoting David Rood)
>  > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks
>  a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations
>  like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan)
>  means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event".  They thus correlate
>  very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic)
>  because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often
>  somewhat unexpected by the hearer.
>
>
>  Precisely. I don’t have much to add to this. A switch-reference 
> analysis for yuNkhaN and chaNkhe is untenable because there are too 
> many counterexamples to a DS analysis for yuNkhaN and an SS analysis 
> for chaNkhe. yuNkhaN occurs frequently with DS but is fine with SS 
> when the event is unexpected; chaNkhe occurs a lot with SS but is 
> fine with DS as well.
>
>  Willem’s impression that yuNkhaN vs. chaNkhe have something to do 
> with obviation stems from the fact that both switch reference and 
> obviation function to “highlight” changing referents in discourse, so 
> there is a connection. But as David says, what we are looking at in 
> Lakota is a system in which switch reference is a secondary byproduct 
> of pragmatic factors inherent in the meaning of the participating 
> elements.
>
>  Regina