Siouan evidentiality

[Rory M Larson]

Hi Dave,

I'll offer what I know from Omaha/Ponca.  John Koontz and Bob Rankin may 
have a slightly different view.

There are at least four particles that are relevant to evidentiality: i, 
bi, tHe and ama.  These are all post-verbal, and to my knowledge, except 
for i, are only used in the third person.

The i and bi particles come immediately after the verb (or in one case in 
Dorsey, after the noun, in a sentence that didn't have a verb).  For the 
most part at least, they are mutually exclusive.  Next may come tHe, and 
ama comes at the end of the sentence.

The i and bi particles are a bit of a puzzle, and I've had a lingering 
debate going on about them with John and Bob since about 2001 or so. Prior 
to then, the wisdom seemed to be that they were simply alternates of the 
same particle, in which i was just a reduced form of bi.  The two both 
belong to a small class of post-verbal particles that cause ablaut; i.e., 
cause a preceding verb that ends in -e to change its ending to -a when the 
particle is present.  bi is surely cognate with Dakotan pi and 
Winnebago-Chiwere wi, which both are involved in making the action of the 
verb plural.  In Omaha/Ponca, i is used in some contexts to mark 
plurality, as for commanding more than one person, or any plural 
declarative (we, you or they).  It also seems to be used in constructions 
describing general behavior, even to the point of a quasi-passive sense: 
"they do it" => "it is done", like Dakotan pi.

However, i is actually used most commonly as a third person singular 
declarative.  In the third person singular, there is apparently a subtle 
difference in meaning, depending on whether the verb is followed by i or 
not.  John Koontz has proposed the distinction of "proximate" vs. 
"obviative" for this, with the subject being "center stage" for the 
proximate (with i), and "off-stage" for the obviative (without i).  My 
sense is that you use i when you focus on the action as a narrative event, 
and do not use i when you want to make the listener visualize the verbal 
action as a condition or context, as when a character encounters someone 
else doing something.  In modern Omaha, declarative i has been truncated 
off, and only the -e verbs ablauted to -a remain.  Our modern speakers 
overwhelmingly prefer the -a form as normative for third person singular. 
They generally explain that the -e form is present and the -a form is 
past.  This explanation makes some sense if the -e form declares condition 
and the -a form declares narrative event.

At any rate, the i particle was used declaratively for events directly 
experienced, or at least not doubted by the speaker, as you describe for 
Biloxi naxo.  In contrast, the bi particle is used when the speaker wants 
to raise the preceding material to an idea or hypothesis to be considered, 
rather than declaring it to be the straight goods on the speaker's own 
authority.  This includes anything that is hearsay, as well as cases where 
in English we might use "the supposed", "the alleged", "the putative", or 
such and such a hypothesis or idea.

The ama particle is closely tied to bi, in the very common form: 
[Sentence] bi-ama.  This is the way most sentences narrating the actions 
of mythological characters end.  However, bi, like i, seems also to imply 
narrative action rather than visualized condition.  Many sentences 
visualizing condition do not end in a regular verb at all, but in a 
positional which tells how a scene is laid out.  In this case, no bi or i 
is used.  For a declarative on the speaker's own authority, the positional 
ends the sentence.  But when visualizing a scene from a mythological 
account, the positional is followed by ama.  Thus, the ama particle 
largely equates to your Biloxi kane, to refer to 'hearsay', or things 'not 
experienced'.

When a narrative sentence is composed of multiple clauses, the clauses 
before the end may end in i or bi prior to the conjuction.  In the older 
speech pattern that is usual in the mythological stories recorded by 
Dorsey, these clauses would normally end in bi for mythological narrative, 
and only the final clause would end in bi-ama.  Later, I think already in 
some of the material recorded by Dorsey, the entire biama package would 
sometimes be used to end prefinal clauses.  In modern Omaha, the two 
particles tend to be fused, and it seems to be uncommon for them to be 
used separately.  In fact, even the meaning of 'hearsay' in current usage 
is in doubt.  I have had speakers insist that biama is simply the required 
declarative form in some cases (I forget- I think it was plural, past, or 
both).

The remaining particle is tHe.  This one is also a bit of a puzzle, and 
seems to me to have changed its meaning.  John Koontz refers to it as EVID 
in his analyses: the evidential particle.  Modern speakers back him up. In 
this case, [Sentence] i tHe means [Sentence] *evidently* took place; 
*apparently* [Sentence] happened.  This is different from the kane-naxo 
axis of distinction.  naxo: "it's so, straight goods, take it from me"; 
kane: "this is what the story says";  tHe: "this is probably the case, 
given the evidence at hand".

Most of the time in Dorsey, however, tHe seems to be a straight-goods 
declarative that something has happened.  I see it as something of a 
perfective marker that throws the action into the past prior to the time 
of the narrative in such a way as to affect conditions at the time of the 
narrative.  It can be used after i, or between bi and ama.

For 19th century Omaha/Ponca:

[Sentence] i ha/he.  Straight-goods declaration of action.
                                (ha and he are respectively male and
                                female emphatic/declarative particles.
                                These seem to have become "old-people"
                                speech in the early 20th century and
                                dropped out of the language along with
                                the preceding i, leaving only -e verbs
                                ending in -a to mark the lost i in
                                20th century Omaha.)

[Sentence] i tHe.    [Sentence] has happened; straight goods.
                                (In 20th century Omaha, this means
                                [Sentence] has *apparently* happened.)

[Sentence][positional].  Picture [Sentence], laid out as
                                        [positional], straight goods.

[Sentence][positional] ama.  Picture [Sentence], laid out as
                                        [positional], that's the story.

[Sentence] bi ama.  This is what he did, according to the story.

[Sentence] bi tHe ama.  This is what someone had done,
                                according to the story.



Hope this helps!  I'll post this to the list, in case other Dhegihanists 
have any comments to add.

Best,
Rory
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