Tutelo verb 'go'

Sat Jun 15 02:22:47 UTC 2013

Sorry folks.  I didn't realize this was a Siouan list query.  I just neglected to look at the return address. It doesn't matter except that my attachment may not have been available.  I don't recall trying attachments on the U. of Nebraska server.  If anyone had a problem retrieving the paper, let me know and I'll send it in a personal email.  Otherwise, just read the paper.  It supersedes Giulia's discussion, although I agree with her that there was a reinterpretation in the pronominal prefix system.  As you'll see, the reinterpretation involved R-class and H-class verb stems.  The phonologically irregular allomorphs of the actor pronominals were lost in those classes of verb and disambiguation of the results was achieved (as in many languages -- French for example) by substituting the independent pronominals.  Surprise, surprise.  There is little doubt about the source, and Giulia may be right that it had something to do with the pidgin status of some Virginia Siouan dialects.  We can't know for sure because the trade language isn't sufficiently attested.  It may not be attested at all unless the Ft. Christana Saponi vocabulary is an example (it includes Algonquian vocab. along with garbled Tutelo)

> The independent/disjunctive first person pronoun in Tutelo is wi:ma (Oliverio p. 148); wi- is the stative/dative/patient first person pronoun (Oliverio p. 71); wa- is the first person actor pronoun (Oliverio p. 64).

No, wi:ma is a compound form.  The original 1st person disjunctive prn. is *wiɁe.  It collapses to wie in some languages and wi: (long vowel) in others -- like Tutelo.  The independent pronouns are ALL derived from the patient pronominals throughout Siouan, but they are NOT patients by role.  Read the paper and you'll see how I, at least, analyze Tutelo restructuring.  They just lost the b/p 1st person and the š 2nd person agent/actor pronominals.  1st person wa- has nothing to do with it.  It's never used with R-stems, and 'go' is an R-stem.  The reanalysis results in large part from simple phonology.  You can pretty much ignore any discussion of active/stative semantics in Giulia's description.

But pay attention to Marianne too.

I can't say anything about Atakapa or Chitimacha or whatever except that they don't have anything to do with Tutelo.  I talk about Biloxi and Ofo in the paper.

Bob

The sentences Oliverio (p. 63) gives are as follows: wi-le:-ta i-athi: = 1sgP-go-POT DIR-house 'I am going to the house'; wi-hi:-ok hiyaNka = 1sgP-arrive--past2 sleep 'I came, he was asleep.'  Note that both 'go' and 'come/arrive' use the first person patient/stative prefix.  There is an interesting quote by Oliverio: "...it seems that some reinterpretation of the active/stative system took place, probably as a result of the limited use of the language and semi-fluency of most speakers at the time of collection, and from the probable use of Tutelo as a trade language.  Thus for instance some verbs of motion, denoting events performed, effected, and instigated, and typically controlled, by the speaker, take stative pronominal prefixes, not the expected active morphology" (p. 62).

So, at least according to Oliverio and her consultants, her 'patient' or 'stative' prefixes are used for 'go, come.'

As I said, a similar phenomenon seems to occur in Atakapa with 'go', and Danny Hieber, who works on Chitimacha, has discovered the same phenomenon with Chitimacha 'go.'

So it looks like this deserves further study, not only in Tutelo, but in other languages (e.g., Atakapa, Chitimacha) that seem to share a similar phenomenon.  Perhaps Marianne is right; maybe the terminology is the problem - I'm not sure.

Dave

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at ku.edu<mailto:rankin at ku.edu>> wrote:
That sounds very peculiar to me.  I suspect that what you're seeing is the disjunctive (i.e., independent) pronominal for the 1st person rather than the patient.  You may already have my active/stative comparative paper, but just in case, I'll attach a copy.  The last section is an addition on OVS that attempts to explain the pronominals.  Bottom line:  I don't think Tutelo uses stative subjects with "go".

Bob
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From: Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu>] on behalf of David Kaufman [dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM<mailto:dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM>]
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 4:13 PM
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Subject: Tutelo verb 'go'

Hi all,

It seems Tutelo's verb 'go' takes a patientive/object rather than active/subject pronoun prefix, wi- instead of wa-.  Does any other Siouan language do this?  (I can't compare with Biloxi since it lost this agent/patient distinction in pronouns.)  I'm particularly interested in this because two Lower Mississippi Valley languages, Atakapa and Chitimacha, also seem to take patientive/object instead of active/subject pronouns with the verb 'go.'  At first I thought this was strange and counterintuitive, but now I'm seeing it may be a more common phenomenon well beyond the Mississippi Valley.  Any thoughts?

Dave

--
David Kaufman, Ph.C.
University of Kansas
Linguistic Anthropology

--
David Kaufman, Ph.C.
University of Kansas
Linguistic Anthropology
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