Tutelo verb 'go'

David Kaufman dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Jun 15 15:51:32 UTC 2013


Bob,

Thanks for your paper; it certainly clarifies the issue for Tutelo.

It is of course peripheral to this List, but Atakapa and Chitimacha do seem
to have this oddity of patient pronouns used for motion verbs like 'go',
and this could also be due to contact in the region (the subject of my
dissertation).  It will require more analysis.

I thought Tutelo may have somehow been doing something similar, but
apparently not.

Dave

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 9:22 PM, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

>  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> 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
>>  ------------------------------
>> *From:* Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of David
>> Kaufman [dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM]
>> *Sent:* Friday, June 14, 2013 4:13 PM
>> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
>> *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
>



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