oy ás’iŋ and iyúha

[Jan Ullrich]

> Jonathan Holmes wrote:

> As I understand it, "iyuha" is used only when refering to humans, whereas "oyasin" means all of creation.

 

Thank you Jonathan. Yes, this is one of the existing definitions that I am aware of, but it is contradicted by data from texts. In the text corpus neither iyúha nor oyás’iŋ are restricted the way suggested above. Both words can be found with human, non-human, animate and inanimate topics, and they both occur with collective and distributive plurals. This is consistent in texts recorded between 1830’s and 2013.

 

So I was wondering if cognates from other Siouan languages may shed some new light on the two words.

 

Jan

 

 

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Jan Ullrich
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:59 AM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
Subject: oyás’iŋ and iyúha

 

Dear colleagues,

 

For one of my current projects I am working on the description of Lakota quantifiers, among other things, and was wondering if any of you may be able to offer some comparative data on the Siouan terms corresponding to the English quantifier “all”. 

 

 

Lakota has two quantifiers corresponding to “all”, they are oyás’iŋ and iyúha. Some of the existing descriptions of these two words suggest that they are not interchangeable, usually stating that one is used with collective and the other with the distributive plural, or that there is a human vs. non-human restriction. However, the existing descriptions actually contradict each other. 

 

My analyses of data from available texts doesn’t support the idea that the two words are different in meaning, at least they don’t seem to be in texts recorded between 1850s and 2013.

 

I would like to know if there are known cognates of either one of the two words in other Siouan languages, and if so, whether or not they can shed any light on a difference in meaning that perhaps once existed. I did check the CSD but didn’t find a mention either one of the words.

 

Jan

 

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