Question re: Dhegiha and other Siouan quotatives

[Rory Larson]

Dave,

Sorry, I misunderstood your original question.  But if we are talking about the first abá, then is that actually quotative as such?  I see that it's glossed as 'said', but reading it in Dhegihan, I would understand that as a normal 'the' in reference to the Old Man, with a projective colon after it.  My proposed punctuation of that sentence would be:

            Icíkitanga  abá: "Anyáxtaga-édan" á-ba-dan,  nanstábe.
I like Justin's suggestion of looking at the quotation as substituting for what would normally be a verb.  Thus:

            s^idoz^iNga akHa ghaage akHa, 'the boy is crying.'

or

            ((s^idoz^iNga)-akHa ghaage)-akHa, 'the boy is crying.'
            ((boy)-akHa crying)-akHa.

with the article wrapping up everything that preceeds it into a noun or stative declaration.  For the quotative situation:

iccikkitaNga akha: "oo aNs^i waali miNkHe" akHa.             The Old Man [said]: "Oh, I'm getting fat."

or

((iccikkitaNga)-akha "oo aNs^i waali miNkHe")-akHa.        The Old Man [said], "Oh, I'm getting fat."

When we have NOUN-ARTICLE WHATSIT-ARTICLE sentences, it seems to me that we are just adding attributes or qualifiers onto the original noun.  The attribute may be a verb that tells what they did, or it may be the words they spoke, but I don't think that would change the meaning of the articles.  It should just be sentence structure, pausing, and understanding of the content that would used by the listener to parse the meaning.

Rory


From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of David Kaufman
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 2:42 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
Subject: Re: Question re: Dhegiha and other Siouan quotatives

Hi Rory,

Thanks for your two cents.  I think that that second ába is the actual verb e 'say' with the non-continuative marker -be, which is then ablauted before dan 'then'.  So that leaves just the first abá that's really in question as to its supposed dual usage of article and quotative.  But examples of this dual usage abound in the Kaw texts with both articles akhá and abá.

Dave

David Kaufman
Linguistic Anthropology PhD candidate, University of Kansas
Director, Kaw Nation Language Program

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Rory Larson <rlarson1 at unl.edu<mailto:rlarson1 at unl.edu>> wrote:
Hi Dave,

In Omaha and Ponca, the corresponding article is amá, where you have abá.  As with Kaw, it tends to imply 'moving/absent'.  But we also have another particle, apparently pronounced the same way, coming at the end of the sentence, that implies that the foregoing is hearsay rather than solid fact.  It can stand by itself, or it can be coupled with the 'allegedly' particle bi to make the common ending for 3rd person hearsay action, biama.

I notice the accent changes to the first syllable in the second case of your example.  I wonder if that could be underlyingly a-aba in that case?  The first would be the ablauted version of 'he said it', followed by either the Old Man's article abá or a 'hearsay' particle as in OP.  One problem with that would be that the 'hearsay' amá in OP shouldn't cause a preceding verb to ablaut.

My $0.02.

Best,
Rory


From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu>] On Behalf Of David Kaufman
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 1:30 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>
Subject: Question re: Dhegiha and other Siouan quotatives

Hi all,

I have a question re: a curious structure in Kaw, and whether anything like it occurs in other Dhegihan or even non-Dhegihan Siouan languages.  The structure involves the articles akhá and abá, used for subjects in Kaw and usually translated 'the', the first being roughly for 'standing/sitting' and the other for 'moving/absent'.  However, in Kaw, these subject articles also somehow seem to have become used as quotatives, or 's/he said.'  Here is an example sentence with gloss:

Icíkitanga  abá, "Anyáxtaga-édan," ába-dan,  nanstábe.
Old.Man   said   bite.me-then          said-then   kicked.him
The Old Man said, "Then bite me," and he kicked him.

So abá, which is normally used for 'moving' subjects and is usually translated 'the', is now being used for 's/he said.'

Any thoughts on this, esp. from other Dhegihan perspectives, or other Siouan languages that might have some similar usage?

Thanks!


David Kaufman
Linguistic Anthropology PhD candidate, University of Kansas
Director, Kaw Nation Language Program

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