[Possible SPAM] Re: Aho!

[John Koontz]

I would guess this pair contrasts something analogous to Omaha-Ponca 'to say' vs. 'to say to'.   The 'say' stems are highly irregular in Omaha-Ponca like most Siouan, but underlyingly they are something like e=...he vs. e=gi=...he.   So the first persons are ehe 'I said it' (from something like Proto-Dhegiha *e=phe) vs. egiphe 'I said (it) to him'.  The third persons are a=i 'they said' vs. ega=i 'they said to him'.   I've reconstructed the  plural from memory of the logic of the system.  What I remember is the unpluralized from ege (e=g(i)...(h)e).   The gi element is the dative marker of course and the weird thing about (OP) 'say' is that that comes *before* the pronoun.   When gi is followed by the root (h)e it contracts with it.   I'm not sure the root is really -he in the third person.   The first and second persons are clearly built on e=(gi)=...he, but the inclusive is usually from another verb entirely, and the third person behaves like e by itself in the simple stem and e=g(i)=...e in the dative.   The initial e= is presumably an incorporated e 'the aforesaid'.   And, of course, this is the quoting verb that follows a quotation.   There's a form with initial ga 'yonder' that is used preceding a quotation.   The third person is  essentially always seen as a=(nothing) or a=i or a=bi with the plural-proximate marker following e and conditioning the a-grade of the stem.  (So you almost never get a singular looking form, and if you did it would be just e, and so hard to know from a demonstrative e.)   The =(nothing) form of the plural-proximate  is current now when no other particle follows.  Dorsey always has a=i or a=bi (the latter when the quotation is itself quoted in some way).   

Anyway, making allowances, I hope, for my poor grasp of IO, I make these

e=wa-a naha 'the one who says something'
vs. e=wa-g(i)-a naha  'the one who says (something) to someone'

I hope I correctly remember naha as an article of some sort.  If not ...

When you add a dative to something then the object is the dative object and the "direct object" sort of falls out of the agreement pattern.  Sometimes it hangs around in the sentence as a noun (or quotation) without governing anything in the verb.   What the relationalists called a chomeur.  
 
I may have found a clue for “ka.”  Dorsey has the term:
 
e-wa-na-ha – the speaker; the one speaking
 
Then he has the term:
 
e wa-ka-na-ha – the one who is meant; the person addressed
 
I’m not sure how (or even if) this is related to the “ka” I am asking about but I’m trying to look at it in different ways to see if it fits somehow.
 

Sky Campbell, B. A.
Language Director
Otoe-Missouria Tribe
580-723-4466 ext. 111
sky at omtribe.org

 
 		 	   		  
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