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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dave,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dorsey's Kaw text collection seems to suggest
a three-way post-verbal evidential distinction. His most straightforward clauses
tend to end with a male gender particle ao, or just o in modern
speech. Dorsey didn't have any female Kaw consultants that I'm aware
of, but they would probably have given him a form
something like that used by Bob's 20th century
female consultant Maude Rowe, (y)e. This gender-sensitive set
corresponds to events and states directly witnessed by the speaker, and is thus
a declarative particle. But since it seems to vary with other evidentials, I've
included it here. At the extreme opposite end of evidentiality, there's the
particle skaN, which tends to appear together with the pronoun e, 'that,' as
skaN e. This one is used for things the speaker cannot possibly have witnessed,
such as the traditional myth stories, making this construction something
akin to the English expression, '...or so it goes.' Somewhere between these two
lies the narrative particle c^He, which seems to be used much as the OP
particle tHe described by Rory below. There are combinations of these, most
notably c^He ao, which is probably still in the c^He category. Since skaN is
definitely way out beyond c^He in terms of evidentiality, the distinction
between the gender set and c^He is probably the fuzzier distinction. I'm not
sure of where the line is drawn between o/e and c^He, but I'd suspect there is a
line there somewhere.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hope this helps,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>-Justin</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=rlarson@unlnotes.unl.edu href="mailto:rlarson@unlnotes.unl.edu">Rory
M Larson</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=siouan@lists.Colorado.EDU
href="mailto:siouan@lists.Colorado.EDU">siouan@lists.Colorado.EDU</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:01
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Siouan evidentiality</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Hi Dave,</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>I'll offer what I know from Omaha/Ponca. John Koontz and Bob
Rankin may have a slightly different view.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>There are at least four particles that are relevant to evidentiality:
i, bi, tHe and ama. These are all post-verbal, and to my knowledge,
except for i, are only used in the third person.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>The i and bi particles come immediately after the verb (or in one case
in Dorsey, after the noun, in a sentence that didn't have a verb). For
the most part at least, they are mutually exclusive. Next may come tHe,
and ama comes at the end of the sentence.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>The i and bi particles are a bit of a puzzle, and I've had a lingering
debate going on about them with John and Bob since about 2001 or so.
Prior to then, the wisdom seemed to be that they were simply alternates
of the same particle, in which i was just a reduced form of bi. The two
both belong to a small class of post-verbal particles that cause ablaut; i.e.,
cause a preceding verb that ends in -e to change its ending to -a when the
particle is present. bi is surely cognate with Dakotan pi and
Winnebago-Chiwere wi, which both are involved in making the action of the verb
plural. In Omaha/Ponca, i is used in some contexts to mark plurality, as
for commanding more than one person, or any plural declarative (we, you or
they). It also seems to be used in constructions describing general
behavior, even to the point of a quasi-passive sense: "they do it" => "it
is done", like Dakotan pi.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>However, i is
actually used most commonly as a third person singular declarative. In
the third person singular, there is apparently a subtle difference in meaning,
depending on whether the verb is followed by i or not. John Koontz has
proposed the distinction of "proximate" vs. "obviative" for this, with the
subject being "center stage" for the proximate (with i), and "off-stage" for
the obviative (without i). My sense is that you use i when you focus on
the action as a narrative event, and do not use i when you want to make the
listener visualize the verbal action as a condition or context, as when a
character encounters someone else doing something. In modern Omaha,
declarative i has been truncated off, and only the -e verbs ablauted to -a
remain. Our modern speakers overwhelmingly prefer the -a form as
normative for third person singular. They generally explain that the -e
form is present and the -a form is past. This explanation makes some
sense if the -e form declares condition and the -a form declares narrative
event.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>At any rate, the i particle was
used declaratively for events directly experienced, or at least not doubted by
the speaker, as you describe for Biloxi naxo. In contrast, the bi
particle is used when the speaker wants to raise the preceding material to an
idea or hypothesis to be considered, rather than declaring it to be the
straight goods on the speaker's own authority. This includes anything
that is hearsay, as well as cases where in English we might use "the
supposed", "the alleged", "the putative", or such and such a hypothesis or
idea.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>The ama particle is closely tied to
bi, in the very common form: [Sentence] bi-ama. This is the way most
sentences narrating the actions of mythological characters end. However,
bi, like i, seems also to imply narrative action rather than visualized
condition. Many sentences visualizing condition do not end in a regular
verb at all, but in a positional which tells how a scene is laid out. In
this case, no bi or i is used. For a declarative on the speaker's own
authority, the positional ends the sentence. But when visualizing a
scene from a mythological account, the positional is followed by ama.
Thus, the ama particle largely equates to your Biloxi kane, to refer to
'hearsay', or things 'not experienced'.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>When a narrative sentence is composed of multiple clauses, the clauses
before the end may end in i or bi prior to the conjuction. In the older
speech pattern that is usual in the mythological stories recorded by Dorsey,
these clauses would normally end in bi for mythological narrative, and only
the final clause would end in bi-ama. Later, I think already in some of
the material recorded by Dorsey, the entire biama package would sometimes be
used to end prefinal clauses. In modern Omaha, the two particles tend to
be fused, and it seems to be uncommon for them to be used separately. In
fact, even the meaning of 'hearsay' in current usage is in doubt. I have
had speakers insist that biama is simply the required declarative form in some
cases (I forget- I think it was plural, past, or both).</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>The remaining particle is tHe. This one is also
a bit of a puzzle, and seems to me to have changed its meaning. John
Koontz refers to it as EVID in his analyses: the evidential particle.
Modern speakers back him up. In this case, [Sentence] i tHe means
[Sentence] *evidently* took place; *apparently* [Sentence] happened.
This is different from the kane-naxo axis of distinction. naxo:
"it's so, straight goods, take it from me"; kane: "this is what the
story says"; tHe: "this is probably the case, given the evidence at
hand".</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Most of the time in Dorsey,
however, tHe seems to be a straight-goods declarative that something has
happened. I see it as something of a perfective marker that throws the
action into the past prior to the time of the narrative in such a way as to
affect conditions at the time of the narrative. It can be used after i,
or between bi and ama.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>For 19th century
Omaha/Ponca:</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>[Sentence] i ha/he.
Straight-goods declaration of action.</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT
size=2>
(ha and he are respectively male
and</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
female
emphatic/declarative particles.</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
These seem to have become "old-people"</FONT></TT>
<BR><TT><FONT size=2>
speech in the early
20th century and</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
dropped out of the language along with</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT
size=2>
the preceding i, leaving only -e
verbs</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
ending in -a to mark the lost i in</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
20th century Omaha.)</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT
size=2>[Sentence] i tHe. [Sentence] has happened; straight
goods.</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
(In 20th century Omaha, this means</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
[Sentence] has *apparently* happened.)</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>[Sentence][positional]. Picture [Sentence],
laid out as</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
[positional], straight goods.</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>[Sentence][positional] ama. Picture [Sentence],
laid out as</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT size=2>
[positional], that's the story.</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>[Sentence] bi ama. This is what he did,
according to the story.</FONT></TT> <BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>[Sentence] bi tHe
ama. This is what someone had done,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT
size=2>
according to the story.</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Hope this helps! I'll post this to the
list, in case other Dhegihanists have any comments to add.</FONT></TT>
<BR><BR><TT><FONT size=2>Best,</FONT></TT> <BR><TT><FONT
size=2>Rory</FONT></TT> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>