Nez Perce linguistics

[jess tauber]

I've been looking through the Aoki et al. dictionary (don't have the grammar on hand but can get to it next week). Verbs are mainly divided into two sets. It's beginning to look as if Aoki's VS set is more about fine, high control activities etc. (the things apparently normally encoded by high tone in Niger Congo languages), though admittedly it will take me a day to compile all the forms. The VC set, on the other hand, seems more about less controlled or finely grained or focused activities (low tone in N-C).

Neighboring Salishan languages are overtly marked for verbal control- is Sahaptian generally recognized to have similar marking, including what I seem to be seeing as above in N.P.? I'm also curious, if this is so, how such marking interacts with vowel harmony, root consonant makeup, aug/dim shifting, and choice of thematic/instrument prefixes.

Has anyone written about this? Thanks.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net