[Lexicog] Re: Citation forms in Prefixing Languages

[David Costa]

> I wondered if you had made some kind of a statement that abstracted stems
> might be the way to go in Algonquian contexts.  I know that's a sore
> temptation there, and I have a vague perception that some very careful choices
> have to be made in selecting citation forms for Algonquian, from noticing
> Rhodes' practice in his Odawa dictionary.  I suspect some of the subtleties
> pass me by.

For most Algonquian languages, problems of choosing lexical entries are
nowhere near as troubling as they are in heavily prefixing languages like
Iroquois. This is primarily due to the fact that except for inalienably-
possessed nouns (mostly just a closed set of kin terms, body part terms, and
such) it's not difficult at all in most Algonquian languages to produce
well-formed, stand-alone words with no prefixes. 99% of the morphological
'action' with Algonquian languages is suffixal, and this of course raises
the issue of which inflected form to use for citations. But I won't address
that here.

The main prefixes you find in any Algonquian language are one of the 3
person marking prefixes, and with verbs it's always easy to create forms
lacking any of these prefixes. In addition, Algonquian languages also have
what are called 'preverbs', which loosely attach to the front of verbs and
which are halfway between being preverbs and clitics. However, the
Algonquian languages vary enormously in how much they use these; in the main
Algonquian language that uses preverbs heavily with which I'm familiar,
namely Shawnee, they're never obligatory. So you leave them off, and you
have a form where the stem is word-initial. (I know that Cheyenne also uses
preverbs heavily, so perhaps Wayne can say something about how Cheyenne fits
into this.)

The problems Rhodes faced in his Ottawa dictionary are from processes more
specific to that language. The big problem is that Ottawa has an elaborate
series of rules which delete vowels in weak syllables. Not only do these
rules produce complex alternations when a word takes one of the three person
prefixes, but speakers of different dialects and generations often reanalyze
the underlying forms in various ways. This same problem also obtains in
Potawatomi, but since I'm not an Ottawa or Potawatomi specialist, I'll let
Rich talk about this more if he feels like it.

There are similar, though less severe, problems for choosing verb entry
forms in Miami. The primary problem in choosing verb stems to give in Miami
arises from what I call the 'Strong Syllable Rule', which is a phonological
rule which counts syllables identically to the Ottawa rule: namely,
odd-numbered syllables are 'weak', and even-numbered syllables are 'strong'.
Long vowels always count as strong, and thus, the syllable count for this
rule is restarted immediately after a long vowel. Even though this rule is
identical (pretty much) to the Ottawa rule, its effects are much milder in
Miami than in Ottawa: instead of causing vowels to delete, in Miami it
mostly just causes underlying /e/ to become /i/ when it's weak, and it
causes weak vowels to be devoiced before clusters of /h/ + obstruent.

So, an example:

underlying stem |memekwii-| 'run'

as in the imperative:

mimekwiilo 'run!'

or the third-person independent:

mimekwiiwa 'he runs'.

But, add a person prefix to it and see what happens:

nimemikwii 'I run'
kimemikwii 'you (singular) run'
kimemikwiimina 'we (inclusive) run'

...where the prefix has altered the syllable count and shifted the vowel
quality. The /e/'s become /i/ whenever they're odd-numbered. One must also
note that there are many underlying /i/'s that never appear as /e/, only as
/i/.

Even though verbs that are subject to such extensive vowel alternations are
overall not all that common in the language, this nevertheless forces one to
decide what stem to give for a verb like 'run'. There are at least three
choices; one can pick either of the forms that occur on the surface,
/mimekwii-/ or /memikwii-/, OR one can give the 'abstract' underlying form,
/memekwii-/, even though this exact stem shape never appears on the surface.

This question actually has practical application in the 'student dictionary'
I've been working on for a few years with the Miami tribe. I've explained
this problem to them, and after taking this all into consideration, the rule
they settled on is that if an instance of the vowel /i/ EVER appears as /e/,
then said vowel will always be given in the stems as /e/. Thus, in the
student dictionary 'run' is indeed given as the 'abstract' form /memekwii-/,
even tho they know full well it never appears quite that way on the surface.
So tribal members essentially agreed with the same solution that a linguist
would find most attractive.

Another minor issue with the Miami dictionary arises from the inalienably-
possessed nouns mentioned above. Like I said, these are a class of nouns,
mostly kin terms and body part terms, that always require one of the person
prefixes to create a well-formed word. Thus, /kitaana/ 'your daughter' and
/nintaana/ 'my daughter' are both grammatical 'whole words', while */taana/
is not. Instead of some Algonquian dictionaries where these are listed under
a 'default' prefix, usually the first person, the Miamis chose to give these
as unprefixed stems, tho with a preceding hyphen to signal the fact that
they have to have a prefix to be a 'real word'. Thus, the form for
'daughter' in the dictionary is /-taana/.

best,

David Costa



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