Suddenly Verbs

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Mon Nov 16 03:19:39 UTC 1998


On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Robert L. Rankin wrote:
> Not to muddy the waters, but Muskogean languages have an infix "grade" for
> what has often been described as "sudden action," "punctual,"
> "momentaneous" etc.  It turns out it can combine with a continuative
> aspectual infix and when it does, it generally forms an iterative.  
> 
> SO, can the Omaha-Ponca (OP) affixes be used with either reduplication or
> the positional (i.e., continuative) auxiliaries, and if so, does the
> resultant form clarify for us what, exactly, John's affixes/categories
> "really" are, i.e., is this a possible "test"?

I guess I'll have to look, but the combination would be messy, since the
"suddenly" forms consist of a motion component (directional), possibly
vertititve, plus a positional component (also possibly with a *k- prefix). 
However, the positional describes the path or action rather than the
agent, or at least so my theory goes. 

Anyway, this is certainly a valid test.  

I should mention that Randy (who's been nothing if not helpful to me in
this!) once mentioned that there are some motion-verb-like auxiliary
particles in Crow-Hidatsa, too. 



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