Archaic A1 p- in Dakotan.

[Robert L. Rankin]

> On Thu, 1 Apr 1999, Carolyn Quintero wrote:
> > What's the meaning of hiyu which Connie mentions?

> I believe it should be, morpheme for morpheme, thi(h)i in OP:  'arriving
> here to set out thither',... Osage would be something like chihu?

I was never able to elicit a cognate for that particular compound motion
verb in Kaw (Kansa).  They have chili 'come back suddenly' and chiye
'arrive suddenly', but no *chihu".

The paper to read on the Siouan motion verbs and their compounds is Allan
Taylor's article in IJAL back around 1974 or 75 or so.  It covers the
territory very well.  Allan sent out questionnaires to everyone engaged in
field work at the time, so his data are quite accurate.  I would think
that few if any emmendations are necessary to his work.

The conjugation of these verbs is particularly interesting since (like
verbs of motion in many languages) they show interesting and archaic
irregularities.  I can't remember if Allan reconstructed person-number
paradigms for each of the verbs or not, but that would be a next logical
step.  You have to compare several Mississippi Valley Siouan languages to
piece together the paradigms.  Even then, there may be holes.  Dakotan
massively replaces the old p- and s^- allomorphs of 1st and 2nd person
prefixes with the productive wa- and ya- respectively.

As for the conjugation of {hiyu} 'to come forth', David's right on the
money. Buechel (p.  83) gives several alternative forms.  The conservative
conjugation is:

1sg	hi-b-u
2sg	hi-l-u
3sg	hi(y)u (where -y- is just an epenthetic glide)
1du  u~-hi(y)u

There are alternative forms wa-hi-b-u, ya-hi-l-u, etc.

Then the "modern form of this verb is:"

wa-hiyu, etc., i.e., fully analogized into the "regular" patterns and
utterly useless to historical linguists!  :)

The -b- allomorph of the 1st person is precisely what we would expect from
a glottal-initial (or a vowel-initial) root.  When the vowel is nasalized
we expect -m- in the 1st person, when the vowel is oral, it should be /b/.
It's important to note that, although it bears a very low functional load
in Dakotan, /b/ is not only phonemic but actually has a clear and distinct
etymological source apart from /p/ and /m/.

{?o} 'to shoot' is another such verb.  Historically it should have had the
conjugation /b-o, l-o, ?o, u~k-?o/, but it probably doesn't. I'd guess
probably wa?o, ya?o or something like that.  Your analogical dollars at
work....

Bob