Siouan case alignment.

[Robert L. Rankin]

Dear Colleagues:

I'm writing an article for the Handbook of Comparative and Historical
Linguistics being edited by Bryan Joseph and Rich Janda for Blackwell
publishers (you may be familiar with Blackwell's analogous handbook for
phonology).  I decided that the hackneyed old Indo-European examples like
mater/mother, pater/father, canis/hound, etc. needed a rest.  The editors
liked the idea of my using Siouan examples. 

I have reached the point where I'd like to talk about problems in
reconstructing Siouan case alignment, and I'd like to elicit discussion
and examples from you for the languages you know best.  My writing won't
involve any kind of comprehensive reconstruction of Siouan grammar; it's
limited to case alignment in simple verbs and will be sort of a "sample"
of what one may encounter in trying to reconstruct this kind of
morphological distinction.

As most of you know, Siouan languages have two sets of "subject" pronouns,
one for active verbs (both transitive and intransitive) like 'to see, to
eat, to go' and another for stative verbs like 'to be tall, to be fat, to
be blue', etc.  The latter set of pronouns corresponds to the set also
used for transitive objects.  This generally seems to be true for all
Siouan languages.  That is, Siouan languages can be characterized as
"active languages" or "active-stative languages." 

My particular problem involves reconstructing the Proto-Siouan borderline
between these two categories of verbs -- the clearly active and the
clearly stative (or adjectival).  In several languages there are cases of
SEMANTICALLY ACTIVE VERBS THAT USE (OR MAY USE) THE STATIVE SUBJECT
PRONOUN SET.  It is this set that I'd like to ask you about.  

1.  Are there such verbs in the Siouan language(s) you've studied?

2.  If so, what are they?  

3.  Can you provide examples?  These would need to be in the 2nd, 3rd or
inclusive (1st dual/pl.) persons, since 3rd person forms do not have
prefixes that reveal case alignment.  All help will be gratefully
acknowledged.  

4.  There may also be semantically stative verbs that use active
morphology.  I'm also interested in any of these you have.  They might
include 'be sitting, be standing, by lying, be around, to stay/dwell'. 

Additional notes that may be helpful to you:  In many active/stative
languages actions over which the speaker lacks "control" may require
stative morphology.  So verbs like 'sneeze, hiccup, belch, fart, pant,
vomit' are sometimes stative morphologically.  In Kansa and Quapaw these
verbs all seem to be active morphologically, but certain other verbs can
be stative.  'Die' can be either.  'Fall' is another good one to look at. 
Miner's Winnebago lexicon lists 'fall over', 'fall down' and 'keep falling
down in weakness while running in fear' as requiring the stative pronoun
set. 

I'd like to keep this simple, so I'm not interested in "derived" verbs
that are stative in their basic form but active when an instrumental
prefix is used with them (this is a regular pattern in Siouan). 

These questions of "agency" and "control" were the subject of a nice paper
by Marianne Mithun in 1991: "Active Agentive Case Marking and its
Motivations", _Language_ 67:510-546. 

I hope my explanation is clear to everyone on the list and that some of
you will be able to help me with some comments and a little data.  

Thank you,

Bob Rankin