More case alignment.

[Robert L. Rankin]

On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, David Rood wrote:
> BE careful of this one; 'fall' is a standard meaning for stative verbs
> in all the languages that have this active/stative pattern, so there is
> certainly semantic pressure to retain the form as stative even if it's
> etymologically otherwise.

My question is whether it will be possible to identify any present or
former causative morphology on the verb.  Randy identifies this verb as
stative in Crow (passhi), but I see no causative morphology there.  But
what do I know about Crow.  Likewise Biloxi.

> You might also be intersted in an observation in Geoff Kimball's grammar
> of Koasati about the stative verbs there.  He maintains he can prove
> that the inflections are genuine objects of impersonal verbs because the
> negation paradigm requires third person subject negatives.

The problem there is that in Muskogean there is no 3rd person
agent/subject morphology to appeal to historically.  We don't really know
where his negative "subject markers" come from since they don't also occur
with affirmative clauses.  He may be right, but it's also possible that
he's following in the rutted footsteps of all the western linguists who
have tried to prove that ergative (and here stative) constructions are
really nothing but "passives."

> ... one should then check the other criteria in Koasati for subject
> status: do nouns take the nom or acc case when subjects of statives, and
> how does switch reference work? 

This opens up another Muskogean can of worms, but I'm convinced (as was
Heather Hardy at one time) that the famous -t and -n suffixes are
'proximate' and 'obviative' respectively, not 'subject' and 'object' with
a homophonous set of switch reference markers.  Proximate/obviative ties
together the two "kinds" of -t and -n nicely while also explaining certain
Choctaw sentences that have had to be analyzed as having "two subjects" as
in "that man has two dogs" where the Choctaw is "that man-T two dogs-T
for.him-sit."  Unfortunately, if I'm right it renders the test hors de
combat.

But I digress.  I'll really be interested to see how it works out across
Siouan, and of course I'll share any results with the list.  Biloxi seems
to have a couple of interesting cases if I've understood them correctly. 
Thanks for the comments on Dakotan! 

Bob