Incorporation

[Robert L. Rankin]

> To take this a little bit further now, in my work with OP I've come to
> the conclusion that prefixing and infixing stems are really more or less
> the same thing, except that the latter have a chunk of invariant
> preverbal stuff that sits in front of a component "main" stem ....

Well, yeah, but to us historians that "chunk" is the really fascinating
part, because such exceptions often clue us in to processes that were
productive hundreds, even thousands, of years ago that have now just left
this bothersome residue.  :)  As Meillet said, we reconstruct on the basis
of the exceptions, not the rule....

> If you don't allow for this hierarchical structuring of components in
> handling the infixing (or preverb) and compound stems you can quickly
> tie yourself in knots.  In this respect I think that Siouan languages
> differ from languages like Quechua or Turkish.  It's impossible to
> define simple linear position class descriptions of the verbs.  

This is typical of what you find in languages in which there is a mix of
inflectional and derivational affixes in the "template" (such as it is). 
Normally a series of inflectional affixes will be pretty linear.  I won't
say there are NO exceptions, but I think they'd be few (Turkish -ler/lar
'pl.' floats a little for example). The problem is that derivation can
take place at any point in history and is often, if not usually, different
for each lexeme.  Thus it will normally be the derivational affixes that
will screw up your nice templates, and, as John's nice examples show
vividly, that's certainly true in Siouan (esp. locatives and
instrumentals).  Then there are periodic "regularizations"  (analogical,
not phonological, in nature)  that may affect virtually all affixes and
further bolix up our neat analyses.  This is a historians perspective, of
course.  Synchronists account for these with more and more compartments
(or other exception features)  for the oddball derivations.  Life wouldn't
be fun without this stuff.

And on incorporation and infixing verbs, Kathy Shea was kind enough to
check some stative verbs for me in Ponca and includes both 'cough' and
'sneeze'.  Both have active conjugations: 

huxpe		cough
hu-a-xpe	I cough
hu-dha-xpe	you cough
hu-a~-xpe	we2 cough

hechi		sneeze
he-a-chi	I "
he-dha-chi	you "
he-a~-chi	we2 "

hu, I assume, is probably 'voice', which occurs in several compounds.
he, I simply can't identify.

Bob