10.720, Qs: Proximate/obviative, ...

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 11 May 1999,  Wayles Browne <ewb2 at cornell.edu> wrote to Linguist:
> A European colleague inquires:
>
> As is well known, some languages, notably some American Indian
> languages, discriminate two kinds of verbal third person, namely the
> proximate and the obviative. One can compare the Latin iste vir and
> ille vir 'that man'.
>
> A constructed Latin example would be iste vir curri-X versus ille vir
> curri-Y, for 'that man run-s', where X and Y represent different
> desinences on the finite verb.
>
> What happens if the proximate and the obviative are coordinated within
> the subject NP? Does the finite verb take the desinence corresponding
> to the proximate or to the obviative? I refer again to the theoretical
> Latin example: iste vir et ille vir curri-Z; what shape does -Z take?
>
> What category wins if the subject contains the proximate/obviative AND
> the first or the second person? Latin: iste vir et ego curri-Z; ille
> vir et tu curri-Z.
>
> Is the proximate or the obviative the less marked category of the two?
>
> Please answer me directly at ewb2 at cornell.edu and I will pass answers
> on (and summarize them for the list, should there be enough).

I'm not an Algonquianist, but I can answer from the standpoint of the
Siouan language Omaha-Ponca.  OP is part of the Dhegiha dialect complex,
which with the Dakotan dialects ("Sioux"), Winnebago, and the
Ioway-Otoe-Missouria complex make up Mississippi Valley Siouan.  In OP,
the MV plural marker *=(a)pi > =(a)i ~ =(a)bi, a verbal enclitic, marks
not only the first person, second person, and third person plurals of
agent and patient, but also the third person singular proximate agent.
The other Dhegiha languages do more or less the same with their reflexes
of this morpheme.  If you consider the implications of using a single
morpheme to mark proximate agent and plural you can see that any obviative
reference loses out to a proximate reference.  Plural and proximate are
indistinguishable.

However, and here I think what I'm saying may well apply in at least some
Algonquian languages, it's probably somewhat misleading to think in terms
of iste and ille or English devices like 'the former' vs. 'the latter' or
'this one' vs. 'that one' or even 'he (the male)' vs. 'she (the female)'
when considering proximate vs. obviative.  It's more of a matter of
attention focus or foregrounding:  'the one we're attending to' vs.
'another or others'.  As soon as you focus to any extent on 'another', it
becomes 'the one we're attending to'.  In short, the opposition is between
'the proximate(s)' and 'obviatives'.  'The former' and 'the latter' are
probably both proximate, as are 'he' and 'she' normally.  It would be
pragmatically bizarre to yoke the proximate reference with an obviative
one in the same grammtical role.

However, in a manner of speaking, the function of the Siouan plural is, in
fact, that of an augment, rather than a plural.  It signifies 'and
others'.  So in a sense it does yoke the proximate with obviatives.  This
is particularly obvious in Winnebago, where both the first person and the
inclusive person markers can be combined with =(a)wi.  In Dakotan the
first person cannot take =(a)pi, but the inclusive can, while in Dhegiha
things are like Dakotan, but the unpluralized inclusive is rare, so
matters are verging on the inclusive requiring the plural marker and
functioning as a pure plural. I suppose one could think of the plural or
augment marking proximate by the expedient of implying others not attended
to, though I don't usually think of it this way.

Another thing to notice is that OP, in effect, requires the object to be
obviative.  There is no way to combine an obviative agent (subject) with a
proximate patient (object) in a transitive verb.  Any occurence of the
plural/proximate marker indicates that the subject is proximate or that
the subject or object is plural.  Algonquian languages manage this with an
inverse marker, which indicates that the application of obviation marking
is reversed from the expected.  OP lacks an inverse marker.

The OP obviative pattern has a lot in common with the Algonquian second
obviative, a system found mainly in the Fox-Kickapoo group.
Interestingly, speakers of Kickapoo and OP both agree in construing
(second) obviatives out of context as implying that the action was at the
behest of another or not actually witnessed by the reporter.

Actually, I'm not aware of a language with a morphologized former/latter
or referenceA/referenceB pronominal opposition.  I'm not sure if this is
more than chance, but I tend to suspect not.  Multiple reference systems
tend to settle on sex gender or noun classes, which are typically
shape/posture systems.  OP has a scheme like the latter, but it is
reflected only in the definite article and certain auxiliaries that are
morphologically identical with the definite article.  Interestingly, the
progressive, one of the forms marked with auxiliaries like this, omits the
plural marking enclitic.  It does mark obviation, however, by using
"object" forms of the article with the obviative subject and as
auxiliaries.  This pattern also occurs with articles in verb categories
that use the plural marker.