Locative Postpositions

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Ardis R Eschenberg wrote:
> > The double article dhaN ama is used in partitives.
> > JOD1890:443.14  s^aaN'=ama e=d=e=di ama    dhaNz^a
> >                 Sioux  the there are there though ...
> > The articles agree, if both are present.  ...
> Perhaps this is tangential, but...
> I am pretty sure that 'ama' used there is not an article.  That is, ama
> serves many functions: quotative, article and in presentative type
> constructions.
> I believe that in the 1st construction above it is presentative (like the
> akh-ama expressions I brought up at the last conference) ...

OK, technically, it isn't an article, but another class of morpheme
homophonous with them and concordant with them.  In Omaha-Ponca these
post-verbal classes, which might be labeled auxiliaries and, perhaps,
presentatives, are identical in form with the articles and I tend to refer
to them as such, as a sort of shorthand.  In Osage, at least, the
post-verbal forms aren't always homophonous with the post-nominal forms,
and the terminology has to be more cautious. Clearly the forms are at
least historically related in any case.

I apologize if the terminology isn't entirely apt.  It is formally based
(the other formal), rather than functionally, reflecting tendencies
somewhat at odds with trends in linguistics over the last half-century or
so.

> This 'ama' has syntactic consequences that an article would not (as it
> is a verbal operator).  Do you have other examples with articles other
> than 'ama' in these positions?  (i.e. maybe i am up the wrong tree).

The ama here is definitely not the quotative, however, and other
"articles" can occur here, in corcordance with the class of the subject. I
thought I'd included enough examples to show this, but may have slipped
up!

I'm not sure that the term presentative is entirely appropriate here,
either.  I'd think that the functional presentative is the e=d=e=di +
article-like-thing sequence; in other words, the ama (or whatever
article-like-thing is present) is only part of the presentative
construction.

> The second ama [in Koontz's example above] might be similar to:
> naN   ama kki, (s^i    agiahi-bi-ama)
> Grown QUO when  (again came for him-pl-QUO)
> When he was grown...(They came for him again).

Here I'm kind of thinking (without seeing the whole context) that the
first ama is the auxiliary use of the article-like-thing, and not the
quotative, as it is in a subordinate clause, but I'd have to check this
further.  I don't feel confident in regard to auxiliaries in
subordinate clauses.  The second ama is definite the quotative, though.

Although the Omaha-Ponca quotative ama is homophonous with the article
ama, I'm not positive it's historically the same thing.  Perhaps it is
from a 'he/they say' plus something like the ma 'the collective' article
or some horribly mutilated version of (a)=bi=a ... That would not be a
regular development, of course.

> Hey.  I also think it interesting that although xti seems to require
> 'do/use', xc^i does not

> egidhe    ppaze-xc^i kki...
> at length dark-very when
> 'At length when it was very dark...'

The auxiliary is optional in the third person.  This is a third person
example.  It would be there if the example was first or second person, I
think.

> Does anyone have a principle[d?] reason for this?

Not really.  It happens throughout Dhegiha, as far as I know, but not in
other Siouan languages.  It is regular with xti ~ xc^i 'truely, very' and
with [s^ ~ h ~ 0]naN 'exclusively, habitually'.  There are moribund traces
with s^te(s^te) 'soever' and the negative, albeit with the latter it
precedes, suggesting that something has been lost before that and the
present z^i morpheme is additional to whatever was lost.  (I wonder if the
lost item isn't something like *(s^)niN, but there's no internal evidence
of this.)

The only conceivable trace of this elsewhere that I can think of at the
moment is the disagreement over whether or not enclitics like xti end in
nasal vowels or not.  That could just be some sort of word boundary
situation, but perhaps *=xti=uN > =xtiN in some cases?  That is, the
auxiliary is lost, but nasality spread from it lingers on?

In any event, if Dhegiha preserves the original pattern here, then these
enclitics are presumably the historical outgrowth of some sort of
appended, or possibly (less likely I think) superordinate adverbial
clause.  I think this might fall under the heading of an unprincipled
explanation.

> Anyway sorry if any of this was ignorant or too tangential I am nutso for
> Dhegiha article/aux/verbs.

One cannot be too nutso over Dhegiha article/aux/verbs.