Locative Postpositions

[ROOD DAVID S]

Here are my thoughts on the locatives, seen strictly from a synchronic
Lakhota perspective.  I would be happy to have corrections or
countertheories from others, and I apologize to those who are looking for
specific diachronic information, because there won't be much here.

	There is a contrast between postpositional or "inflectional"
(suffixal)) -ta and verbal -tu; the verb e'tu means 'to be in/at a
particular place', and I am not convinced that this stressed "e'" is
the "neutral" demonstrative root John has talked about; the latter is
probably extant in ekta 'to/toward', etaN 'from' etc.  I think the
stressed "e" is the verb root 'be', found in e.g. the so-called
personal pronouns (miye', niye', unki'yepi) and the definite existential
verb e' seen in sentences like "He' Robert e'" 'that's Robert'. The -l/-n
marker is, in my opinion, the reduced form of e'tu, not the -ta
postposition, but I can't give you any good arguments for that assertion.
	I am not aware that modern day speakers use the "thil" form for
the locative of 'house'; I've heard thima'hel for 'in the house' and
'thi(y)a'ta' for 'toward the house', but I'm the first to assert that I
have limited exposure to this language and probably haven't heard
everything that's out there.
	
	David


David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
Campus Box 295
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu