Locative Postpositions

[Robert L. Rankin]

> I am not convinced that this stressed "e'" is the "neutral"
> demonstrative root John has talked about;... 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'.

John:
> I guess I don't distinguish between the two usages in looking at
> Omaha-Ponca.  This may be a deficiency in my approach, but I think it's
> mostly because Omaha-Ponca doesn't make the verb :  postposition
> distinction morphologically by truncating some of the postpisitions.

> We do have to ask ourselves whether the possibility of such an analysis
> for the origin of the situation in Dakotan should cause us to adopt it
> over the one that David likes, which clearly works, too, if we're not
> overly concerned to reduce the number of "e" entities.

In Dhegiha there is a distinction between {?e:}, the demonstrative, and
{he} 'to be', so I'd expect all the e's in DH to be of the demonstrative
variety.  You find the {-he} 'be' compounded with positional verb roots to
form auxiliaries (reduced biclausal constructions).  When following a
vowel, {-he} is conjugated in the 2nd person, otherwise it seems to be
invariant (forming aspirated consonants):  [$ = s-hacek]

'be sitting'	'be moving'	'be standing'

1st  mi~k-HE	a-ri~- HE	a-tha~- HE
2nd $ni~k-HE   ra-ri~-$-E      ra-tha~-$-E
3rd  ni k-HE	

Some Dhegiha languages take it farther.  Osage and Quapaw have versions
with zha~k-HE 'be lying'.  In Dhegiha {he} is always a locative 'be' as
far as I know, but this is presumably because it is always compounded with
a locative verb in those languages.

There is probably a dissertation to be written (by some enterprising soul)
on the developments of this verb and possibly other verbs of being (for
example {?u~:}.  They have been grammaticalized in any number of
interesting and different ways.  ?U~ is the basis for a past tense in some
Dhegiha dialects and, I think, in Biloxi.

Bob