augmentative/diminutive shifting

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 6 Sep 1999 Zylogy at aol.com wrote:
> Is there someone out there who has any idea when various sound-symbolic
> shifts in Siouan languages became unproductive- that is, lexicalized-  in
> most of the languages?

It's an interesting question whether unproductive and lexicalized are the
same thing - at least in this case.  The fricative gradation that occurs
throughout the family and the affrication that occurs in at least Dhegiha
are not in any sense morphological or obligatory, and in Dhegiha the
closest to frequent use I've seen is a text or part of a text in which
there was a lot of the affrication.  I don't recall the details at the
moment but I remember it seemed to be associated with a "little old lady"
(wa?u zhiNga) speaking.

On the other hand, it's not at all clear that all examples of the
fricative gradation are inherited, so somebody, somewhere, sometime is
manufacturing new examples that catch on and become fixed idioms.  It's a
form of lexical affixation (nonlinear or superfix or whatever).  It seems
to be less used (less productive) than instrumental prefixation, for
example, but I'm not convinced it's completely unproductive in Dhegiha.  I
just don't have any idea how productive it is.  Other lexical processes of
uncertain degree of productivity would include reduplication and
spontaneously generated onomatopes or ideophones.  I'm pretty sure that
things like the locatives, reflexives, datives and suus prefixes are more
productive, but I don't have anything but an impression to go on there
either.  These are quasi grammatical, of course, in Siouan languages,
though less so than personal inflection.

Some of the fault for not being sure of the degree of productivity here
falls on the shoulders of the students of Dhegiha.  We haven't been very
productive either, I guess.  On the other hand, I suspect that it's not
really possible to say much on this score for any language in the family,
including the Dakotan dialects or Crow.  The truth is, very little has
been done on such questions, and the best lexicons for Siouan languages
are still at a quite primitive state of development, including those for
Dakotan.  I can remember David Rood agonizing over issues like this when
the new Lakota dictionary project got under way.  (It's currently on
hold.)

By the way, another related phenomena might be bl ~ gm alternations in
Dakotan.  There's no real etymolopgical source for gm.

> Also, family-level cross-linguistic work seems to
> indicate that most of such augmentive/diminutive shifts originate as bound
> morphology.

Like Dakotan =la DIMINUTIVE - here in Teton form.  I think this is derived
from =la(ka) the conjugated enclitic that means 'consider as'.  Most of
the rest of Mississippi Valley seems to rely on appending their equivalent
of 'be little' to the noun.  I think this occurs some in Dakotan, too.

> Has any study been done to determine etymological sources within
> Siouan?

I'm not aware of any investigations into the origin of fricative gradation
(or any of the other phenomena mentioned) in Siouan.  I've always assumed,
however, that it originated in precisely the form in which it now exists.
If there is something affixal underlying all this, then it's very old and
I suspect there's nothing left of it.

Howver, Wes Jones has discussed (in a SACC/MALC paper, published in the
MALC proceedings) an apparent pattern in Proto-Siouan of forming new roots
from old by means of various extensions (initial or final).  There are
enough examples to make it seem that something was going on, but the basis
of the system is completely obscure - i.e., the extensions seem arbitrary
- at this point.