augmentative/diminutive shifting

[Jess Tauber]

Thanks for the responses. In comparing what has been done concerning
augmentative/diminutive shifts across North America, it becomes pretty clear
that Chinookan and Sahaptian had the most elaborated systems. These, however,
were mostly limited to nominal forms, and much more rarely occurred on verbal
forms. Interestingly, many of the "Penutian" languages in this area relied on
true ideophones to specify manner on a very much reduced verb stock. These
ideophones are quite simple in structure, and relatively few in number (and
they don't exhibit shifting) which seems to be true of most verb-initial
languages with case (or which had it) as well as many primarily head-marking
verb-final languages. Word order here can be pragmatic (and statistical) or
grammatical- so I'm including "free" order langs.
The picture in Siouan, at least to me, resembles to some extent an
extrapolation beyond the situation between Pomoan and Yuman. In Kashaya Pomo,
a good percentage of normal verb roots (especially those descriptive of
manners of action) can appear stripped of morphology as ideophones (or
conversely, one could think of the roots as derivative- it's difficult to
know which process came first).  Aug/dim shifts per se are not evident. In
Yuman there are also ideophones, though fewer in number, aug/dim shifts seem
more limited to quality terms (and derived nominals) than in Siouan. Given a
putative relationship between Siouan and Hokan, perhaps shifting goes back to
before the current families evolved. From what little I've seen Siouan has
essentially no ideophones. Perhaps aug/dim shifts originated on stative
verbs, while ideophones describe more actions with recognizable termini. In
any case the Siouan shifts resemble Yuman more than anything else on the
continent. Speculations?

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com