Quapaw potential mode.

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, R. Rankin wrote:

> wie    naN-hi         aN-o-   ki-      ttoN-we   tta-i-tte-   naN,
> 1sg alone-EMP  1PAT-in-BEN-depend-PL POT-?-POT-as
> Me alone just me      they depend       would     as
> Since they would be depending on just me alone,
>
>  wi-tteke o-a-ki-we-bda-bda a-b-di$taN.
>  my-mo.bro in-1AGT-BEN-INDF-1AGT-work-1AGT-work on-AGT-stop
>  my mother’s brother  I  work-work  I  ceased
>  I stopped working for my (maternal) uncle.
>
> The exact structure and meaning of the compounded potential particles,
> tta-í-tte is unclear, unless maybe the second -tte is perhaps -the, your
> 'evidential'.  For Dorsey, the meaning resulted in the meaning ‘would’.

I'd read it 'since it appeared that they would be depending on me alone'
or 'since I concluded that they would be depending on me alone'.  I'm
assuming that he quit working for his uncle because more immediate
responsibilities developed.  In other words, what is presumably the analog
of OP *the* here adds something more than the potential.

Of course, focussing on the evidential sense heavily in the translation
might not be appropriate for literary purposes, any more than rendering a
gender marker as 'the male/female' would be in translating from a gender
language like English into a Dhegiha language, e.g., "she" does not
require 'the woman' in the translation, though the Omahas I worked with
liked to put it in in translating examples for me.