Strange use of Quapaw article/aux.

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, R. Rankin wrote:

> > The breve itself isn't a mark of aspiration, but it seems to be a
> > mark of the combined states lax (not tense) and unstressed.

> That's entirely possible, but we also know that Dorsey had a diacritic for short
> vowels rather than long ones

To clarify, the breve is his mark of shortness, only it has nothing to do
with shortness, at least in Omaha-Ponca.

> > Plus if it were the future, it would be still off that it were inflected,
> > prefixally and not with a following article auxiliary, whereas prefixal
> > inflection like this is not odd for articles, albeit it is for inanimate
> > articles.

> That's assuming the a- is indeed the pronominal.  By me it should still
> be thaN or uninflected.

It isn't thaN.  If it is, this would be a pair of unique mistakes for
Dorsey.

> The -i- of ttaitte (or ttaithe, whichever) is not the plural -bi.

Ah, true, it would be a unique use of -i as plural Quapaw, but in OP it is
definitely the plural/proximate, whether this is reanalysis or separate
development in OP, or whether it is an irregular development in Quapaw.

> > Fifth, and this is a more recently
> > argument, it seems that 'shall surely' can easily be analyzed as 'shall
> > from the evidence, shall evidently, shall seemingly'

> But that presumes evidentiality, which we can't do until/unless it's
> confirmed.

If several things confirm the same line of reasoning, it seems reasonable
to me.  We can't reject each of the arguments individually because the
others alone don't quite convince us.  We have to decide if the whole set
convinces us or not.