new track: ?uN

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, R. Rankin wrote:
> Interesting that Omaha has lost the instrument prefix.  Mus' be areal.
> "Normally" 'use' is 'do with', *i-?uN (BI y-oN, TU i-oN, etc.)

No trace of it in Omaha-Ponca.  And in Dakotan it is missing, too, of
course.  The ?uN 'use' verb is actually the instrumental postposition,
right?  In Omaha-Ponca the analog of that is to put an i-locative on the
main verb and make the instrument an argument of that verb.

> Do you find anything at all in Omaha that would suggest the 'be'
> meaning??  I'm wondering how widespread it is and I have no statistics.

No trace of it that I'm aware of.  'To be' with nouns and the occasional
verbal quality expression is bdhiN/niN/-- (enclitic).  Since this is
enclitic often to the demonstrative e, that e often shows up alone in the
third person.  I don't think I have an dhiN 'to be' examples for the third
person, though that's obviously the stem.  'To be there (to be located)'
involves using e=di (liek Da e=l ~ e=tu) as a predicate, or e=d(i)=e=di,
which I think is actually 'to be there (to be at that place)'.  The verb
thaN (maybe ttaN (?) as Dorsey's open quote is very unreliable) is 'to
exist, to abound'.


> I feel that the aspectual or temporal auxiliary meaning of the
> semi-grammaticalized form of *?uN that we find in all the Dhegiha
> dialects could be more easily derived from 'be/was' than from 'do/did',
> although the 'exist' meaning isn't as congenial..

Dorsey often translates this auxiliary as 'do/did', if he translates it at
all.

> In QU it seems to have the 'imperfective' meaning, but it sees a lot of
> use in Dorsey's Omaha texts and may have developed into a 'past' or
> 'perfect' there??

Dorsey often renders clause final *dhaN* as 'past'.  So far I haven't
studied the contexts thoroughly.  Of course he often renders clause final
*the* in the same way, or as 'the'.  But when *dhaN* appears after *the*
or in various other places I'm pretty sure it really must mean something
like 'past'.  I wonder, of course, if some *dhaN* alone might be
evidentials.

JEK

I just have to remember to sign explicitly.  Pine puts the signature at
the top of the file in replies, and mine's rather out of date anyway.