Another (?) Omaha particle.

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, R. Rankin wrote:
> I have to be careful about starting a new thread here because I've
> already taken on the whole Colorado National Guard and am spending half
> my mornings doing email!

Sorry. I was home yesterday because of getting ready to take the kids to
hear N*Sync (I think that's the spelling).

> But... In working up a paper on discourse here I chose the story of "The
> rabbit and the turkeys" (Dorsey 1890 pp.  557ff.) because I have that
> story in three different Siouan languages.  In it Dorsey has numerous
> instances of the particle /aN'/ (accented nasal [a]) with the meaning he
> translates consistently as 'having'.  These appear to be essentially
> perfects in that, in most if not all cases, they signal that some event
> had *already* taken place when the action or state of the main verb in
> the sentence does.  The particle never appears as naN or dhaN.  It is
> this latter auxiliary that seems to have an imperfective meaning in
> Quapaw.  It is clearly derived from *?uN 'do' (or maybe 'be') and is
> conjugated, as we have noted several times, m-aN, z^-aN, naN.

I'd have to check this particular text, but one or two of the texts simply
substitute aN or gaN for egaN in the sense of the 'preceding action
subordinate'.  I don't know if these things are idiosyncratic, influence
of another language, or a dialect.  Of course egaN is just e=g(i)-aN, or,
maybe better e-g(i)=aN, given where the inflection falls.

Another oddity of some speakers is to say "Hau." essentially between
paragraphs.

And then there are the ones who affricate lots of dentals - I call it
little old lady speech, though maybe it's 'speaking to children'.

JEK