Tense, aspect and time in Siouan.
ROOD DAVID S
rood at spot.Colorado.EDU
Thu Jun 22 13:24:06 UTC 2000
from David Rood:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, R. Rankin wrote:
> It looks to me as though there may be a perfect and
> an imperfect, both derived from *?uN 'do' ultimately. It may be that
> only one of the two is found in a given language, or we may yet discover
> both throughout Mississippi Valley Siouan (tho' with all the work that's
> been done on Dakotan, I tend to doubt that, since someone would have
> probably spotted it).
You give us too much credit, I fear -- we all tend to revere Boas and
Deloria enough to fail to ask questions they didn't answer already, and
real discourse studies are scarce. Also, I think the fact that the
distinction is likely marked by particles makes it probable that the
marking is optional -- if the meaning is clear from context, don't mention
it. Another topic to put in the "things we really ought to look at "
list.
This suggestion takes me back to the observation that k?uN and ?uN
are sometimes in apparent free variation as clause-finals. I don't
believe there is any such thing as free variation between particles like
that, just opaque linguists; maybe this is a clue we could follow to try
to elucidate the difference here. I'm intrigued by the gaN/aN variation
in Omaha now, too.
David
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