Omaha/Dakota k?uN cognates.

[R. Rankin]

> Omaha-Ponca patterns, which are, I think entirely typical of Dhegiha, are
> that demonstratives follow nouns and articles follow demonstratives.

>

> It's dangerous to see syntactic order as historical order, but I wonder if
> this doesn't suggest that the Dakotan articles, which are not obviously of
> positional origin like the Dhegiha ones (as described by Robert Rankin in
> his 1970s MALC paper on positionals), are something older retained in
> Dakotan and lost in Dhegiha.

While it may be dangerous in the case of pronominals and in the case of languages
that force all their affixes into pre- of suf- position, it's still worth
considering most of the time.  I suspect the Dhegiha article order is a reflection
of their more recent addition to the grammar.  You might check Giulia Oliverio's
Tutelo grammar.  I think a good reflex of -ki(N) is preserved there (although
apparently not in the languages in between).  So it's old, but may not always have
been an article.

> I wonder if the -gi in wakkaNdagi might not
> actually be a fossil remnant of something like the Dakotan article.

Certainly could be.

--
Robert L. Rankin, Visiting Professor
Research Center for Linguistic Typology
Institute for Advanced Study
La Trobe University
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