Lakota demonstratives

[regina pustet]

Regarding Connie's message, I have the follwoing frequencies for that part
of my Lakota texts that I have sampled:

he' : le' : ka'      370 : 164 : 0
hena' : lena' : kana'  154 : 83 : 0

The values match Connie's results for the Deloria texts. Taking just the
values for he'/hena' and le'/lena', the ratios are:

Deloria
he' : le'     75% : 25%
hena' : lena'   82% : 18%

my texts
he' : le'     69% : 31%
hena' : lena'   65% : 35%

Well, the match is apparently more pronounced for the singular forms.

Regarding David's first message:

>  -- when do you
> need that third degree of distance?

It all depends on the semantics/pragmatics of the system. Many languages
have a three-way distinction in the demonstrative system, and the exact
functions of the demonstratives involved do not necessarily overlap, as
David, Bob, and John have already pointed out in the discussion. So what
if ka' expresses a degree of proximity that at least partly overlaps with
the semantic range of English 'that'? Then there would be as much
motivation for using ka' in narratives as there is motivation for using
'that' in English. And ka' does occur in the older texts, as Connie's text
counts show; it's not exactly frequent, but it's there. Maybe it's just a
coincidence that my speakers didn't use ka' -- the next thing to do is ask
them if they find the combination of head nound plus ka' acceptable at
all.

Regina