Lakota demonstratives

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Kathleen Shea wrote:
> > Spanish (I think):
> >
> > Demonstratives:    este   ese   aquel
> > Locative:          aqui   alli  ahi

Based on dictionary definitins, I seem to have gotten alli and ahi
reversed!  It should be:

                       este   ese   aquel
                       aqui   ahi   alli
                       aca    ?     alla

I can't find any trace of *aya.  (I think it was a ghost doublet of alla,
as Kathy Shea more or less suggested politely.)  I can't find any trace of
a form -a corresponding to ahi.  The directional sense of alla is
apparently fairly weak.  It is said to be more remote or less specific
than alli.

Note that for many purposes este and aquel are normally paired, e.g., as
'the latter' vs. 'the former'.

Bringing things back to Native American languages, there is comparative
summary of 'Inacessible and Absentative Inflections in Algonquian' by
David Pentland in Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics 25.3:25-26 (2000).
These are somewhat comparable to the remote category of demonstratives and
can be paired with demonstratives.