Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

---------------------- Forwarded by Rory M Larson/IS/UNL/UNEBR on
08/28/2001 11:05 AM ---------------------------


Rory M Larson
08/24/2001 03:57 PM

To:   Koontz John E <John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU>
cc:

Subject:  Re: Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system  (Document
      link: Rory M Larson)

Hi John,

> Please feel free to post any substantive discussion to the list.  I'll
> reply offline in this case.  I think I started the offline thing myself,
> though intending it mainly as a temporizing apology for not giving you
the
> full response your excellent points deserve.

Why don't I post my last letter to the list, and then you can
post the one you last wrote?  Then I can post this one, and
they will be up in sequence.  I wasn't sure before which way
it would be better to go.


>> In these two cases of dialogue, egaN' takes no preceding -bi.  I count
>> six other cases of egaN' in narrative statements of the same story,
>> each of which does take a preceding -bi (or -b alone, tacked to the
>> final vowel of the preceding word).  These are at lines 2, 4, 7, 15, 17
>> and 20, all on page 23.

> My counter argument here is that there seem to be two egaN conjunctions.
> This is something I'd noticed during my last active progress on my
> dissertation a few years ago, though I'm not sure I ever associated it
> with bi-conditioning and I haven't written anything up on it that I can
> recall.  I think I may have mentioned it to Ardis later, but maybe that
> was just multiple kinds of ama.

> My recollection is that one of the forms was regularly stressed on a
> particular syllable (apparently the second). The other was accented in
> various ways depending on the accent of the preceding verb (depending on
> where the tendency to alternating syllables for secondary accent placed
> it).

> As far as glosses, one form was usually glossed something like 'so', or
> sometimes maybe 'in order that'.  The other was the 'having' conjunction.

> It appears from your examples that the first pattern in each of these is
> paired, though I'd have to go look at my notes to be sure this is what I
> noticed.  Maybe it's more complex and my initial analysis and this one
> don't match because I'm completely off base.

> Anyway, the first examples you provide have the sense 'so, in order
that',
> while the group on p. 23 are the other - more common one, "having," what
> Bob Rankin recently called (I forget where, maybe just conference
comments
> or email) the "conjunct mode" after a term used in Algonquian grammar
> (maybe elsewhere, too) to refer to generically subordinated clauses (as
> opposed to specific kinds of subordinates like conditionals, causals,
> temporals, etc.).  These are somewhat like active present or imperfect
> participles in Indo-European languages (note tha "having"), but in
> Algonquian they take personal inflection.  There may be an implication of
> sequencing (not always in Algonquian, I think), so they are somewhat
> temporal, but not in marked way like 'when' clauses.  In OP they're just
> regular verbs, of course, followed by a kind of generic conjunction.

> Now what you need for a counter example would be a 'so' that had a bi or
a
> 'having' that didn't.  The easy way to find this would be to search the
> computer file version of the texts (which I assume you have?) for 'so'
and
> 'having'.

No, I don't have the computer file version.  I just have a paper copy up
to page 293.  Mark is gradually filling me in with the rest.

I agree that there are two forms of egaN.  The one I was discussing is
the subordinating conjunction with the accent (almost always) on the second
syllable, egaN'.  This one is usually glossed "having", though in my second
example it is glossed "because".  The other form is not a conjunction.
Its accent pattern varies as you describe, though when it is not too
much bound up with other words its accent is generally on the first
syllable, e'gaN.  (Thanks for pointing out the varying accent pattern--
I hadn't realized this and was about to protest that it never happened,
but I've just found a couple of examples of it.)  This word means
"like the preceding", or "like that", or "in that way".  I think you
can use e'gaN by itself to mean "okay", "agreed", "as you say", or
"that's what happened".  You can definitely use it alone in command
form as "E'gaN ga!", "Do that which has just been described!", or you
can give a long-winded description of an action and terminate it with
"e'gaN ga!" (or "egaN' ga!") to order someone to do the sort of thing
you have elucidated.

In the story "How the Rabbit Killed a Giant", there are two to four
cases of e'gaN as well.  In the test I considered in the last letter
though, I was only counting the cases of the conjunction egaN'.

I think the semantic difference between "having" and "because" is a
distinction made in English, but not in Omaha.  EgaN' covers both of
these usages at once, though Dorsey may choose different English words
to gloss it depending on the context.  The meaning of

     Clause1 egaN' Clause2

is that Clause1 took place as a precondition to Clause2, which followed
either temporally or logically.  Clause1 is not necessarily a complete
explanation of Clause2, so we can't always gloss egaN' as "because" or
"so" in English.  However, I think it does always give some background
explanation that elucidates how and why Clause2 came about; e.g. [The
giant rushed at the Rabbit] egaN' [he pushed him down in the blood],
in which Clause1 is a prerequisite to Clause2, but not a statement of
the operative cause.  On the other hand, [They fear you] egaN' [they
do not attack you] is a statement where Clause1 is the operative cause
of Clause2, so egaN' can be glossed with "because" or "so" in English.
It also refers to the present, so "having" will not work as the
English gloss.  If we have a statement referring to the past, in which
Clause1 is the operative cause of Clause2, we can gloss egaN' either
as "having" or as "because".  But the Omaha grammatical paradigm does
not seem to distinguish past from present, or operative cause from
prerequisite condition; it is all equally egaN' to them.

The counter-example you ask for of egaN' glossed as "having" without
-bi is already with us as the first of the two examples I offered of
egaN' in dialogue without -bi:

>>      She' akha' MashtshiN'ge-iN' akha' pa'de wa'gazhi egaN'
>>      aNpa'dai ha -- "That one, the Rabbit, bade us cut it up, so
>>      that's why we cut it up".

In my own free translation, I put egaN' into English as "so that's
why", but Dorsey actually glossed the word in this case as "having".


> I should add that there are also a number of other uses of egaN.
> Basically, it is a verb e=...gaN 'to be thus, to be so to something',
> inflected e=gimaN, e=gizhaN, e=gaN.  This neat pattern of gi before the
> first or second person pronoun or g fused with the third person stem also
> occurs with e=ge (alternatively suppletively e=gidhaN from dhaN 'tell'
> instead) 'to say to someone', inflected e=giphe (or is it egihe?),
> e=gis^e, e=ge.

> The underlying verbs (without -g(i)- 'to someone/something') are eaN
'how;
> to be so' and, of course, e 'to say' (which has some many alternaive
stems
> it's difficult to describe except by listing the inflections ehe, e^e, e
~
> a=i ~ a=bi).

I'm not sure I follow these conjugations, and I'd be interested in
seeing examples from Dorsey.  I did run across a case of e'gigaN
this morning, which seems to mean something like "(come to) be like
itself (again)", glossed by Dorsey as "was as before".  This is in
"Two Faces and the Twin Brothers", page 213, line 15, in the context
of a magical feat that is difficult to understand.  This certainly
appears to be a case of e'gaN with an infixed -gi-.


> Anyway, apart from verbal uses, egaN seems to be used after verbs in the
> sense of 'sort of'.  Probably in this sense it seems to be a fixed part
of
> e=dhe 'to think', which is always e=dh=egaN 'to sorta think'.  It's also
> part of a pattern or set of related patterns of the shape "eska(naN) ...
> gaN=dh=egaN" = 'would that ..., oh that ...' Sort of like Spanish ojala
is
> how I conceptualize it, though not a loan from Arabic like that!

I think these are cases of compounds that use the non-conjunctive e'gaN
form discussed above, which would mean "like the preceding" or, as you say,
"sort of".


>> Also, I should note that statements or clauses ending in one of the
>> words that you call articles, and that I have been calling
dispositionals,
>> and that Paula Ferris Einaudi calls classificatory verbs in her Grammar
>> of Biloxi, never seem to take -bi, even in the narrative.  I would claim
>> that to be a standard exception to the rule of dubitative -bi in
>> narrative statements.

> In these sentences, which I call progressives, though that's not entirely
> apt, for various reasons - maybe imperfects is closer to the mark - both
i
> and bi are missing, I believe, and number and obviation come from the
form
> of the article.  Basically, the lack of i ~ bi is equivalent to the use
of
> the obviative articles (dhiNkhe, etc.), while the presence of i ~ bi is
> equivalent to the use of the proximate articles (akha and ama).

> I'd be interested in your logic with the term dispositional.

All right.  I'm starting out under the influence of a chart that Mark
made up for us last year, and which I think came ultimately from you!

It seems to me that these words basically indicate the disposition of
the preceding noun, which may be standing, moving, sitting, lying,
elongate, flat, globular, plural, scattered, in a row, in a bundle,
at a point, in an area, committing the action, or being affected by
the action.  These are like our markings for singular or plural, or
for gender, but except for the absence of gender distinction, the
Omaha system is much more powerful than our own in indicating to the
listener what pattern to look for or to imagine.

These words can be used to close a noun phrase, in which position
they may feel like the definite article to us English speakers,
or they can act as the main verb of a sentence, in which case they
are asserting the disposition of the noun in a timeless sort of
way that may be like the progressive or imperfect for us.  The
closest thing I can think of in English are sentences like "A man
stands tall", or "She is sitting pretty", or "The boy lay sick".
The standing, sitting or lying verb is just slid into a sentence
that would function just fine without them if they were replaced
by a form of "to be", but they add the extra information of the
subject's disposition.


>> 2) I think I've found a counter-example to our rule that -i and -bi
could
>> not both occur at the same time.  In "Ishtinike and the Deserted
Children",
>> page 87, line4, we have:
>>
>>      E'gidhe shaN'ge i' khaNthaN'i-biama'. --
>>      "It happened that the horses mouths were tied, they say".

> I'd take this to be a typo or mispeaking, though I'd have to reconsider
if
> there were many examples.  I've noticed a few other typos here and there,
> surprisingly few, though.  There are also definitely some
> mistranscriptions and mispeakings, e.g., the errors noted with proximate
> and obviative marking (or dubitative) in the footnotes.

>> 3) I think I've also found a case of two different -i morphemes
>> appearing at the same time.  On page 88 of the same story,
>> line 7-8, we refer to "the children who were abandoned" as
>>
>>      shiN'gazhiN'ga waaN'dhaii ama'

> Same reaction. Of course, the only support I can offer to this is that
> Dorsey doesn't comment on these somewhat unusual cases, which is negative
> evidence, and weak anyway.  Anyone could overlook something.  And, for
> that matter, I think Dorsey assumed with you that bi had a dubitative
> sense, though he glosses it as quotative.

Should we really be using the term "quotative" here for ama',
biama', etc.?  Direct quotes are usually in the form of
"X", a' biama', or ga: "X".  The word ama' seems to mean
"the foregoing is the repute", but the actual wording of
the foregoing is the narrator's.  Dubitative -bi with the
meaning of "supposedly" is only marginally different from
ama'.  The ama' particle appeals to the standard tradition
of the community, while -bi implies that the foregoing is
open to doubt.  Encountering either of these as a repetitive
narrative device, "they say" is probably the best and
shortest gloss we can think of to fit in a small place,
but its implication is not that the foregoing is a direct
quote, but rather that the speaker divorces himself from
responsibility for the truth of the preceding statement.


>> These are the only examples I've found of these two cases,
>> both in the same story, which is otherwise rather difficult.
>> Perhaps NudaN-axa spoke a somewhat different dialect
>> than that of the La Fleches.

> I think he was Ponca.

If that's true, then I think it's much more likely that cases
of -i / -bi doubling up are normal in Ponca but not in Omaha,
than that these cases are random typos.  I've just gone through
another story by NudaN'-axa and found a third example.  In
"How the Rabbit Went to the Sun", page 28, line 5, in a short
version of the myth of the Rabbit and the Devouring Hill, we
have:

     Ka'shi-qti e'gaN dhasniN'i-biama'--
     "After a very long while, he was swallowed, they say."

Here we seem to have a passivizing -i, followed by
dubitative -bi.

If we accept that this is the way NudaN'-axa actually spoke,
rather than that this peculiar sort of typo just happened to
be made three times in two different stories that he gave,
and if we suppose that the way he spoke was typical of the
Ponca dialect, then it follows that the Ponca dialect at
least recognizes -bi and two types of -i as three distinct
morphemes.


>> These arguments are tenuous, but so far the dubitative -bi
>> model seems to offer the best fit for me.  I'd be interested
>> in any counter-examples from Dorsey you could find
>> that would support the -bi / -i equivalence model, or
>> specifically the obviative/proximate model.  I certainly
>> agree with you that the whole issue is very tricky!

> In general, why would songs and names be dubitative?

They wouldn't.  I think we'd agree that the -bi that appears
in these cases is simply a fossilization of the original
MVS pluralizing -bi that was locked into these "texts"
before pluralizing -bi was reduced to -i in OP.

Your conception is that we have just one ( -bi / -i )
postverbal particle, which may be either -bi or -i
depending on the environment of its occurrance, and
which is derived from the well-known MVS pluralizing
particle *pi (or whatever the original is supposed to
be).  My conception is that we are dealing with several,
probably three or four, completely different, if not
always adequately distinguished grammatical particles
that come out as -bi or -i in Omaha, and which may have
as many distinct etymological origins.

I would speculate that our problem arises from the
collapse of [u] into [i] in OP.  (Caution: what about
Osage, Kaw and Quapaw?  Do they have -bi, or -i, as
their pluralizing particle?)  Suppose that proto-OP,
before the [u]=>[i] collapse had, say, four distinct
post-verbal particles, as follows:

     *bi  - the foregoing is plural, or the
            subject is not defined.

     *bu  - the foregoing is to be taken with
            a grain of salt.

     *u   - the foregoing is a fact.

     *i   - the foregoing took place prior
            to the time that the rest of our
            talk is concerned with.

Then the [u]=>[i] collapse occurs.  Now we have two
different forms of *bi, and two different forms of
*i, respectively indistinguishable.  Trying to sort
out by context whether -i signals fact or past
perfect is a manageable nuisance.  But the confusion
of pluralizing -bi with dubitative -bi is simply not
acceptable.  Everything you try to say about a
plurality comes out sounding insincere.  You are a
father in the market for a daughter-in-law.  "My
sons are great hunters!" you boast.  The family of
the prospective bride hears: "My son is supposedly a
great hunter-- but don't bet on it!"  In this
context, it is not the dubitative -bi, the scoundrel
responsible for this faux pas, but the honorable
pluralizing -bi that retreats in shame.  You
desparately want to signal plurality, and you know
that to do it you should add a particle after the
verb that sounds like -bi, only it can't be -bi.
You seize on -i, which is already polymorphous in
meaning.  Neither of its original meanings will
cause you the embarrassment of dubitative -bi,
so you bet that adding one more meaning to -i
can't hurt as much as the current situation.  So
you indulge in some creative bad grammar, and
soon everyone is gratefully using -i as the
pluralizing particle.  But this shift from -bi
to -i was pragmatic, not phonological.  Hence,
any traditional "text", be it name or song,
that was already fixed before the leap was taken,
will keep its original pluralizing -bi's.  But
outside of these sacred reserves, dubitative -bi
holds sway as the only active -bi in OP.

As I say, the preceding paragraph is speculative,
so please consider every statement made in it to
be followed by dubitative -bi!


>> Also, I'm wondering if I could ask a favor of you.  I've been
>> working up a series of lessons for teaching an Omaha
>> class, and Mark is thinking of using them on our class
>> this coming semester.  So far, they're pretty much off the
>> top of my head, and I'm floundering.  They need to be
>> vetted both by the native speakers and by a qualified
>> OP linguist.  Would you be willing to take on the latter
>> role?  I've got about five lessons done so far, plus an
>> introduction to explain how I'm doing it and why.  The
>> lessons are pretty short and simple, and mainly
>> grammar-oriented.  If you would be willing to look
>> them over and give me your feedback, I'd really
>> appreciate it.

> I'll give it a try.  I'm swamped at the moment, but this is something I'd
> like to support as much as possible.  How about trying me with one?

Alright!  Here's a copy of lesson 1, and also the
introduction, to explain what I'm trying to do.
Thanks!

Rory

(See attached file: Lesson 1.doc)(See attached file: Introduction.doc)


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