Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 00:00:58 -0600 (MDT)
From: Koontz John E <koontz at spot.colorado.edu>
To: rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system

On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> 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'd have to wonder if Dorsey didn't maybe misgloss it.  I don't recall
anywhere that he discusses the difference between the two.

I think, though it's not clear to me, that adaN 'therefore' and the egaN'
'in order that, so' are actually part of the following clause, though
normally conjunctions are part of the preceding clause.

> 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-.

The paradigms are in various of Dorsey's manuscripts, but there are
examples in the texts, I think.  Let's see:

90:232.11 e'giphe 'I said it (to him)'  487.16, etc., actually have 'to
him' in the gloss

90:712.5 e'gishe 'you say to (him)'

90:170.3 NikkashiNga ege'=hnaN=bi=ama '(the) man usually said to him'
but 90:39.7 e'gidhaN=i 'he said to him' (alternative form with stem
e=gi...dhaN)


90:245.5 e'gimaN 'I do thus'

90:26.14 e'gizhaN 'you do thus'

The 'he does thus' interpretation of egaN is clear from the imperative
examples you mention.  They are 'do thus!'

> > 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.

OK, so you use 'disposition' in the sense of pattern.  The standard
Americanist term is positional.

> These words can be used to close a noun phrase, in which position
> they may feel like the definite article to us English speakers,

I'd go further and say it was precisely a definite article, albeit
encoding also the positional logic with its implications.

> 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

There are a few cases where they do act as the main verb, but normally
they follow what is logically the main verb and act as an auxiliary to add
som additional sense to it (apart from configuration or position).  This
is where the term "progressive" or "imperfect" applies.  Of course, the
auxiliary verb is logically the main verb in most linguistic situations.
So, for example, "he is searching for it" has the auxiliary "is" as the
inflected main verb.  In OP, the embedded verb retains personal
inflection, whereas in English it is reduced to a participle.

> 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.

> 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

Quotative, again, is just the standard Americanist term for such narrative
or reputative markers with meanings like 'they say; by repute' or 'I don't
know, but I been told'.  It doesn't really imply that this is the form
used to quote something in any marked way.

> > 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.

There's also 101.4, 221.14, 288.5, 357.5, 361.10, 561.9, 589.4, 591,14.

I doubt this is Ponca usage per se, and I'm definitely going to have to
look at these examples.  A lot of them are ?iibi with 'give' or akiibi
sometoimeds written aki-i-bi, which I think is akhi=i=bi, with the i being
'to come'.  I will definitely have to look at these examples, however.

> 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?)

Osage has pi (never i) alternating with pa and pe, which seem to be pi + a
'male speaker' or pi + e 'female speaker'.  Kaw is similar, but substitute
b for p.  I forget what Quapaw has, but only OP has the i allomorph.  IO
and Wi have wi.  Dakotan has pi or bi, depending on the dialect.