Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

(Bob wrote:)
> In Kaw and Quapaw it doesn't seem to me that there is anything but
=abe/=abi
> and =awe/=awi respectively. The first member of each pair is female
speech.
> The phenomenon of reduction to -i in Omaha and Ponca looks to me to be
> entirely phonological. Note that this does not mean that speakers could
not
> have assigned morphemic status to earlier allomorphs though! That is, in
OP
> there may BE more than one morpheme now. But not in Kaw/Quapaw.

>> 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.

> Unfortunately, there are no post-verbal [u"] morphemes in Kaw or Osage
that
> I can think of. Quapaw merges u and i like OP.

And no post-verbal [bu"] or [i] morphemes either, I suppose.
Oh well, it was a nice thought.

(Bob wrote:)
> Since I have not really been searching for homophonous '-bi's', I would
have
> to say the same. But I'm at least skeptical of the polymorphemic
solution,
> i.e., I would plunk for polysemy, not homophony.  That's not to say that
> there isn't more than one *(a)pi in all of Siouan.

Any thoughts on where the *(a) is coming in, or why it
usually disappears?  Until now, I had always thought the
pluralizing particle in Siouan was just plain *pi.

(John wrote:)
> 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.

It doesn't look good for my hypothesis that several different
morphemes were involved, with great confusion caused by the
collapse of u into i in OP, as comparable particles do not
seem to be present in Kaw and Osage which would have preserved
the original phonological distinction.

However, I believe that -bi in historical OP, exclusive of
fossilizations in names and old songs, is best understood
as casting a dubitative sense on what preceeds it, rather
than as a conditioned alternate of the now-standard
pluralizing particle -i.

If -bi and -i are taken as semantically equivalent alternates
derived from the standard Siouan pluralizing particle *pi,
then I think it is almost impossible to give a satisfactory
phonological or other explanation for their distribution in
OP that is not arbitrarily cut to fit the individual cases.
We do not seem to have any cases of -wi, as Dorsey would
surely have given us had there been an actual phonological
gradient between the forms.  The two forms are discrete,
and their distribution is fairly regular.

Bob suggests above that the reduction of -bi to -i is
phonological, but that an earlier allomorph ( -bi ) could
have been made into a different morpheme.  This would be
my fallback hypothesis if I can't have an incoming
separate morpheme such as dubitative *bu".  The problem
with this solution, however, is that we need a good
explanation of how a pluralizing particle develops into
a dubitative.

In general, a phonological theory would predict *bi as
the pluralizing particle in OP, and the fossilizations
make plain that that is what it once was.  An advantage
to the dubitative -bi theory is that it provides a
compelling motivation for the speakers to switch to a
different means of expressing plural, as I argued in my
previous post.  If so, the switch would need to have
been phonologically discrete from the beginning, rather
than a gradual phonological erosion of the stop.

I think one possible explanation of the jump from -bi
to -i might be found in Chiwere.  The Omaha sacred
legend indicates that the Omahas were closely connected
with the Iowas at the time they crossed the Mississippi,
and somebody (John?) pointed out about a month ago that
OP "HiNdakhe" was a loan word from IO.  Since the IO
version of the pluralizing particle is wi, the Omaha
would already be familiar with usage of the particle
in a weakened form.  After a round vowel, it would be
indistinguishable from -i.  If dubitative -bi appeared
in the Omaha language by whatever channel, creating an
embarrassing conflict with the standard pluralizing -bi,
then a garbled version of the Iowa form might have been
the natural choice for eliminating the semantic conflict.

Rory