Ablaut (RE: Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system)

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> > True, but the situation may be more complicated still. In Dakotan there
> are
> > two allomorphs of 'plural' (at least), -pi and -u. And they occur in
> > well-defined environments with no intermediate forms that I know of. I
> > suspect most Dakotanists would want to derive the -u from a vocalized
> [p],
> > certainly a possibility syllable-finally. But outside of MVS in the rest
> of
> > Siouan there seems to be no trace of -(a)pi, and in OVS the morpheme is
> -tu.
> > Go figure.
>
> Well!  I took two years of Lakhota, and I don't recall ever running
> into a pluralizing -u!  But if that's so, it provides an even easier
> solution to our problem.  In Omaha, *pi => bi, and *u => i.  A
> dubitative -bi comes in, and the particle i < *u becomes the
> pluralizing particle of choice.

Connie explains this in a subsequent letter, but -u- is essentially a fast
speach variant of pi.  I wonder if plurals like =tu elsewhere might not
amount to *(r)u, i.e., fast *=pi with epenthetic r separating it from
preceding vowels (preferably high).  I suspect the main problem with this
is that =pi appears to have been historically *api, with replacement of
preceding root final e or occurrence instead of an e from another source
explaining ablaut in verbs.  Anyway, if api reduces to au, I wouldn't
expect epenthetic *r in that context:  (?) *aru.

> OVS is Ohio Valley Siouan, comprising Biloxi, Ofo and Tutelo,
> correct?

Yes.  Sometimes referred to as Southeastern.

> > The -a- is tied in with the entire Mississippi Valley Siouan "Ablaut"
> > problem. I have a paper on the topic. Historically at least, the -a- is
> part
> > of the following morpheme, not the verb stem.  It replaces preceding -e
> > (which some consider epenthetic anyway).
>
> Hmm, that requires me to do some rethinking.  I assume that
> the "Ablaut" problem concerns the verb endings the Colorado
> Lakhota project people express with a capital -A, which derives
> -a, -e or -iN depending on what follows, correct?  I had been
> inclining toward the notion that the -a was the basic stem, with
> -e being an alternate of -ai.  A lot of verb or ta- endings in Omaha
> do seem to be allomorphic this way, and I had been about to
> ask about this issue in conjunction with the "two -bi or not two -bi"
> discussion.  Could you expand on your paragraph, or perhaps
> put me in touch with your paper?

Most Siouan languages behave as if in the ablauting set e ~ a the e were
basic.  Dakotan, does not, in two ways.  One is that there are also some e
~ aN stems, like yatkaN 'to drink' (cf. OP dhattaN).  The other is that a-
and aN-final variants seem to be preferred as citation forms.

Because some a and aN do not alternate with e, Dakotanists identify a pair
of morphophonemes A and AN to represent the alternations and distinguish
these from non-alternating a and aN (and e) in writing stems.

Siouanists more used to dealing with the other languages (e.g., Crow or
Omaha-Ponca) tend to assert the basic status of e specifically because
neither of these factors occur there.  In fact, in OP except for two
rather special stems all e-final verb roots are ablauting, so it's not
really necessary to distinguish a morphophoneme E vs. regular e.  Weird
things do occur in the e-dominant languages, though.  One is that the stem
for 'go' is something like rEEhEE in Hidatsa.  In other words, the ablaut
occurs internally as well as finally.

It's sort of challenge to Dakotanists - one they haven't really taken up -
or to comparative Siouanists in general - likewise - to explain how
Dakotan came to be so different.  Why does aN alternate with e?  Why are
the a-vowel grade the citation forms?  I've tried to tie the latter to
Dakotan nominal ablaut, and intepreted the a-grade of verbs in citation
forms of verbs as the nominal a-grade serving to nominalize the verb stem.
It's also possible that the common use of a ~ e in marking male vs. female
declaratives, etc., may be connected.  The possibility that there is (or
was) a declarative e or 7e following most verbs in main clauses might
explain several things about Dakotan verbs, e.g., the 7-declarative
sometimes mentioned.  (7 = glottal stop)

As far as the alternations between e ~ a, there's no reason to believe the
e is derived from ai, though this is a change that occurs in various
Indo-European languages.

The usual historical explanations of the e-grades are that the verbs end
in e historically, or that e is the usual epenthetic vowel added to
C-final stems, or that e is a thematic morpheme of some sort - perhaps a
declarative or demonstrative in origin.  Perhaps both.  The usual
historical explanation with a is that it is part of the following
morpheme, e.g., the plural is =api, not just =pi.  Similarly in OP and
Dhegiha generally the negative is clearly =azhi, since not only does e
change to a before zhi, but the plural form is =b=azhi < =(a)bi=azhi.  In
Dakotan, the negative =s^ni is an e-grade, interestingly enough.  I take
that to be something like *=shi=niN, with the *=shi matching Dhegiha =zhi
and equating to the Dakotan =sh adversative, too, but not everyone agrees
with that.  I'm not sure why -a- in Dhegiha.

The iN allomorph of A and AN in Dakotan doesn't occur in all the dialects,
but it is found in Teton with the future =ktA.  Nothing exactly like it is
found elsewhere in Siouan.  Omaha-Ponca does have a form e=iN=the
'perhaps', which may contain the iN as a dubitative particle in what is
otherwise just e=the 'the aforesaid' + 'the vertical'.  But iN doesn't
occur, with the OP future =ttE, which is cognate with Dakotan =ktA.
It appears that Teton, at least, has =iN=ktA for the future, anyway, and
that this explains the iN ablaut pattern for its future.

===

We tend to think of ablaut in terms of verbs only, but Dakotan has nominal
ablaut, too, though it's fairly obsolescent.  However, a number of factors
suggest that sopme sort of final vowel alternation was fairly common with
noun stems in Mississippi Valley:

- Dakotan has all those CV'C-a noun stems with "epenthetic a".

- Dakotan has some CV'Ca ~ tha-CV'Ce stems, like shuNk-, not to mention
itazip-.

- Dakotan has some CVCa ~ CVC (in compound) stems.  (Sorry, can't
recall an example.)

- Dakotan has some CV-ya ~ CV (in compound) stems, like wiN- and he-.

- Dakotan has some CVCe' ~ CVC (in compound) body part stems, like siNt-
and c^haNt-.

- Dakotan CV'C-alternant stems correspond pretty nicely with the CV'Ce
stems in Dhegiha and Ioway-Otoe and the CVVC stems in Winnebago.

- Dakotan CV'-ya stems correspond pretty nicely with the CV(V) stems of
Dhegiha, IO, and Winnebago, cf. Da wiNya(N) and heya vs. OP miN(ga) and
he.

- The Winnebago "article" is ra (and Dakotan -ya < *-ra).

- Dakotan and Omaha-Ponca have a series of CV nouns that take an insert

-ya (Dakotan) or -a- (OP) before certain postpositions, e.g., Dakotan thi
~ thiyata, OP tti ~ ttiatta (tti-a-t-ta cf. Da e-k-ta).

- OP has ablaut (e > a) in some CVCe nouns before some postpositions,
e.g., ppahe ~ ppaha=di.

- Dhegiha proximate animate articles (OP akha and ama) seem to have an
extra a- on the front of them (and follow nouns).   For that matter the
obviative animate ones have a sort of "locative" a in the inclusive:
aNg-a-thaN, aNg-a-dhiN, if I remember rightly.

It seems to me that all these patterns intergrade when looked at
carefully, i.e., that it's hard to divide them up into the neat subtypes
this list suggests.  That is, CV'Ca ~ CVC nouns are sometimes also CV'Ca ~
CVCe ~ CVC nouns (like shuNk-) and so on, and even though a > e is not the
normal development of a in OP, all those Dakotan a-final nouns tend to
come out e-final in OP.  The *-ra forms also seem to suggest that the -a
can occur after vowel final stems with epenthetic *-r-, too.

Given this we have a bit more than a set of arbitrary unrelated facts.
We have some sort of process that allows e ~ a after stems of the form
CV'C and perhaps CV.  Either both of the vowels are affixal in some way
(I've suggested articles) or one is organic or epenthetic and the other
morphemic, etc.  Epenthesis doesn't work very well to explain unaccented a
or e, if there are V-final cases, but perhaps those are -r final stems.
This has been suggested by Rankin and Carter, at least, working from a
somewhat different set of considerations.

It's difficult for me to see how the ablaut of both nouns and verbs can be
reduced to a single simple phenomenon, but they can clearly interact.  If
=a is a postnominal morpheme, it can occur with nominalized verbs, for
example, and the same argument can apply to epenthetic -a after a CVC
stems of both kinds.