Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system
Koontz John E
John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Fri Aug 31 14:14:03 UTC 2001
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001 voorhis at westman.wave.ca wrote:
> > 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.
>
> > 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?
>
> Just analogy? yatkaN 'drink' joins the semantically related yuta 'eat'?
I thought there were other cases, though yatkaN is, of course, the
canonical example of AN.
---
I'm interested that the e-alternants are being put forward as citation
forms by everyone. I think I've been corrected from e-variants to
a-variants even for inflected forms at SACC, by Dakota speakers, though I
couldn't say who it was who did it. So I don't think it's entirely a
linguistic concoction. However, I am not a Dakotanist - though I
sometimes play one on the Net - and this should definitely be
investigated.
JEK
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