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

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Wablenica wrote:
> --Talking about citation forms, I'm inclined to think that at least two of
> the native speaker use -e form as a basic one - Violet Catches and Albert
> WhiteHat in their language books.

Noted, and cf. what Paul Voorhis said above.

> > 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?
>
> --Besides other reasons, -a form is a "default" form when any of the 25 000
> words that do not trigger ablaut is following an -A/-AN verb. Among any
> class of words - enclitics, determiners, postpositions - there are both
> triggers and non-triggers of ablaut.

Ah!  This is the argument I use for e as basic in Omaha-Ponca.

> > 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.
>
> =ktA triggers -a > -iN ablaut in Assiniboine too, at least in some
> subdialects (Shaw, 1980)
> Besides, -iN ablaut occurs in Lakota before:
> conjunctions na, nahaN, naiNsh;
> familiar imperative yetxo' (m.s.) (not everywhere?);
> polite imperative ye (all sexes) (interchangeably with -i : o'makiyi ye!
> help me! - o'kiyA, to help)

I thought some of these were sometimes given as just i?  Of course, before
n this would be somewhat moot.

I think i occurs instead of short e in Crow and/or Hidatsa, but I don't
control the details.