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

[Shannon West]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Koontz John E
> Sent: August 31, 2001 7:56 AM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: Ablaut (RE: Obviative/Proximate and the Omaha verb system)
>
>
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> > I'm not getting to the conclusion of what you say here from the
> > premises you cite.  We want to know which of the ablaut forms
> > represents the bare stem of the verb, and which has been
> > modified, presumably by an absorbed extraneous morpheme,
> > or part of one.
> >
> > You claim that most Siouan languages seem to have -e as the
> > basic form, with -a the derived form.  Dakotan does not appear
> > to be this way for two reasons:
> >
> >     1)  It has verbs that use -aN as well as ones that use -a
> >         in opposition to -e, while other languages have only
> >         -a / -e variants;
> >
> >     2)  The citation form is -a in Dakotan, but -e in other languages.
> >
> > Premise 1 seems to be a strong reason for favoring the -a or
> > -aN version as the stem in Dakotan, since if the -e version were
> > the stem, there would be no explanation for forking to -a or -aN
> > respectively depending on the verb.
>
> Yes, this is the argument the Dakotanists use.  It doesn't hold any
> particular water outside Dakotan, of course, and the ablaut of aN-stems
> seems to be a secondary development there.
>
> > The fact that other Siouan languages do not have an -aN / -e version
> > of ablaut is only negative evidence, however.
>
> True, but nobody suggests that Dakotan is conservative in this, and even
> Dakotan is somewhat schizophrenic in this regard, since the e-vowel
> appears in the singulars in finite clauses.  The usual explanation of this
> in Dakotan grammar is that A => e before the 7-declarative.

Okay.  I'll start out by saying that phonology usually gets the best of me,
so if I don't seem to be talking on the same thread, please set me straight.
Am I understanding the above to say that in Dakotan, the final A becomes e
before the glottal stop ending (declarative)?  If so, I don't believe this
is true of Assiniboine.

For example:
buza waNz^i mnuha7.  'I have a cat'  The a is very clearly a and not e, but
it is definitely [e] in yuhebi 'they have'.

That's one I could immediately think of, but I'm sure there's more.  The -e
form in singulars was one of the first things I noticed when I started
looking at Lakhota for insights into Assiniboine.  I'm sure they're not like
that in ASB.  Most of the verbs I can think of offhand with final ablauting
vowels just drop those vowels entirely (or sometims devoice them) in the
singular forms.

Woda -> wowad(a) 'I ate'	--> wodiNkta 'I will eat'
Yuza -> mnuz(a) 'I held it'  --> mnuziNkta 'I will hold it'

Anyway, just my $0.02.  I'll make no attempt at analysis of this, but
figured some extra data might be fun.  :)

Shannon