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

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Shannon West wrote:
> 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'

One factor that I would wonder about is that Pat Shaw showed in her
dissertation that a-epenthis and a ~ e ablaut are independent in the
Dakotan dialects, so that many verbs have a final a that does not ablaut.
Nouns can have a final unaccented a, even, that is deleted in compounds
but doesn't alternate with e.  I think most such cases are just chance, as
nominal ablaut is clearly controlled by derivational factors.  Moreover,
which a's ablaut varies widely with the dialect and subdialect.  Her
dissertation discusses this extensively.

On the other hand, in Omaha-Ponca if a verb ends in e it ablauts.  The
only exceptions I've noticed are e 'that' used as a verb and nouns used as
verbs, e.g., kkaghe 'crow' or tte 'buffalo'.

JEK