(not so) Silly terminological question.

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, ROOD DAVID S wrote:
> Bob has raised an important issue that needs some thought.  John's
> "applicative" answer is ok, except that it also applies to the real
> locatives -- adding "a-" or "o-" to a verb often changes its argument
> options, just as i- does.  The term "applicative" refers to the function of
> the morpheme, not its meaning.  I think Bob is looking for a meaningful
> abbreviation that will separate the i- from a- and o- as well as from ka,
> yu, ya, etc.

Maybe because the first applicatives I encountered were instrumental I've
long had the impression that the core sense of applicative was an affix
that introduced an instrumental complement to argument status, and that
the wider sense of affix that augments or shuffles the argument structure
of the verb was a sort of extension.  I've just checked a few general
references, however, and it looks like I've had things reversed.  Trask
(for example) - Crystal was no help on this - defines an applicative as a
construction that raises an indirect object or oblique (object) to a
direct object.  While the Siouan locatives stop a bit short of direct
object, because they don't govern concord, at least not that I've noticed
so far in OP (Rory? anyone?) - in fact, I think they can co-occur with a
direct object - it's clear that they do introduce some sort of secondary
argument - at least what I believe Fillmore called an inner locative.

So applicative isn't going to work.

> locatives and remarking that the label doesn't cover the full range of the
> forms, but I know others don't like that kind of non-mnemonic labeling.
> We could try something like "inst" vs. "instr", I suppose.

Returning to Bob's question, which I though was what to gloss i- if one
glossed dhi-, ba-, ... (yu-, pa-, ...) as instrumental (or some
abbreviation thereof), I'd say there were two cases:

- Gloss the locatives (a-, i-, etc.) as locative, LOC, etc. and the
instrumentals as instrumental, INS, etc., or

- Gloss the individual locatives by sense and the individual instrumentals
by sense, but

- Not some combination, or, if some combination is needed, use compounds
like instrumental locative vs. instrumental or general instrumental vs.
hand instrumental.

It might be safer to always refer to the locatives as the (something)
locative in text.  The names I had tentatively come up with for the three
locatives, based on Uralic case names, were adessive (a-), superessive
(u-), and, well, I'd better call it instrumental (i-).  If people prefer
to call the first one the locative, then we should probably try to call
the class of forms applicatives, because while locative applicative is
just long, locative locative is long and awkward.

OP udhu (cf. Da iyo-)  is pretty close to being perlative (through or at
least along).  I've never been sure what to make of idha- (cf. Da iya-).
There aren't many examples of it.

It seems to me that the instrumental function of i- is to introduce
specific or maybe non-generic - can I say focussed? - instruments, while
the instrumental prefixes indicate non-specific, generic - unfocussed? -
instruments.  I take it this is implicit in the fact that OP forms like
we'base (wa-i-ba-se) indicate a 'saw', but just base' would have to be a
'sawn thing' I think, because the instrument is non-focussed.  I don't
thibk you can have *wese.  This might also be consistent with the tendency
to translate instrumentals with 'by ...ing' phrases, i.e., in terms of a
pattern of activity instead of a particular instrument.