Odds & Ends of Ioway-Otoe in Omaha Sources

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Trechter, Sara wrote:

> Hey John, I've missed something...what do you mean by "a simple declaration
> (in obviative form)".  It's obviously "the obviative form" that I'm
> curious about.

I'm sorry I was obscure.  I was afraid I was droning on about something
that might not be generally interesting, so I hurried.

> kkettaNga           wa'the         agi'=bi=ama
> big turtle          he struck them he came back QUOTE

This is embedded under (or tagged with) a quotative (=ama), but the verb
is agi=bi 'he comes back', which is the third singular proximate form (in
Omaha-Ponca), homophonous with, or better, identical with, the third
plural.  The form should be pretty recognizable as being like a plural to
a Dakotanist, as =bi compares nicely with =pi.  The quotative conditions
the conservative form =bi of the proximate/plural here.  Otherwise it
would be agi=i.


> es^a=i=dhaN
> you said EVID?

Here's the second person quotation form I mentioned.

> e'  the       agi          ha
> him he struck he came back DECL

This is in obviative form, having no =i ~ =bi with the third singular.
And then the ha (=ha?) is the declarative.  So this means something like
'he-obviative struck him' or 'he-offstage struck him' or 'he-(not seen)
struck him', whereas the first clause would mean 'he-proximate ...', etc.