Fetch

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:
> In Crow, 'fetch' is also a serial verb.  The first part is ku'nnaa, which
> combines with de'e 'go' and hu'u 'come, yielding ku'nnaahuu 'come after,
> fetch' and ku'nnaalee 'go after, fetch'.  Both parts are inflected for
> person.  I have no idea where ku'nnaa comes from!

Thanks, Randy!  That's pretty interesting.  It looks like things are
somewhat parallel in overall structure.  I think the analogous structures
in Dakotan use a sort of preverb, hiyo-, but contrary to the situation in
OP, the hiyo- is only inflected for object.  It does have a suus gliyo.  I
assume that the Crow forms inflect ku'nnaa for subject and object, but the
hu'u and de'e only for subject?

As far as ku'naa, I can't explain the -nnaa, but it may be significant
that the Omaha-Ponca agi- would be from PS *a-ku-, with the initial a-
being at least homophonous with locative a-, perhaps the a- that occurs
with plural(/proximate) motion verbs in Dakotan and Dhegiha.  The changing
of that a to e in the stem/third person dative is usual.  I seem to recall
that there are some reflexes of that in Dakotan, too.

Anyway, the gi < *ku part inflects like, and probably is the vertitive of
*(h)u 'come':  ppi/s^ki/gi.  Of course, even if the Crow and OP elements
do match and the -nnaa has some other reasonable explanation - say a
subordinating morpheme or that plus prefixal a- on the next verb? - it
wouldn't necessarily show more than two parallel structures of post
Proto-Siouan origin.

It's reasonable enough to see the agi + go forms as 'having come for
something, to go (back)', but it's odd to find 'having come for something,
to come (back)'.  You'd expect, 'having gone for something, to come
(back)'.  It looks like the first part orients on the object and the
second part orients on the context of the action, instead of both
orienting on the context of the action.  This is different from the 'pass
by' serials, in which both forms do orient on the context, as in 'having
come here to go on'.  It may be interesting that the Crow and OP forms
both seem to have this orientation peculiarity.  The question would be
whether this was typologically unusual.

I forgot to mention that the OP 'fetch' forms can use just plain
unoriented 'walk' as the motion verb after agi, too:  agimaNdhiN.

JEK