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

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Koontz John E wrote:
> 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'

Are the dropped or devoiced vowels clearly always /a/ in this context?
Perhaps some of the dropped vowels are e?  David Rood has a funny story
about the differences in voiceless vowels in Wichita, but it's his and
I'll leave it to him!

> 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.

I didn't make it clear that the independence of unaccented final a - C#
stems in Shaw's terminology - and ablaut applies especially to verbs.

Examples of

a# verbs:  niya', yugha', xpec^a', ba', gleska', paha', etc.
aN# verbs:  lowaN', ki'nihaN, yughaN', yuthaN', etc.
A# verbs:  yeA', aphA', nasA', yA' (to go), yA' (causative), etc.
AN# verbs:  yatkAN', hAN', nuwAN', hihAN', slohAN', hiNxtAN', etc.
    (Connie had a list of such forms, too)
C#a verbs:  c^ha'gha, the'c^a, thaN'ka, lu'ta, c^huwi'ta, etc.
C#A verbs:  yu'zA, ka'ghA, s^a'pA, kuN'zA, uN'pA, etc.

These examples are for Teton, from Shaw.  She treats a with C# stems
(for which stress and reduplication pattern are diagnostic) as an
epenthetic vowel added by a phonological rule of stem formation, rather
than, say, as a thematic morpheme.  She treats verbal ablaut as a lexical
property of stems.

She further notices that ablauting status varies with dialect.  For
example, she finds that yuha' 'have' ablauts in Sioux Valley (a form of
WaxpetuNwaN Santee), Stoney and "Riggs" Santee, but not Teton; xa' 'bury'
ablauts in Teton and Sioux Valley, but not in Assinigoine or Yankton;
dowaN' 'sing' ablauts in Assiniboine, but not in Teton, Sioux Valley or
Stoney; etc.

On the other hand, on closer reading, it sounds like what Shannon is
describing is not a variation in which stems ablaut, but in how ablaut
behaves with singulars?

JEK