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

[voorhis at westman.wave.ca]

BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> If the changes occurred in pre-Proto-Siouan, one would expect to find some
> trace of the phenomenon in Catawba, but there is none.  One could argue that
> Catawba has leveled out the phenomenon, but then the argument becomes
> circular.  So, the change must have occurred in Proto-Siouan or later.

Indeed, the alternation of final e and a, so common in other Siouan
languages, is not only absent from Catawba, but moreover, there is no
Catawban cognate support that I know of for most of the proposed
predecessors of ablaut.  But maybe Catawba is so distantly related to
most of the rest of the Siouan languages that there was plenty of time
for the one group to develop ablaut while Catawba lost all trace of the
factors that caused it.

Koontz John E wrote:
> .... Perhaps the main ones
> that are reconstructable for earlier stages of the language are *ktE or
> (?) iNktE, the irrealis marker, and maybe something like *krE as a kind > of third person plural.

The future marker in Catawba is part of the clause-final marking system
(like Dakota do, ye, he, wo, 7, or Winnebago -(Sa)na, -re, -gi.).  Maybe
ka:te7 'indeed' or even ka:te(:)se 'the next time', the latter attested
only once, are cognates with *ktE.  No sign of *iNktE though.

> .... Some stems clearly have accented ablauting vowels, like yA' 'go',
>
> .... It's true that at least 'go' may come from something
> like (?) *ree'hE which might explain the exceptional pattern away as
> secondary.

Catawba da: 'to go', usually held to be cognate with this verb,
certainly fits more easily with yA or *rA than with *ree'hE.

> ....
> What does seem clear is that there is a very good chance that ablaut is
> some of its primary specific examples (with pi or ktE) can be accounted
> for nicely by assuming that the vowel preceding the enclitic is actually
> an historical part of the enclitic. ...  It looks very reasonable to see > the plural as *api (across much of the family) and the irrealis as  iNkt(e) (in at least some Dakotan dialects).

The future marker was discussed above.  As for the plural, there is a
noun modifier (=adjective or stative verb?), apparently meaning 'more
than one', found in the published texts, whose pronunciation is probably
wi: or wi.  That seems to be a possible cognate with the pluralizer
*-pi, but there is no good evidence that it had an initial vowel.

> ....
> To sum things up, I think verbal ablaut originated in Proto-Siouan,

I think John is using the term Proto-Siouan to mean the ancestor of all
the Siouan languages after the separation of the Catawban group.  I know
that is also what I was thinking of when I first used the term, but of
course there's also an ancestor of Catawban and the rest of Siouan
further back in time that I think we all, or just I (?), usually also
refer to as Proto-Siouan.

> ....
> Turning to nominal ablaut ... most e-final nouns in Dhegiha reflect
> 'specific' forms, while most a-final nouns in Dakotan reflect 'generic'
> forms.  The real benefit in comparative terms may be to save us from
> looking for a specious phonological basis for the difference in final
> vowels.
>
> Nominal ablaut is probably an internal development of Mississippi Valley,
> originating in Proto-Mississippi Valley.  I think the conditioning
> enclitics in this case were just vowels, though morphemes none-the-less.
> ... the
> morphemes in question were nominalizers and appear with nominalized  verbs, ...
> Nominal ablaut is not productive, primarily because in each of the
> branches the renewal of article and/or nominalizing systems has replaced
> the relevant morphological systems, and because in Ioway-Otoe and
> Winnebago the merger of final *a and *e after velars and the subsequent
> loss of *e in final light syllables in Winnebago has eliminated much of
> the phonological material of the system.  Ironically, I think that the
> Winnebago =ra (and maybe =re) nominal markers and maybe Ioway-Otoe are
> 'that' may be the best remininants of the system as articles, though they
> seem to be post-vocalic allomorphs.

There are no probable cognates in Catawba for putative articles or
demonstratives *a or *e, as far as I know.  Blair has more extensive and
accurate material to work with, though, and may be able to suggest
something for these and the other Siouan forms discussed here.
Likewise, I'll count on him to correct my transcriptions since the
material I work with is rather unreliable, especially in the marking of
vowel length.

Paul