Plural Marking (was Re: Ablaut ...)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001 BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> Paul Voorhis wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> Although Siebert also analyzed wi as general pluralizer, all of the data I
> have show it to be the non-first person, plural object proclitic on verbs
> (i.e., it means <you plural object> or <them>).  It forms a set of object
> proclitics with ni <me>, yi <you singular object>, and nu <us>.  Third person
> singular objects are not marked by a proclitic.  There is also another object
> proclitic, pa <some>, which is used for indefinite objects.  I think Catawba
> pa may be a better candidate for being cognate with Siouan *-(a)pi than is wi.

It's interesting that wi covers both second person and third.  Not that
Siouan-Catawban doesn't have some other interesting concatenations of
person.  It appears that Winnebago may use ne (phonologically odd, too) as
an independent pronominal of both the first and second persons (Lipkind,
p.  29).  Actually, it is usually accompanied by an enclitic with a sense
like 'only', and proclitic to a form that that does distinguish person,
but the use of a cover form seems unusual.

But what I was thinking of is that at least some Siouan languages use
different plurals for different persons, e..g, Mandan has nothing for the
first (but does have ruN- as a special first person plural pronominal),
riNt for the second, and kere (< *kre) for the third.  Tutelo has nothing
for the first person again, but pu' for the second person and helE' for
the third (perhaps again from *kre, though the development would probably
be phonologically irregular).  So there is some precedent in Siouan for
plural marking categorizing or correlating with persons, and in cases of
categorizing first is usually opposed to second plus third.

Mandan has the a-grade before riNt (which also inserts an i if it follows
a consonant), but, apparently, the e-grade before kere.

Tutelo had the a-grade before helE', but it looks pu, doesn't cause
ablaut, and, if anything, may delete some of the stem final.

Tutelo does have a potential marker tE (no initial k), and this conditions
the ablaut grade i (or sometimes e).

Tutelo uses the a-grade in citation forms.

(Manda information from Kennard in IJAL, and Hollow's dissertation.
Tutelo information from Oliverio's dissertation.)