OP e'iNte

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

John,

>> Are we absolutely sure (checked with native speakers)
>> that that final -te in e'iNte is a -the and not a tte?
>> Dorsey doesn't mark the potentive particle tte any
>> differently from the positional the, as far as the t
>> goes, anyway.

> He tends to put a breve over e in the vs. e in tte.

> I'm pretty sure I've got the tte and the sorted out, partly, but not
> entirely with the help of speakers:  =tta=i ~ =tte future, =tta=i=the ~
> =tte=the future of surity (Dorsey's 'shall surely') or future +
evidently,
> =bi=the ~ =i=the ~ =the 'evidently' (sometimes glossed narrative past,
> etc.), e=iN=the ~ iN=the 'perhaps', e=the modal.

There is no breve over the final -e in the examples of e'iNte
I've looked at since reading this post, and the potentiality
marker tte seemed to me like a better candidate for the end
of this "whatever" word than the "vertical", "stacked", "bundled"
positional the.  So I ran it by our three native speakers in class
yesterday.  It took some coaxing, and Mark's excellent
solicitation skills, to get them to come around to this question,
but in the end they agreed firmly that the final syllable of e'iNte
is aspirated -the, not -tte as in buffalo.  So I think we've
confirmed that your phonological analysis of e'iNte as
e=iN=the is correct!

Rory