Nominal Ablaut, Noun Theme Formants, and Demonstratives

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> I see John's examples with DEM N as ordinary modified nouns.
>
> The instances of N DEM (ART) I've always looked upon as two distinct
> constituents, the DEM part of which I would translate mostly as predicates
> (translation is one of the big imponderables here, as Dorsey's understanding
> was not always 100%).
>
> 90:124.14    wa'xesabe dhe'=ama 'this blackman'
> My analysis: 'this one, the black guy'
>
> 90:80.2      maN' dhe=the 'this arrow'
> My analysis: 'the arrow, this one'
>
> In other words I think the bracketing is [N [DEM ART]]. A lot of these are
> possibly copular constructions. The few cases of N DEM alone are less clear
> and less common, but only field elicitation and careful comparison of
> semantics will elucidate the situation, and none of us wants to do that. But
> these are the only cases where reanalysis would realistically yield N DEM in
> a single syntactic constituent.

I think that the preposed demonstrative is the more marked possibilty. In
Dakotan demonstatives can only precede the noun if the noun is followed by
an article.  If the demonstrative follows the noun the intervening article
can be omitted.  Demonstratives follow and are written as enclitic in
Mandan.  A posiitonal can follow the demonstrative.  Demonstratives follow
in Winnebago, but, interestingly, can be preceded by the positional.
Demonstratives also seem to follow in Biloxi and Tutelo.  I'm not sure
about the situation in Ofo, or in Crow or Hidatsa.  In Dhegiha
demonstratives can precede or follow.  The list I provided gave samples of
most possibilities, though not of things like NOUN=ART DEM=ART and so on.
I think Omaha-Ponca is pretty typical of Dhegiha as far as the syntax of
article and demonstratives.  Note that the articles, however, are
essentially what pass for positionals elsewhere, and that they follow the
demonstrative.

My analysis of the syntax of NPs:

N'' => [N' (DEM)] (ART) (QUANT)
N'' => DEM (ART)
N' => N (QUANT)

So, of course, when the demonstrative precedes I see that as a sort of
extraction.

This is consistent with the hypothesis of the development of articles from
posiitonal verbs, but, of course, there's no reason why constituents might
not have been reorganized.

Again, though this analysis is certainly convenient for the nominal ablaut
ex-article analysis, I don't believe that accepting it need commit one to
the hypothesis that nominal ablaut comes from old articles.