Predicative (?)e (was RE: Nominal Ablaut, ...)

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

John's discussion of predicative (?)e brings out the dimensions of
a problem in OP that I struggled with, thought I found an explanation for,
and then failed to observe the counter-evidence that made that
explanation untenable.

> Returnign now to OP, it's pretty clear what the (?)e is doing with
> demonstratives, even when there's a noun preceding the demonstrative, or
> anarticle following.  (Note that these e-forms seems to be almost always
> followed by a declarative.)

> 90:126.14   dhe'e he 'this is he (w spkg)'
> 90:136.16   dhe'e ha 'this is he (m spkg)'
> 90:17.1     s^e'e ha 'that is it (m spkg)'
> 90:419.9    dhe'=dhaNkh=e'e ha 'they are the ones'
> 90:246.19   he'ga=am=e'e ha 'it is the Buzzard'
  [snip]
> 90:153.17   ga'=thaN e'e ha 'that one is she'
> 90:17.1     s^aN'de=dhaN s^e'e ha 'that is the (his) scrotum'

Actually, although the meaning of the sentences were plain,
it was anything but clear to me what the (?)e was actually doing.
I see three possibilities:

1)  The (?)e is a verb, equivalent here to English "is".  This
    option feels very good to an Indo-European speaker--
    the (?)e even sounds like a derivative of "est"!  By this
    understanding, we might read, for example:

     dhe'      (?)e      he
     this-one       [it] is        DECL

2)  The (?)e is the generic deiktic e, meaning "the foregoing".
    In this case, it takes the place of a noun.  The "is" is implied,
    and we assume a rule in OP, as, I think, in Semitic, in which
    [Noun 1] [Noun 2] means [Noun 1] is [Noun 2].  With this
    understanding, we would read:

     dhe'      (?)e      he
     this-one       the foregoing  DECL (is)

After wrestling with a few sentences of this type last year while
trying to hack into Dorsey, I decided in favor of option 2, for
reasons I no longer remember.

Now John hands us a sentence like this:

> 90:17.6     a'=gu=di=the=di t?e'=dha=i=the  ttaN'be=t[t?]=egaN
>             where-   the-at they killed him I will see it HAVING
>             ua'ne  bdhe'e he
>             I seek I go E DECL

>             I go seeking in order to see the place where they killed him

The operative part is "ua'ne bdhe'e he", and in all the
times I've read that story, the (?)e after that bdhe somehow
never sunk in.  John gives other examples of (?)e after
verbs and positionals as well, including another "bdhe'e he"
example, so this cannot be brushed aside as an anomaly.
This pattern defies both the above understandings of (?)e:

1)   bdhe'          (?)e      he
     I go      [it] is        DECL       (??)

and

2)   bdhe'          (?)e      he
     I go      the foregoing  DECL (is)  (??)

despite John's heroic efforts to make it work within option 2:

>            (Maybe, '(Here) *I* am the one who is ...' with the understood
>            sense that the looker (Rabbit's Grandmother) might have been
>            saved a good deal of trouble if *only* the lookee (Rabbit) had
>            heeded the *excellent* advice that she gave him and *avoided*
>            those consarned blackbears in the first place ... JEK)

I think there is one more possibility for (?)e:

3)  The (?)e is a modal particle (or whatever we properly call
    all those little morphemes like -ga, -a, -ha, -he, -bi and -i that
    usually come at the end of a sentence or clause), which acts
    as a declarative.  In this view, our readings would be:

     dhe'      (?)e      he
     this-one       DECL (it is)   EMPH

and

     bdhe'          (?)e      he
     I go      DECL      EMPH

(The particles -ha and -he are not so much declaratives as
emphatics, though they may sometimes assume the
declarative role.  They commonly occur after the command
particles -ga and -a when a speaker clearly wants to
emphasize a command.  In formal speech, -ha is replaced
by -adha'.)

Option 3 gives us intelligible sentences in both cases.

However, we already have a declarative modal particle -i,
which can fit in much the same paradigms as (?)e under
option 3:

289:11    wiz^aN'dhe     MaNtc^u'  i          he
     my sister Bear      DECL (she is)   EMPH

and

288:12    Edha!     e'        hnaN i          he
     Alas!     she says  only DECL       EMPH

What struck me about the numerous examples John gave is
that, barring just two cases that don't really fit the pattern he is
generally describing, every single case of postfixed (?)e is
immediately preceded by a word that ends in accented -e.
On the other hand, while declarative -i is fairly common after
-a, -u and -aN, I'm not sure I ever see it after -i or -iN words,
and I'm sure I've never seen it after non-ablautable -e stem
words.

I believe the (?)e morpheme that John presents here fills the
gap for the -e stems nicely.  The original sequence

     [Statement]-e'      i

must have become

     [Statement]-e'      e

by simply lowering the original *i to match the preceding -e'.
Since both are front vowels, they would have been hard to
distinguish in quick succession anyway.

Counter-evidence to this hypothesis would be examples of
accented -e stems followed by the -i declarative, or (?)e of
this type appended to roots that are clearly not -e stems,
especially -a, aN, -A and -u stems.  John and I should both
be on the lookout for this.

Rory