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

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> > 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

I think this is the usual analysis in Mississippi Valley languages at
present.

> 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)

Or, 'this one(dhe) [is] the one(e) [I meant]' or 'it(e) [is] this(dhe)' or
'it(e) is this(dhe) [that is] the one(e).'  It is this that is the
analysis I currently prefer.

> 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.

I've noticed examples like this from time to time, but I've always tabled
them in favor of some other matter.

> 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)  (??)

I make 'I am the one(e) who is going', an approach which actually works in
some of the cases, but seems obscure with this particular example.
However, the approacj I take in applying it here, though it does seem a
stretch, does take away some of the bland narrative quality of the
utterance, which otherwise seems more or less a sort of descriptive
monolog:  "Now I'm doing this, now I'm doing that, etc."

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

The stretch.

> >            (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'.)

The adha(u) is what I've referred to from time to time as the hortative.
It is commonly used by heralds announcing the decisions of the chief or
hunt leader, etc.  It occurs in some kinds of songs, and I used to hear
Clifford Wolfe use it in announcing Powwows.

> Option 3 gives us intelligible sentences in both cases.

This is true, but I'm not sure I see why a declarative would be
particularly associated with 'this is the one' kinds of sentences.

> 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.

I gather this would take us away from the i = 'plural' analysis entirely.

> 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.

It definitely occurs after verbs of motion in final i (i, hi, thi), after
agdhiN 'sit' in iN, and after tti 'dwell' in i.

And, of course, if i is a plural in origin, we wouldn't expect to find it
after a first person verb (bdhe) or after any singular -e final, since
these all ablaut to a in the plural.  True, it is used with the third
person singular.

> 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.

I'm afraid I don't think that's what happened.

> Counter-evidence to this hypothesis would be examples of
> accented -e stems followed by the -i declarative, or (?)e of

Which would theoretically never happen, though we have examples like

90:110.6  s^iN'gaz^iNga e'=i 'they are the children'
90:149.8  tte=i=the 'she was a buffalo'

These are among the few examples of e-stems that don't ablaut.
I'd be tempted to say that nominal stems in fian e don't ablaut, but
there's

90:358.3 kkagha=i 'they are crows' < kka'ghe

> 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.

This kind of example might also help clarify matters here.  Looking at the
paradigm of dhiN 'to be' shows that when it occurs with a focussed pronoun
it requires an e.

90:33.4 wi'=e=bdhiN 'I am he'
90:262.1 dhi'=e=hniN=de 'since it is you'  (there's that =de)

90:75.17 Is^ti'niNkhe am=e=daN 'it is (the) Ishtinikhe who is (moving)'
  ama = 'the moving', so I'd revise this to 'it is (he,) Ishtinikhe

  =daN occurs as a sort of 'contingent' marker, as 'during', and with some
  declaratives, which is what I think is going on here.

90:113.7 e'=e he 'it is he'

The closest to an inclusive I know is:

90:197.10 aNgu' aNdhiN'=b=az^i 'we are not'

As far as I know there are no cases in which the third person stem dhiN of
'to be' occurs with a focussed pronominal, so this paradigm is rather
defective.  And since e occurs alone in the third person in such cases,
it's open to being interpreted as the verb 'to be' in that person.
However, the other persons have dhiN in an ordinary dh-stem inflectional
pattern.

And the third person does occur without the focussed pronouns.

90:148.17 tte'wa?u dhiN 'she is a buffalo woman' (not to be mistaken for a
buffalo gal, unless that actually explains the old song)

90:148.18 wathaN'ziwa?u dhiN 'she is a corn woman'

On the other hand, you also get:

90:247.18 He'ga akh=e 'he is (the) Buzzard', with akha 'the single, not
moving proximate'

And then there's

90:385.8 Is^i'baz^i akha=e akha ha 'I. is the one'

I have no idea what's up there.

JEK