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

[Koontz John E]

Bob says he meant to post this.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 11:48:01 -0500
From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: 'Koontz John E ' <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
Subject: RE: Predicative (?)e (was RE: Nominal Ablaut, ...)

There is a lot here to digest; thanks for the really interesting data.

Actually, I think most of what you have here agrees with what I have been
saying, but there are probably still matters of homophony/polysemy to be
dealt with. The laryngeals 7 and h/H are problematic too. We need to be
especially careful sorting out reflexes of demonstrative *7e: and locative
*he in languages that have tended to lose one or both laryngeals. They are
clearly not a single Proto-Siouan etymon, but that doesn't mean they
couldn't syncretize in some languages.

These copular and locative 'be' verbs are not covered very well in the
Siouan literature. It is clear that we have to reconstruct at least *he 'be
in a place' and *7u:N 'be' overlapping with 'do' (homophony or polysemy??)
and that both have tended to fuse to preceding lexemes to form auxiliary
verb constructions of one kind or another. Biloxi is full of reflexes of
*7u:N in this capacity, and Dhegiha AUXs all have -he. I haven't even begun
to sort them out in Dakotan.

Bob