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

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 12 Sep 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> >> 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.
>
> I'm confused, but interested.  Could you elaborate your argument
> here?  Why are you seeing this (putative) declarative as particularly
> associated with 'this is the one' kinds of sentences?

If e was simply a declarative, why would it occur especially frequently
with sentences of the form DEMONSTRATIVE e DECL (where DECL is the he/ha
you decided you might prefer to gloss as emphatic).  I think clearly
something about the e added to the demonstrative produces the sense
'this/that is it/she/he', where the 'is it/she/he' of the English must be
the sense added by e.  The question seems to be how the e works to produce
that 'is it/she/he'.  I think that understanding that will help explain
cases of VERB e.  I don't think we need to jump from the initial
difficulties of explaining some VERB e examples to an explanation that
seems to me to make it harder to explain how DEM e ha/he means 'DEM is
it/she/he'.

> > I gather this would take us away from the i = 'plural' analysis entirely.
>
> That's the view I would favor.

I'm afraid I'm still not convinced on that.

> >> 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.
>
> Alright, these are both fair counter-evidence by the first clause
> of the criteria I stipulated.  I don't think this clause is very
> strong, however.  It's likely that the shift I postulated above
> was still in progress in Dorsey's time, and that the declarative
> -i after -e could appear as either -i or -e depending on the
> speaker, the transcriber, the surrounding words, and the rapidity
> of the utterance.  One might pronounce the -i more carefully
> after an unlikely declaration like "she was a buffalo", while one
> would never utter it any way but -e in the common expression
> "I am going."  And for your first example, would we recognize any
> semantic difference between
>
>      s^iN'gaz^iNga e'=i
>
> and
>
>      s^iN'gaz^iNga e'=e  ?

If I understand matters, we wouldn't normally get the latter construction.
We'd expect:

       s^iN'gaz^iNga e.

In short, the first is:  s^iN'gaz^iNga e=i 'they are the children' and the
third is s^iN'gaz^iNga e 's/he is the child'. It might be possible to read
the second possibility as 's/he is that child'.

The closest we have to an example like that is, I think, something like:

90:419.9    dhe'=dhaNkh=e'e ha 'they are the ones'

I'll have to check to make sure the first e wasn't actually part of the
article.  I think not, because the plural of dhiNkhe is usually dhaNkha,
hence any e there seems like it must be due to contraction.

> The second clause of my criteria is stronger.  Can we find any
> examples of this (?)e following any other type of stem than -e ?

Sure, see s^iN'gaz^iNga e=i.  Also, all cases of akh=e or am=e or probably
the dhaNkh=e just cited.  In these last there have been a contraction.  As
far as I can see, all contractions across = or word boundaries result in
loss of the first vowel.  Another sort of interaction one gets preserves
both vowels but inserts dh, and those are all in rather special pre-verbal
contexts.  There are also some preverbal examples of a + i => e, or aN + i
=> iN.

I will, however, see if I can find some examples of verb-final non-e
followed by e.

> Could you define what you mean by a "focussed pronoun"?  I gather
> that this is your term for the pronouns wi, dhi, aNgu' and e, which
> stand as nominals independent of the verb.  Correct?

Yes, that's correct.  Focussed however is more than adjective qualifying
independent pronouns.  It means something like 'selected for attention or
comment in contrast to other possibilities.  English independent pronouns
are not focussed.  If you say 'I ate it' with normal intonation, the 'I'
is, in effect, the personal inflection of the verb (or the clause).  But
in some languages, like Spanish, the independent pronoun emphasizes the
participation of the referent in contrast to others.  So, just 'yo lo
comi' in Spanish means 'it was specifically me, and not someone else, who
ate it'.  In English you get this sense by stressing the pronoun:  '*I*
ate it' or by using a cleft construction like 'it was I (or me) who ate
it'.  Something like the contrastive (focussed) interpretation seems to
apply to independent pronouns in Siouan languages.  This is fairly typical
of languages that have inflected verbs, but not always, e.g., not in
French (where most inflection is written only) or in Russian (where
inflection is real enough in the present/future forms).

Focus is not restricted to pronouns.  It can be applied to arbitrary
noun phrases in indicative sentences.  It's usually considered that
wh-questions automatically focus the wh-noun phrase.

If anyone else wants to jump in and offer a better explanation of this,
which must surely be possible, I'd really appreciate it.  Surely someone
out there must be itching to do this!

> If so, wouldn't
>
>      e dhiN         he/she/it is
>
> be about the only possible third person example of dhiN occurring
> with a focussed pronominal?  This construction would clash with the
> somewhat common form e'dhiN, which I think means "have for him/her".

It might clash with it, but it needn't preclude it.  In fact, it's e'=dhiN
'that is the one' that doesn't seem to exist.

Incidentally, the 'have for him or her' is the dative of adhiN 's/he has
it'.  The dative involves in very unmarked cases the insertion of the
prefix gi- before the stem.  In OP this gi contracts with lots of things,
so that, in simple historical terms e'dhiN is from *a-(g)i-dhiN.  In
contemporary terms the contraction explanation doesn't work very well,
because (a) the cases where contraction occurs are somewhat arbitrary, (b)
in some cases the appearence of contraction affects several syllables in a
row, and (c) in some cases the contraction affects a non-adjacent
syllable.  For that matter, (d) in some cases the gi manages to appear
before the pronouns as gi.  It's all very interesting, but let's not get
into it further right here!

> > 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'
>
> I've been conceiving of akhe' as an e-grade ablaut form of akha',
> "s/he is the one", where something one has experienced or discussed is
> identified as a specific entity.

I think it's just contraction of akha + e or ama + e, though, of course,
in general terms this is the explanation that Bob has argued underlies
most ablaut anyway, at least historically.  As usual in OP and SIouan in
general, faced with something like akhe you have to look at everything
else and arrive at some balance that leads you to decide if it's (in this
case) akha=e or akhe from akhE, etc.  One factor that leads me to the
first analysis is that normally in Dhegiha the e-grade is clearly the more
basic in analytic terms, and that is not the case with akha.

I assume that reading akhe as you want to arises just recently, from
deciding that the extra e in things like dhee or bdhee is the same as i
and means 'witnessed'?

> This would be in contradistinction to bdhiN', which identifies the
> subject as a member of a set.

I do agree that dhiN (the third person of this verb) identifies the
subject as a member or a set, whereas constructions with just
demonstratives or articles are existential or non-set pointing.

> Ama' / ame' would be the plural/moving counterpart of akha' / akhe'.

Yes, but really it's just akha and ama with or without a following e.

> When these are used as articles, we get the a-grade ablaut form, and
> the sense is that X is the specific known entity that committed the
> action or that we are talking about.  How does that sound to you?

The definite articles do indicate specific references, usually previously
mentioned or contextually predictable entities.  However, I don't see akhe
as being a verbal instance in an e-grade and the articles as being
articles in the a-grade.  Instead akha + e => akhe is a predicative use of
the article + demonstrative, or, to be more precise of the demonstrative.
The article is just there because the noun phrase being predicated is
definite.  So the structure of Hega akhe is [Hega=akha] e, [buzzard the]
that (or he), pronounced He'ga=akh=e and meaning 'it (or that or he) is
the Buzzard'.