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

[Rankin, Robert L]

>> So are you considering wie to be all one word, as the independent
>> pronoun form of "I"?  Do you parse this as:

>>     wie       bdhiN
>>     I         am        ?


> Exactly. In Proto-Siouan, maybe 3000 years ago, wie, yie, ie, etc.
were presumably the patient pronominals compounded with or prefixed to *7e,
the demonstrative, I think. But the glottal stop has been replaced by zero
or a glide (y) in most languages and these are best thought of as
disjunctive, contrastive pronouns and single words. The first person is
"echoed" here by the b- of b-thiN. (thiN, 'be of class membership')

> kkaNze bliN  'I'm a Kaw'


Alright...  Now a "patient pronominal" is what?  The basic, original
pronoun that can either be incorporated into a verb in a non-intensified
way, or be combined with some other particle, likely demonstrative, to
produce a stand-alone, disjunctive pronoun?

The patient pronominal prefix set is used to mark the object of a transitive
and the subject of a stative verb.  It also combines with a number of
particles to produce various emphatic/contrastive disjunctive pronouns. (I
am the one who..., me too, etc.)

So you would reconstruct the Proto-Siouan state roughly as follows:

     *wi  - I (MORE LIKE 'ME' ACTUALLY RLR)

     *7e  - that, a demonstrative

     *yiN - to be (a member) (PROBABLY *riN  RLR)

Then

     *wi=7e    ==> *wie       meaning "I - that"  (OK RLR)

     *wi=yiN   ==> *bliN      meaning "I - be-a-member"

Here the pronoun would be a variant of the active pronoun /a-/. Proto-Siouan
for this was probably something like *wa-. Wi- was the corresponding
patient.

>In this case, where is the demonstrative *7e pointing?  Does it
indicate the *wi, or does it reference something else that is
being linked to the *wi?

It is simply a part of the independent pronominal set. Whether the 7e is/was
a copular verb of some kind or whether it was a demonstrative particle begs
the questions that we've been trying to answer, i.e., is it a case of
homophony or polysemy?

Now you say that you've never heard the verb bliN used with a
contrastive pronoun.  I take it this means that you have never
heard

     wie bliN

in Kaw?

No, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. What's it mean? It's me (rather
than someone else)?

>If so, that surprises me.  In Dorsey's OP collection, the
statement wiebdhiN is actually somewhat common.  However, in
Dorsey, the contrastive, disjunctive personal pronoun set
seems to me to be clearly

     wi   - I

     dhi  - you

     oNgu'     - we

I've heard the final -e of these forms elided or semi-elided, so I look upon
the Omaha-Ponca versions without a clear [e] as just fast speech forms. It
seems clear that the forms WITH the 7e underlie these throughout Mississippi
Valley Siouan. It might pay to listen for a long V here.

in hopes of surviving....  The righteous cub in the end states his own
claim:

     Wi'-hnaN s^te edue'ha-ma'z^i the.

     I alone did not follow them (in their wickedness).

'I alone' may compound wi- with a different particle. Or this may again have
an underlying -e. I don't know. Ask for it in slow speech (understanding of
course that the request "please speak more slowly" is usually interpreted as
"please speak more loudly" :-) ).

>Elsewhere, forms like wi s^ti, "I also", are not uncommon.

Again, a different compound and different meaning.

>It seems to me (and I think to John also, no?) that these
basic pronouns still exist independently of following 7e
in OP, though they may be fused in other Siouan languages.
My sense of the wiebdhiN sequence is:

     Wi        e         bdhiN
     I         s/he      am
     I am s/he, the one just spoken of.

>In this interpretation, of course, bdhiN would be a
copula of identity, not of set membership, but I think
that is required by the context in any case.

I don't think so.  I think the complement "s/he" here is an artifact of
English. Also, this is one of those cases where 'identity' and 'class
membership' overlap somewhat. Nonetheless, I certainly wouldn't be dogmatic
about insisting that dhiN can ONLY be set membership. It's just that
virtually all my cases are that way.

I'd bet that the forms wie (or wii), dhie (or dhii), oNgu, etc. are Gestalts
for speakers. I'd be very surprised if they can still decompose them into
two morphemes. The compounds date back many centuries (I can't recall if
they're Proto-Siouan or not, but I think they occur in Ohio Valley Siouan
also.)

Bob