akhe

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

>> 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.

> John:
> 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 still don't see that it's that clear that the e-grade is more basic
than the a-grade.  You've effectively shot down the argument from Dakotan
-AN stems for the a-grade being the stem by pointing out that the -AN
stems are an analogic derivation within the Dakotan branch, but you still
haven't given what I see as a strong argument for the converse position
that the e-grade is the basic stem form.  I believe the only reason you've
given for this view is that the e-grade is the usual citation form.  Yet
I think we've all agreed that the citation form may well be marked with an
additional morpheme.  Certainly in English, we might be inclined to use
"to run" as the citation form, although the stem would certainly be "run".
In German, we'd use the infinitive as the citation form, though there
would be an "-en" tacked onto what is actually the stem.  In Latin, we
might also use the infinitive as the citation form, in which case we would
have a "-re" or something appended to the stem.  In the Siouan case, we
simply have an alternation between -a and -e endings, with the -e ending
form commonly being chosen for citation.  If this is the only argument we
have for the basicness of the e-grade form, then I think we have to regard
the issue of which one is the stem form as an open question.


> 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'?

No, actually I've been reading it, and akha, that way for quite a while.
You may be right in your view that it is simply a contraction of akha=e;
I just didn't think of that possibility at the time I discovered akhe.
Another possibility, perhaps, is that it is a merging of akha=i.  Yet a
fourth possibility might be found in the phrase you and Bob have been
disputing:

>>> 90:63.11
>>> Is^ti'niNkhe akh=e akha,    a'=bi=ama
>>> I.           is    the one  said they they say

I would be tempted to parse this as Bob does:

     [[Is^ti'niNkhe akha] [e akha]] ...

If this is what it took to say "Is^ti'niNkhe is the one", is it not
likely that the entire sentence would be radically reduced in daily
unelevated speech?  The accented e might have contracted backwards
with the preceding akha, while the final longwinded akha was simply
truncated away.  Thus:

     X akha', e' akha'  ==>  X akh=e'

where both variants mean "X is the one", but with the latter version
saving three syllables of speech time.

This fourth explanation would not support the interpretation of

     [[X akha'] [e]]

necessarily being a complete sentence.


In any case, though, I can say I've been quite comfortable in
reading akha'/akhe' as having the verbal sense of "to exist" or
"to be the one", even where it appears as an article.  As a
subject marker, X akha' simply means that X is the one (who
committed the action).  It also makes it much easier to
understand the force of occasional sentences in which akha' is
used for the plural, e.g.

43:6 Khi MaNtc^u z^iN'ga akha' du'ba-biama'.

     "And there were four young Grizzly bears." (Dorsey's tr.)

Or as I would read it:

     And [young Grizzly bear] there-was, four of them.

Rory