akhe

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> 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,

I think this argument originates with the Dakotanists, though I'm not
enough of a historian of the matte to recall which.

> 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.

Omitting the citation form argument in its operation sense, i.e., what do
speakers use as citation forms, which you recall, one could approach the
matter from the point of view of which form seemed simplest in various
senses.  The a-grade occurs with the third person singular as the most
common variant, of course, but only with following =i or =bi, albeit the
former is often lost in modern Omaha speech.  There are forms - the ones I
call obviative - in which the e occurs with nothing following it.

90:345.9 wadhi'xdhe dhe=the 'he went chasing (buffalo)'

This is also the form that occurs when an article follows (forming a
relative clause or indicating the imperfective), or kki 'if', or another
verb embedding the e-grade under it as a complement, etc.  When cases
occur, as they do, in which dhe=kki is opposed to dha=i=kki, it seems
logical to see the a-variant as derived from the e-variant under the
conditioning of the presence of i.

There are also Siouan languages - Ioway-Otoe, for example - in which e is
the usual grade for the third person singular, because the unique Dhegiha
pattern with the plural as proximate doesn't occur.  This needn't imply
anything for Omaha-Ponca, of course, but it does show that Siouan
languages can work either way.

In the end, of course, it probably doesn't make much difference which
grade is basic except for linguistic purposes (in writing the stem).
I do, think, however, that considering the logic of akhe vs. akha and ame
vs. ama without insisting on a particular analysis of akhe and ame, it is
still clear that the alternation of e vs. a works differently for these
than it does for (more typical) verbs, and that this is apparent even
without addressing cases like akh(=)e=i where it works in quite the
opposite way from, say, (a)dha=i.

JEK