Syncopating or Short Pronominal Stems (Re: reflexive vs. suus 'make')

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, R. Rankin wrote:
> Good summary.  BTW ga:ghe is consistently long; I wonder what happens
> when the accent shifts?

I wish I'd been listening properly ...

So, to summarize, the g-stems are gaa'ghe 'to make', g(aN)aN'ze 'to
demonstrate', g[aN]aN'dha 'to donate', g[aN]aN'z^iNga 'not to know how'
(sure looks like 'to little wish'!), and gi 'to come back'.

The verb gaN'=dha (both roots inflected) 'to want, to wish' is similar,
but has kkaN'=bdha in the first person, with kk where the others have a
pp.  Actually, of course, kk is what I'd expect with gaa'ghe, but ppaa'ghe
is what you get.

The only d-stem (*t-stem) is d[aN]aN'be 'to see'.  Interestingly, in
Ioway-Otoe and Winnebago the only *t-stem is *a...ta (hada', haj^a') -
same gloss, different stem.  In Dakotan there is a verb that's not coming
to mind, that has ki-k-t... in what seems to be a dative or frozen dative
that I suspect is a relict t-stem, of special interest as (a) a Dakotan
example of the *t-stems, and (b) a *t-stem that doesn't mean 'to see',

There are more b-stems.  Most are derived with the ba- and bi-
instrumentals, but b[e]e'thaN 'to fold' is a b-stem, and in Osage baN' 'to
call' is or was, and I suspect that most stems in b- probably were at one
point.  There aren't a great many of them, but I don't know the list off
the top of my head.

In fact, once you allow for the dha- and dhi- instrumentals, there aren't
actually all that many other dh-stems (*r-stems, or y-stems in Dakotan
terms), either.  Perhaps under ten?  The causative looks like a *r-stem in
Dakotan and Dhegiha, but is not.

This is one of the anomalies of Siouan grammatical treatments.  Sometimes
the *ptk stems are treated as irregular verbs, sometimes as major
paradigms, but there actually never are that many of them in either case -
except as due to the productiveness of certain instrumentals.  The
perception of the nature of the category is partly a matter of whether or
not there is a separate personal paradigm.  But even when there is not,
there are often substantially characterizing patterns of dative and
possessive derivation.

JEK