'he told me'

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Shannon West wrote:

> For the Assiniboine of 'he told me', I've got omagiyaga and omijiyaga. I
> recognize the rule g --> j / i_, but why is the i there in the first place?
> Is there a difference in these two forms that I'm not seeing? Linda, do you
> get both forms too?

Isn't this an opposition of the possessive and the second dative?  I
suppose in this case the stems are something like ogiyaga 'to tell to
someone regarding one's own' and ogijiyaga 'to tell to someone regarding
someone else's (with the approval of that other person)'.  And the first
dative would be ogiyaga, too, but inflect differently, and mean 'to tell
to someone regarding someone else's (without their approval)'?  Except I'd
kind of expect the possessive to be omiyaga, and for omagiyaga to be the
first dative.  Perhaps I can be forgiven being a bit confused when the
regular OP dative and possessive are opposite in morphological behavior
from the Dakotan forms.  At least there's no second dative to worry about
in OP.

> I have this pair but I don't have a clue what to do with it.
>
> John buza waNz^i hiNhaN opetuN (z^e) omagiyaga
> John told me he bought a cat last night (he = John)
>
> John buza waN'z^i 'hiNhaN opetuN (z^e) omijiyaga
> He told me John bought a cat last night (same reading as English he != John)
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Shannon
>