Information / nouns vs. verbs

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Linda Cumberland wrote:
> Here are some Assiniboine examples where thi and thipi are clearly
> nouns:
>
> huNku thipi ekta khi   'he went back toward his mother's lodge'
>
> tuwe thi mahen phi'iNch'iyac  'someone was moving around in the lodge'

I take it that the idea is that these postpositions can only govern nouns
in Dakota syntax?  Is this true of all postpositions though?  I'd think
that this certainly wouldn't work as a test in Omaha-Ponca.  And without a
contrast between noun-governing and verb-, or rather clause-, governing
postpositions it might be possible (in at least some theories of
linguistics) to object that this mini-clause 'they live [there]', though
it has a potentially more general meaning than '(their) lodge' is still to
be taken in the context as the conventional mode of referring to the more
restricted meaning.

How would one distinguish in Dakotan languages between 'he went back to
his mother's lodge' and 'he went back toward where his mother lives (or
lived)'?

I have the impression that the way to do this in OP might involve some
sort of focus construction, i.e, 'to her house' vs. 'to there where she
lived'.  Actually, at least in some contexts there is a special possessed
form of 'house', which is etti 'his/her house' vs. tti 'house'.

One special postpositional formation you can detect in OP is the special
adverbialized form of 'to the house', which is ttiatta 'to/at the house'
(like Dakotan thiyata)  or ttiadi 'in(to)  the house' as opposed to
tti=the=tta or tti=the=di, with an article (one of the possible articles).
I claim this is historically a special variant of ablaut, in effect, as
tta (cf. Da -k-ta)  and di (cf. Da -tu ~ -l) condition ablaut in OP
(though this is becoming optional in the texts).  An example would be
maNthe 'inside, beneath' vs. maNthadi 'in the interior of', which would be
cognate with the mahen in Assiniboine.


> And an example with Bob's suggested locative o-:
>
> "maz'othi, maz'othi" eya. HiN! zhechen maz'othi cha eyash knihe
> huNshta '"Iron lodge, iron lodge!" he said. Oh! then an iron lodge
> (like that) dropped down, it is said.'

With rather a thud, I imagine!

This could be interpreted as maza + othi 'iron' + 'lodge', but what about
'iron' + 'they live in (it)', i.e., something like 'iron that they live
in' or nore nominally 'iron for living in'?  I take it that othi doesn't
occur alone in the sense of lodge?

I can't tell you how odd it seems to me for that locative to be missing,
though it is missing in Dhegiha, too!

I can say how nice it is to see Assiniboine examples!  The zhe
demonstrative is very homelike to a Dhegiha student.  I've never forgotten
it, not since I fell over it while trying to explain southern Dakotan he
as the regular phonological correspondant of Dhegiha s^e.

JEK