Native American verbs vs. nouns

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 John Koontz wrote back:
> > I know what you mean about the embedding thing.  It was and sometimes
> > still is difficult for me, too.  It didn't lead me to any new theories,
> > but it is a bit disconcerting the way embedding and heads work.  English
> > extracts the heads into the context and adjoins the remainder of the
> > embedded clause, which may acquire a trace like a relative pronoun, while
> > Omaha leaves the head in place and appends the context, roughly speaking.
> > The reference to the head in the context clause is precisely the embedded
> > clause, with the focussed element determined by the context, though, if
> > there's a determiner it may give a hint as to the identity of the head.
>
> Thanks, John!  I was going to be disappointed if nobody jumped on me for
> that posting!

I didn't want you to feel that no one was paying attention, though it's a
time of the year when people really aren't paying much attention, I'm
afraid.  Social activities tend to overwhelm everything else.  Not to
mention the end of the Semester.

> Definitions needed, preferably with examples:
>
>   Head ...

Also, the noun described by a relative clause is the head of the relative
clause, which is what I was referring to here.  The concept of head is a
central element of current syntactic theory though not exactly an
innovation within it.  What is, I think characteristic of modern
approaches is an insistence that a head be endocentric, i.e., a variety of
the thing of which it is a head.  This impacts the assessment of what
might be the head of a construction, and of what the boundaries of the
construct might be.

>   Embedding/embedded clause
>   Context/context clause
>   trace

A subordinate clause is embedded in a sentence, which is, of course, a
clause itself - the main clause.  A subordinate clause typically functions
like certain simpler elements of a sentence, e.g., an adverbial clause
acts like an adverb, an adjectival (or relative) clauses acts like an
adjective, a noun clause (or complement clause) as a noun, and so on.
The idea (and this is not new) is that these clauses are embedded within
the higher level or context clause provided by either the sentence or some
other embedded clause.  A typical notation is to put square brackets,
perhaps labelled in some way around the clause.

[[[[[[[[ShoN'ge ska] u'joN] abthiN'] wakHe'ga] zhoN't?e] kHe xta'athe] kHe
gini'] koNbthe'goN]

[I hope [[[[[the [beautiful [white horse]] that I have] which is sick] and
lying sound asleep], which I love], will recover]]

A more parallel construction in English would be:

[I hope that [[[[[[[the horse which is white] which is beautiful] that I
have] which is sick] which is asleep] which I love] will recover]]

I've simplfied here somewhat, but this shows what I mean about OP putting
the most deeply embedded stuff first and then just appending more to it as
it's pushed deeper.  By contrast, the situation in English tends to push
things deeper into the middle.  In more detail:

Things are roughly parallel, but inverted in order with complement clases:

[[shoN'ge gini'] koNbthe'goN]

[I hope [the horse will recover]]

With relative clauses you get the extraction of the head in English and
the English adjectival construction offers a modified noun phrase
alternative without real parallel in OP.

[[shoN'ge ska] kHe xta'athe]     [I love the [white horse]]

[[shoN'ge abthiN'] wakHe'ga]     [(the) [horse that I have] is sick]

You could look at the English in this latter case as:

[(the) [horse [that I have]] is sick]

In the relative clause 'horse' is extracted out of the embedded clause 'I
have (the) horse' and raised into the main clause, leaving the relative
pronoun 'that' behind as its trace in the relative clause proper [that I
have].  And this trace has to be at the beginning (awkwardly sometimes
called the head!) of the embedded clause, rather than after the verb as in
'I have (the) horse'.

In essence, OP substitutes noun clauses for relative clauses.

>   Focussed element

The thing that a sentence (or clause) is about, to which attention is
directed, e.g., in this case the horse.  The focus of a relative clause is
its head.

>   Determiner
>     (Would this be, e.g., the positional/article /khe/ in the example
>     above?)

Yes.  Articles and demonstratives are called determiners.  I've been
simplifying things by not marking determined nouns which their own set of
brackets, but, normally it would be:

I love [the [sick horse]]

[[[shoN'ge wakHe'ga] khe] xtaathe]

> > As far as I can see the Omaha verbs are still perfectly finite.  In fact,
> > I'd argue that there are essentially no non-finite verbs in Siouan
> > languages.
>
> You'd need to define exactly what your criterion is for "finite verb".

Any verb which is inflected for person is finite.  As far as I know, this
is not a practice unique to me.  I would consider an OP third person verb
to be inflected, albeit there is no prefix (or suffix)  to indicate it.
This is one of the crosses that students of languages with "zero" pronouns
(or unmarked personal categories) have to bear.  But in particular, there
is nothing in Omaha-Ponca that I have noticed that seems analogous to a
participle or gerund or infinitive or verbal noun.  I could be wrong,
because I don't feel that I control all of the complementizing verb
structures (I hope that, I think that,  ..., etc.).

I have to be a little careful in saying 'nothing analogous' because I mean
to exclude analogies that rely on what I take to be finite subordinate
clauses, e.g.,

wathatHa=i egoN, noNzhiN=i

which could be translated 'having eaten, he stood up', but is clearly
(to me) structured more analogously to 'when he had eaten, he stood up'.
(I made this example up, and it may fail in some respect, though I think t
is essentially correct.)

I would argue this because, in the first person I believe it would be

wabthatHe egoN, anoNzhiN


with both verbs inflected.  There are, of course, languages in which
things called participles can be inflected or at least possessed, but in
those cases there is something about the language that distinguishes the
sort of forms called participles (or subordinate mood verbs) from main
verbs and there is nothing like that here (apart from the conjunction
egoN).  The inflection follows the main verb pattern, and there is no
additional affix to indicate that the verb is participial or subordinate,
apart from that egoN.

I could repeat this sort of example for forms tantamount to 'I want the
horse to get well', which I would argue were structured like 'I observed
that the horse got well', but I think this might suffice to show where I'm
coming from.

> If there are no non-finite verbs in Siouan, then the distinction ceases
> to be a factor within the language.

Not really.  It might become harder to observe within the context of the
language alone, but the lack, or rather absence, of non-finite forms
imposes and/or reflects a particular structural pattern in the language,
nevertheless.  Finite forms work one way (I observed thathe got well);
non-finite ones work another (I want him to get better).

English offers a variety of subordinating structures, using finite
clauses, participles, infinitives, etc.  The Siouan languages I know all
use finite clauses only.  There are languages which use participles and
infinitives only, e.g., most Eskimo languages.

> >  This is entirely consistent with the way nouns and adjectival
> > (noun-modifying) forms are derived from verbs by means of un-marked
> > nominalization of inflected forms.
>
> Could you illustrate this with an example or two?  I'm not sure I see
> the connection.

I mean that there are no affixes that convert verbs to nouns (infinitives
or other verbal or deverbative nouns) or adjectives (participles).  You
just use the verb (unmodified) as a noun, or you just form a relative
(essentially a noun clause) to produce the modification.

There are no analogs of -tion, -ness, -ity, or even 'to ...'.  There are
no analogs of -ish, -ly, -ing, etc.

So, to say something like 'a working solution' you have to provide a
structure like 'it works that it solves it'.

If you need a new noun in OP you provide a predicate form:  either a verb,
or a noun plus a verb, etc.  The verb can be as elaborately derived as
necessary.  The only non-verbal modifiers are other nouns, in
constructions like poNka wa?u.

> > It is possible for a subordination
> > marker to develop, but it will be based on an obligatory determiner
> > and/or a postposition or a comparable subordinating verb.
>
> For example?

If all relative clauses were marked by e or ga or some article, like

shoNge wakHega e                (not actually required)
the horse which was sick

But you do need e (or some other determiner) with most nouns if you add a
postposition.  A very limited set of nouns will take a postposition like
=di directly, e.g., ttiadi, and the morphology may be peculiar, as it is
in this case:  tti + di => ttiadi.

niugashupa editHoN 'from the pond'
oNnoNzhiN editHoN 'from where we stood'

Examples of subordinators derived from postpositions don't occur in OP.

Examples of subordinators derived from verbs - well, egoN 'be so' is
rampant.

> > It is possible to
> > raise an argument into the context clause, but the only real ways to do
> > this are with possession or a transitivizing or dative construction.
>
> And three examples would be?  (Sorry, I'm still lost!)

noNghi'de oNska' I hear well (ear I-clear)

thewithe 'I sent you' (go-I:you-cause)

moN gia'gha=i'He made him an arrow'
moN dhia'gha=i 'He made you an arrow'

> > There aren't any case forms of independent pronominals.
>
> In OP, there are (functionally) four independent pronominals:
>
>       e'          s/he, it, they
>       wi'         I
>       dhi'        you
>       oNgu'       we
>
> and these do not change according to whether they are subject or object.
> Is this what you are referring to here?

Yes.  Also, there are no locative forms.