Omaha athe'

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

Well, after all that build-up three weeks ago, I have
to report bad news on /athe'/.  We had both speakers
in class together recently, and I tried to expand on
the expression / AzhaN' athe' /, which Emmaline had
volunteered the previous session.  Alberta promptly
stopped me to correct my grammar: the expression was
/ AzhaN' the /; there was no a- there.  I looked
pleadingly at Emmaline; she smiled and deferred to
Alberta.  I tried the you, we and s/he forms; Alberta
was emphatic that it was simply /the/ in each case.
Both ladies took great amusement at the way I rolled
my eyes.

Emmaline's parents were uncommonly fluent speakers
of Omaha, but Alberta Canby is about a generation
older and has often shown herself to be very clear
and reliable in her explanation of the language.
It's possible that I prejudiced Emmaline in the
first instance by having quoted the expressions in
Dorsey that Bob was interested in confirming.  In
any case, I'm afraid the trail has run out at this
end.

I should note too that Alberta's use of /the/ here
is precisely in accord semantically with what John
has been saying all along, though I'm still having
trouble seeing it that way in Dorsey.  I'll want
to pursue this particle further.

Rory




                    rlarson at unlnotes01.un
                    l.edu                       To:     siouan at lists.colorado.edu
                    Sent by:                    cc:
                    owner-siouan at lists.co       Subject:     Re: Attn: Dhegiholics.
                    lorado.edu


                    01/14/2002 06:33 PM
                    Please respond to
                    siouan







Bob,

I submitted your sentences to Emmaline Sanchez, one of our two Omaha
speakers, in class today.  She had no trouble at all accepting the
two sentences from Dorsey as valid:

     Na!  Agdha'the athe'!
     Well!  I must have eaten it (my own)!

     Agdha'sni kki azhaN' athe'!
     When I swallowed it, I must have been asleep!

When I tried to conjugate it, though, I got into trouble.  Something
like

     Dhagdha'the dhathe'!

sounded redundant, as the last word also means 'eat'.  In fact, at
one point in there it seemed she was telling me that athe' itself
could also mean 'eat', which it probably does if they elide the
initial dh-.  (I ruefully recall a moment last semester when I was
all ready to rush onto the list with news of the discovery of a
brand new article, iNkhe'.)

I think I got acceptance when I tried athe' with 2nd and 3rd person
forms, but I'm not quite sure, as we were possibly at the point of
confusion by then.  I'll try running these by them again later.

In the first person, at least, I think we're clear that this form
is valid and still used in Omaha.  Emmaline explained the word athe'
as meaning you must have done something, and even offered an example
of her own.  If someone tells you they were trying to get a hold of
you at ten o'clock the previous morning, you can tell them:

     AzhaN' athe'.
     I must have been sleeping.

> WHAT I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT IS WHETHER THIS IS REALLY A CONJUGATED
> "EVIDENTIAL ARTICLE" OR SOME OTHER, UNIDENTIFIED, PARTICLE.

At present, the evidence here seems to be that athe' is an
independent particle that does not conjugate.  We'll need to do a
little more work to be sure of this, however.

Rory