Helmbrecht Queries: Postpositions

[Koontz John E]

I've got another query.  In Johannes' article (2002.  Nouns and Verbs in
Hochank.  IJAL 68.1:24), he says 'Relevant for the identification of nouns
in Hocank is the fact that the local position of an object relative to
another object is not expressed by an adpositional phrase (three are no
adpositions in Hocank) but by a constgruction which resembles much more a
genetive phrase which is formally simply a juxtaposition of two words in
Hocank.'  An example would be:

ks^e= i'z^aN waaru'c^ hihag=e'j^a naN'k=     s^aNnaN
apple INDEF  table    top   there be.sitting DECL

I'm in two minds on this because, actually, I've often felt that
postpositions in Omaha-Ponca, anyway, had various analogies to verbs, and
because I know that they also fall into at least two different
morphological and syntactic types.  However, there are certain things in
Sioua languages, including Winnebago that at least look like
postpositions, and I'd be reluctant to dispose of them in passing like
this.  I'm wondering if Johannes has some additional thinking on ths
subject that he'd like to go into, considerations that might have been out
of place in this article.

If I had to identify postpositions in Winnebago, I'd point first to forms
like e(e)'=ja.  This is glossed above as 'there', but etymologically it is
e 'it, that, the aforesaid' plus an enclitic =j^a.  The =j^a can't occur
independently, but it's essentially a locative postposition, like the =gi
in e(e)'=gi 'here'.  The glosses here are somewhat notional.  Lipkind
(1945:52)  speaks of egi as an adverb, and shows that it compounds with
various nouns:

c^iinaN'g=r(a)=egi 'in town'
haNaNh(e)=egi (or maybe haNhe=gi) 'tonight'
(Miner also gives haNaNhe'=r(a)=egi 'at night')
maNaN=n(a)=e'gi 'to the earth' < maN' 'earth'
waN'g=r(a)=egi 'above' < waN'k 'top'

For examples with other demonstratives (than e), see Lipkind (1945:53):

ee'gi 'here'
mee'gi 'here near speaker'
dee'gi 'here near speaker'
higi' 'here in its place'
gagi' 'there'
z^eegi' 'there near you'
ee'j^a 'there'
z^ee'j^a 'there near you'
hij^a 'there in its place'
gai'j^a 'there near him' (obviously ga + (h)ij^a in this case)

Perhaps the glosses suggestg that speakers ae a bit hazy on the
relationships of the forms, and that they are perhaps completely
lexicalized, but, to me, it looks like essentially a case of
demonstratives (h)i, ee, dee, z^ee, ga + =j^a and =gi.  The =j^a,
probably, is cognate with the =(k)ta in Dakotan and the =tta (< *=kta) in
Omaha-Ponca.  The =gi seems to be a Winnebago and Chiwere equivalent of
the =di in OP (which may be cognate with the =l ~ =tu in Teton Dakotan).

I notice that we are apparently lacking the fossil forms with nouns that
occur in Dakotan (thiyata) or Omaha-Ponca (ttiatta).

For cases with verbs, see:

hac^iij^a 'where' < hac^i 'to dwell' (perhaps =ij^a ?)

Of course, this verb is the one used in lieu of 'house' in Winnebago, and
the root in all three cases is *hti 'to dwell; a dwelling'.

I've mentioned that postpositions have a quasi-verbal character in OP.
It's not that they can be inflected, but they can stand, some of them, as
predicates in the third person.

As far as morphological and syntactic peculiarities I had in mind the
tendency of some of them to attach directly to nouns, though mostly in OP
they seem to require an article (originally a verb) or a demonstrative to
support them.  So, you get tti=the=di 'in the house'.  But that's a lot
like the =ra in many of the Winnebago examples, except that Winnebago also
retains the ee= demonstrative, as i c^iinaN'g-r-egi.

In OP there is also a strong tendency in older texts for =di added to a
noun to cause ablaut or -a- insertion, e.g., ppahe 'hill' + di =>
ppaha=di, or the example of ttiattha (or ttiadi) with tti 'house'.

A further syntactic irregularity, and here we get into something more like
the Winnebago situation, is that apart from this (older?) enclitic set of
postpositions, there are (newer?) "heavy" postpositions, often begining
with demonstratives, usually longer, that are typically independent,
though sometimes they compound with a noun.  Examples would be maNthe'
'in, under', e'gaghe 'around', or idaNbe ~ edaNbe 'center of'.  Most of
these can take one of the lighter postpostions themselves, e.g.,
maN'tha=tta 'inside of', idaNba=tta 'through the center of'.

It's this last category that acts much like and is structured much like
such Winnebago forms as hihag=e'j^a in the first example, from hiha'k
'top', given the hi-, perhaps originally 'its top'. I'd wonder what the
problem would be with treating 'on top (of)' as a postposition in this
case, though clearly there is also a whole part relationship of the sort
Johannes mentions between table and top:

waaru'c^ hihak=    e'j^a
table    (its) top there
table    (its) top DEM=LOC

Actually, given that nouns with final -e lose it, this might be,
historically hihake=j^a, and reanalysis of such forms as having e(e)j^a in
order to explain hihake=j^a without rsorting to allomorphy for hihak(e)
might explain the strong tendency of Winnebago workers (and perhaps
speakers) to handle DEM-POST combinations as monomorphemic - though I have
also seen elsewhere a tendency to explain them as ee + hi-POST
combinations, the latter treated as monomorphemic.  Examples gaij^a
suggest this is sometimes the case - today!

I know that Regina Pustet has also been wrestling with the question of
subtypes of postpositions, though in Dakotan, and based on considerable
fieldwork and text searching.