?uN as AUX V.

[Anthony Grant]

Dear Bob:

Interestingly enough, forms of both 'do' and 'be' are used in
English-lexifier creoles and/or AAVE to express habitual aspect.  Guyanese
has /doz/, for instance, and AAVE's use of 'be' is well-known through
William Labov's work.

Best

Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: R. Rankin <rankin at ku.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 10:10 PM
Subject: Re: ?uN as AUX V.


> Apropos our recent discussion of the meaning(s)/use(s)
> of reflexes of Proto-Siouan ?uN 'do, be' as some sort
> of past (perfective or imperfective) and
> probably-aspectual auxiliary, I was just going over an
> old paper of mine on Biloxi aspiration and ran across
> this obvious entry in Dorsey and Swanton's 1912 Biloxi
> dictionary:
>
> uNni 'sign of continuous action' (?) with various
> examples (p. 284, and the ? is Dorsey's).  This pretty
> much confirms Catherine's and John's notion that this
> aux. functions as an imperfective marker.  Thus far I
> have no feeling for when you would use reflexes of *?uN
> and when you might use positionals, but presumably the
> distinction is that one that exists between
> 'continuative aspect' and 'imperfective aspect'.
>
> Bob
>