Dhegihanists.

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> I've been working thru the paper by Barron and Serzisko on Siouan
> positionals and Ponca article use.  They cite two sentences from JOD
> 1890:466.7 and 467.3.
>
> Ki te-nuga ama waji-pibaji
> and buffalo bull the [moving] was savage
> And the buffalo bull was savage.
>
> Waji-pibaji te-nuga aka
> was savage Buffalo bull the [not in motion]
> The buffalo bull was savage.
>
> Is this your reading of the above sentences?  Is buffalo bull singular or
> plural here?  Is the article difference due to motion, number or something
> else?

In what follows I raise more questions than I (don't actually) answer.

Anyway, these are the glosses Dorsey gives, and I think nobody, B&S
included, has gotten much beyond them.  There's been a certain amount of
uncertainty about them recently, of course.

Superficially, this pair looks like a paradigm case of akha 'the
motionless subject' vs. ama 'the moving/plural subject' (in the moving
case).  The text makes it clear that the context is that a man is pursuing
a bull, which is acting agressive.

[Frank LaFlesche is narrating the story, "My First Buffalo Hunt."  His
father has refused him permission to participate.  He's angry at his
father and the two of them are watching the progress of the hunt together
from a hill.  His father is talking to him, but he is silent and sulking.]

E'gidhe   tte-nu'ga wiN tti'=   atta=dhishaN
at length bull      a   tent(s) to   tending

* e'gidhe marks clauses that seem to have anticipatable content
* dhishaN 'pulling' indicates approach

adhiN'    agi'=i             nikkas^iNga akha wiNa'=xc^i akha.
having it he was coming back man         the  one   just the

* adhiN 'to have' + motion verb is a transitivizing construction for
  motion verbs, indicating accompaniment or pursuit.
* I hear wiNaxc^i as wiaNxti in modern Omaha. It appears that -a-
  here is a special case of the linking -a- that appears above in
  tti=atta= < tti + tta.

Kki      ttenu'ga *ama* waz^iN'=ppi=b=az^i.
and then bull     the   mind    was bad

* I think Ardis told me that "Ki" is actually khi, not kki.
  I have been associating it with kki 'if, when'.
* Notice the stress on ttenu'ga (like pteblo'ka), though I would
  expect *tte'nuga given the way compound stress usually works.
  I have no idea why this pattern occurs with tte-.


Ni'kkas^iNga dhiNkhe               ie'naghi=dha=   hnaN=i
man          the (sitting, object) he attacked him regularly

[At this point, Frank LaFlesche's father tells him he can go help.  He
grabs an apparently unexpectedly light gun and lassos an apparently
unexpectedly tall horse and sets off.]

Bdhi'ze             gaN    e'=di bdhe'.
I took it (the gun) and so there I went

* This is perhaps two sentences?  GaN 'thus' is usually a sentence
  introducer, but can sometimes occur en lieu of egaN, perhaps
  this is bdhi'z e=gaN 'having taken it'?  This gets into the sill
  unresolved issue of whether there are one or two egaN particles.

E'=di phi'=     kki=z^i,
there I arrived when

ttenu'ga *akha* s^kaN=az^i naz^iN   *akha*.
bull     the    not moving he stood PROGR

* The bull is explicitly standing still.  Notice the concordial use of
  akha in the progressive auxililary slot.
* Notice the =z^i (apparently not NEG) on =kki 'if' in this context.
  Except I'm not sure what the context is!

Kki      ni'kkas^iNga akha e'=di phi'      kki,
And then man          the  there I arrived when

gi'dhe=xti=aN=bi    a=i.
he was really happy he said

Waz^iN'=ppi=b=az^i ttenu'ga *akha*.
mind    was bad    bull     the

* The bull is still akha-marked.

[At this point the hunter wounds the bull with an arrow.  It charges them,
Frank's horse throws him and heads home, and the bull runs off, to0.
Frank arrives back at the tend to find his mother scolding his father.
His father is laughing.  He asks Frank if he killed the bull.]

Notice that the bull is obviously moving when ama is applied to it, and
explicitly standing still when akha is applied to it.

But there are various problems.  For one thing, the man chasing the bull
is introduced with akha, though he is presumably moving, too.

For that matter, why is a definite article applied to the man?  This is
the first mention of him, and Dorsey's texts translates ni'kkas^iNga akha
wiNa=xc^i akha as 'one man'.  We should probably guess that his identity
is actually known, perhaps even to Dorsey, most likely to the LaFlesche
family, within which the story had no doubt circulated for years.  Frank
hasn't bothered to identify him in the fragment, but he is 'the fellow we
know' for all practical purposes because of the longer narrative or family
background from which the story is abstracted.

I suppose this sequence could also support an intepretation of akha as
'more intimate, better known, closer' and ama as 'less intimate, less well
known, further off', a proposal (in my paraphrase) offered by Carolyn
Quintero at the Niskidhe Dhegiha meeting, I think, based on her perception
of the pattern in Osage.  The article akha is applied in the same text to
'my father' and 'my mother'.  The bull is definite, but starts as ama and
perhaps only shifts to akha as it becomes more central to the text?  In
effect, akha is really proximate (on stage), and ama is only sort of
proximate (on stage).  I think this is worth investigating, but I don't
know if it holds water at this point.

There is an obviative (off stage) clause toward the end of the text:

Akhi'=kki,
I arrived home when

iN'naNha  akha iNda'di   i'husa               akha        kki,
my mother the  my father she was scolding him the (PROGR) when

akhi'.
I arrived home

S^aN'ge thaN      maN'zedhahe udha'ha     khi=                  the=di,
horse   the (OBV) bridle      stuck on it he arrived back (OBV) when

i'bahaN=i the  aN'aNdh     idhe'=dha=i the.
she knew  EVID it threw me SUDDENLY    EVID

When I got back my mother was scolding my father.  When the horse got back
with its bridle hanging she knew [what had happened] (it seemed).  It had
thrown me (it seemed).

* The word for bridle is maN'ze 'iron' + dhahe, which is the root of the
  stem udha'ha 'to adhere, be stuck on' tha follows, I think.
* I think that the pattern of clauses in the first sentence, with
  'When I got home, when my mother was scolding my father, I got home' is
  probably just a misspeaking, but I'm in no position to say.
* I assume that the 'it threw me' clause at the end is a sort of repair,
  to clarify what it was that his mother had realized.  I would normally
  expect the opposite order of clauses in general terms, though I don't
  know if one can actually say something like

? aNaNdha idhe'=dha=i (the(=di)) i'bahaN=i=the
  it threw me SUDDENLY (when)    she knew it EVID

Notice that as this sentence already shows, an evidential or perfective
*the*, especially if followed by =di LOCATIVE, is rendered 'when' with a
subordinate clause.

Notice that this text is also rife with final-position subjects.