Tense

[Rory M Larson]

Hello Henning,

>I have a small question that regards tense in Ho-Chunk and Siouan in
>general.  Most of the literature that I have gone through (and I could
have
>somehow missed it) doesn't give tense a very strong treatment.
>What I have seen is that Ho-Chunk seems to make a future - non-future
>distinction based on the suffix
>-kjene or the intentive -kje.

You're raising an interesting question.  David Rood's reply, based on
Lakhota, sums up the doctrine on Siouan tense as I have learned it.
That is, there is no grammatical timestamp on sentences, as there is
in Indo-European, though time can be indicated explicitly by temporal
adverbs.  Instead, there is a particle of potentiality that follows
the verb, which indicates that the action is only a possibility, an
intent, or an inclination, not a fact.  In Lakhota, this particle is
ktA, in Omaha ttE, and in Winnebago it is apparently kjE.  Since the
future is only a possibility or an intent, not a fact, this particle
is used to express what we Indo-European speakers would call the
future.

That being said, the actual grammar of making sentences seems to be
bafflingly complex, and includes considerations English never thought
of.  My background in Siouan involves two years of Lakhota taken about
a decade ago as a formal course, and about three years of Omaha going
on now as a figure-it-out-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sequence.  I would
like to swap notes with you in grammatically comparing Winnebago to
Omaha, but my own knowledge of Winnebago is almost nill.  Could I ask
you to help analyze your examples morphemically?

>Most often, the 3Pl subject form -ire (or -hire) is given to indicate the
>subject.  However, in getting forms this actually is the past tense.

>Jagu aire?
>Jagu e-ire?
>What say-3Pl?
>What did they say?

>Jagu anaaNk?
>Jagu e-naaNk?
>What say-3Pl?
>What are they saying?

So /jagu/ means "what".  I assume this is equivalent to Lakhota /taku/.

Then we have /a/ or /e/ for "say".  In OP it's the same.  By Bob's
and John's analysis, /e/ should be considered the basic form, and /a/
would be the ablauted form caused by an original leading a- in the
following particle.

Finally, we have two alternative modal particles, /ire/ and /naaNk/,
at the end, which close the sentence.  Both indicate that the subject
of /e/ is 3rd person plural.  Both force the /e/ to ablaut to /a/.
But while /ire/ implies that the action is in the past, /naaNk/ implies
that it is in the present.

Have I understood your examples correctly?

If so, could /naaNk/ be described as a positional?
To me, it looks like OP /dhaNkHa'/, which shows up
now and then in the Dorsey texts, apparently as the
plural of /dhiNkhe'/, but which is denied by our
modern speakers.  In OP, these two terms seem to
have the flavor of "sitting", or "object of the
action".

In OP, at least in the 19th century, sentences
seldom ended with a verb; rather the final verb
was almost always followed by one or more particles
expressing the modality and the demand of the
sentence.  Your Winnebago particles /ire/ and
/naaNk/ seem to behave in the same way.

In 19th century OP, the modal particle /i/
directly followed a verb and made you focus on it
as a discrete action.  Alternatively, you could
simply finish a sentence with a positional after
the verb; this would indicate that the verb was
the state of affairs with its subject in the
classificatory state implied by the positional
itself.  Here, we set the scene rather than
describe an occurrence.  Or, as Bob has put it,
the action is progressive.

I don't recall whether modal particles in this
position force ablaut in OP; my feeling is that
they don't.  However, they do force ablaut on the
potential particle /ttE/ in constructions that
indicate a fairly definite future:

      tta miNkHe        I will
      tta tHe           you will, s/he will
      tta akHa          s/he will of their own accord
      tt(a) oNgatHoN    we will

The Winnebago particle /ire/ is especially interesting
to me because of a discussion we had on the list just
over a year ago about two alternate OP particles, /i/
and /bi/.  The /bi/ at least ought to be cognate with
Lakhota /pi/ and Chiwere /wi/.  Doesn't Winnebago also
have a pluralizing particle /wi/?  I seem to recall
from Lipkind that both /wi/ and /ire/ existed as
pluralizing particles in Winnebago, but that /ire/ was
only used in the 3rd person-- is this correct?  Anyway,
in 19th century OP, /bi/ and /i/ both make you focus on
the act rather than the state, but /bi/ implies hearsay
while /i/ implies the straight goods.  Used in the 3rd
person, both can be either singular or plural, though
in other contexts, such as commands, both can be
pluralizers.  The view has been that /i/ is a variant
of /bi/ in its origin, and hence equates to /pi/ and
/wi/.  But I wonder if it could not actually be cognate
to at least part of HC /ire/ instead?  Can /ire/ be
analyzed in Winnebago?  Do we have cognates of /ire/ in
other Siouan languages?


>I think Miner is the only one that correctly lists these forms.  Yet there

>is no extensive treatment of tense in his work.  This seems to be the only

>form that indicates something took place in the past rather than not in
the
>future.
>Past can be indicated through the absence of the positional in other
cases.

>waNk  naNka naNwaNnaNks^aNnaN.

>waNk  naNka  naNwaN-naNk-s^aNaN.

>man   that (sit) sing-POS (sit)-Declarative

>That man is singing (seated).

>waNk naNka naNwaNnaN.

>waNk naNka naNwaN- naN

>man that (sit) sing- Declarative.

>That man sang.

So /waNk/ is "man".

The word /naNka/ or /naNk/ is a positional indicating
"sitting" and "singular".  Does this alternate with
/naaNka/ or /naaNk/, with a long 'aN', meaning "sitting"
and "plural"?  In OP, a number of Dhegihan 'aN' sounds
have shifted to 'iN', apparently when unaccented and
preceding an accented syllable.  Is shortness of the
vowel also a factor in this?  Compare OP /dhiNkHe'/,
"sitting" and "singular" with OP /dhaNkHa'/, "sitting"
and "plural".

The verb /naNwaN/ means "sing".

/naN/ is the declarative demand particle.

What is /s^aN/?  That should be important here, but
I don't see a gloss for it.


>In the above forms the demonstrative can be replaced with the indefenite
>article -iz^aN or the defenite article -ra with the same effect.

>My question is if you all think there is more to tense in Ho-Chunk than
what
>i have read?  What is happening in other Siouan langauges.  I believe I
read
>in a paper somewhere that Lakhota also makes a future-non-future
>distinction.  Do positionals have a similar effect (I'm especially curious

>about Chiwere)?  Thank you.

Hope that helps some.  And thank you if you can
answer some of my scattered questions about Ho-Chunk!

Rory


>On a side note, a budding linguist like myself, and as a person with a
>vested interest in Ho-Chunk langauge study I really appreciate this List.

>You all have no idea how much more efficient and valuable my studies have
>become based on the archives and current comments on this List.  Thank you

>all again.

>Henning Garvin
>UW-Madison
>Anthropology/Linguistics