Cleft/Focus Example

[Koontz John E]

I noticed this great example of an "e-cleft" in Omaha-Ponca this evening.
It's one I missed in preparing my paper for the Siouan and Caddoan
Conference because this one doesn't show the "e" as enclitic to the noun
as recorded in the texts.  I include the context, because it's needed to
show the focus.  The over all context involves a story in which the hero,
guesting with four Thunder-beings, is successively offered various
inedible things to eat, each of which the Thunder-beings call by various
innocent names.

---

Dorsey 1890:181.11-12

"WattaN'ze=skidhe bdhaNze=xc^i          u'wagihaN=i=ga!"  a=bi=ama.
 corn      sweet  very small-(grained?) cook for them     he1 said

He'  (=?)e  wak[h?]e akh=ama.
lice that   he1 was meaning

GaN,   "E'gaN     aNwaNdhatha=b=az^i," a=bi=ama
And so  like that we do not eat it     he2 said

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I think that "Lice were what he meant." is a very suitable translation for
the second sentence in this context, and that a focussing cleft is what
adding the e here produces.  (Oo, a cleft of my own!)  The subject here is
implicit in the verb (but governs the imperfect auxiliary akha), and this
is an object cleft.  The sentence certainly doesn't mean "He meant those
(particular, previously mentioned) lice."  In fact, the lice haven't been
mentioned previously, though one might argue that they could perhaps be
assumed by the hearers on the strength of corpses of men previously
mentioned.  I recall an article on Eskimo antipassives in which it was
pointed out that rocks were always definite, even if not previously
mentioned, because if there was one thing you could assume in an arctic
landscape, it was rocks.  Similarly, humans may imply lice, but I don't
think this is what is going on here!

It's also useful to note the verb u'wagihaN=i=ga 'cook it for them!' in
the first sentence. The underlying verb is uhaN' 'to cook'.  The dative is
ugi'haN.  Because the object is plural the u- prefix is accented, i.e.,
derived from *wo < wa-o'-, where historical wa- is the actual plural
object prefix.  But, various u-verbs with animate objects (dative object
in this case) add wa- 'them' anyway, pleonastically, as it were.  With the
a- and i- locatives wa- is regularly added before the locative (producing
wa'- and we'-), but with this locative it follows.

JEK