Dorsey and West Virginia; Sentence Final Markers

[Koontz John E]

I knew there was a reason I associated James O. Dorsey with West Virginia,
apart from the fact that I seem to recall that he's buried somewhere in
Western Maryland - Harper's Ferry?

Anyway, like all of us, he occasionally took notes on envelopes, and NAA
4800 Dorsey Papers:  Dhegiha 120 includes one of them, which is addressed
Rev.  J. Owen Dorsey, Hedgesville, Berkeley Co., W. Va.  The postmark
reads Omaha Agency Neb Mar 1, but I can't make out the year.

The note on the envelope appears to be

men say
...[a?][n?]au yes

women say
.... ena'+ (?)

In other words, a note on sentence final forms.  These appear to be
variants of the 'announcement' marker.  I think I've sen adha(u) and edha,
too, maybe in song texts.

Above ths in the xerox on another slip is a list of "Punctuation signs
(oral)"  [i.e., sentence final forms] for a number of Siouan languages:

do   ha, he      ke   ke-i   s'   ts -    -k
[Sa] O[m]        I[o] Ot     Ma   Hid     Crw

These are declaratives.  Under O is written Qu, K & Os, though I think
this annotation is not quite right.

Below this is

he   a           a'haN      a'daN     a'dha
     hai-a       ehaN+      edaN+     e'dhe
     ha-he
     adaN
     ba, badaN

These are additional Omaha (and Ponca) forms.  I'm using N for raised n
and dh for cent-sign (edh)  V' is an accented vowel.

In the first row he looks like the feminine declarative again, but I don't
recognize hai-a or ha-he, so I'm not sure what he's getting at here.  A
simple a is the interrogative (or female imperative).  AdaN is something
like 'therefore' and also occurs finally in quoted questions.  Ba and
BadaN would be -bi + a and -bi + adaN, for cases where -bi precedes these
markers.  Dorsey generally lists contractions of -bi and -tta with
following elements as distinct elements, e.g., biama, bas^e, baz^i,
ttadaN, ttathe, ttas^e, etc.

AhaN and ehaN occur with exclamations.

For adaN and edaN see above.

Adha and edhe are glossed 'indeed' in the texts and might be called
emphatic.

JEK