Dhegiha Plurals and Proximates

[Koontz John E]

About a month and a half ago, just before my life became an apparently
unending sequence of Income Tax forms, miscellaneous and alarmingly
past-due deadlines, and, more recently and pleasantly, cheering at junior
girls' softball games, Rory Larson had posted a a very long (about 17K)
and thoughtful discussion of Dhegiha proximates and plurals.  As I am way
behind on acknowledging Rory's postings, I thought I could do far worse
than to return from the (apparently) dead to tackle some aspects of it.

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Rory wrote:
> I'd like to revise my position slightly from what I was
> arguing when first grappling with this.  First, the dichotomy
> between =i and =bi is quite regular in the Dorsey texts.  If the
> verb is followed by =i, the speaker is asserting it on his own
> account as the straight goods.  If the verb is followed by =bi,
> it means that the speaker is absolving himself of responsibility
> for the implication of what he has just said.  Thus, =bi is
> regularly used in reporting hearsay, or in describing a former
> hypothesis.  In the latter role, it may cover supposition or
> expectation ("supposed to").

I think I've stated before that I am more and more convinced that this
does explain the opposition of =i and =bi in Omaha-Ponca texts and, on
presume, in conversation, though there are some additional special cases
like names and songs where =bi appears.  As Rory points out subsequently -
I may not make it that far this evening - it might be possible to regard
these as special cases of quotative usage, stipulating that this term is
not perhaps used ideally in Siouan grammatical terminology.  Was it
reportative that was considered the better term?

> In third person declarative statements, neither =i nor =bi
> normally has anything to do with plurality.  They do indicate
> that the concept is complete rather than progressive,

That is, progressives are formed by adding one of the positional forms
that serve also as definite articles, and this positional follows a verb
that ends in the stem final vowel, without any sign of =i ~ =bi.

> and that it is independent of outside influence.

Does this refer to sporadic comments in Dorsey's footnotes, especially in
Dorsey 1891 that certain forms without =i would be this because the action
must have been performed at someone else's behest?

> In commands, and in statements and exhortations that use the potential
> particle /tte/, =i at least signals plurality.

Typically, of course, =tte is followed by a positional, but it does occur
without it in a sort of precative or exortative sense that Dorsey tends to
gloss 'you will please' as in

i'=dhadhe=tte
you will please send it hither
D90:689.10

udha'gdha?a?a=tta=i ha
you will (please) give the scalp yell
D90:15.12

> There are a few very rare, but illuminating cases, however, in which
> =i is replaced by =bi in these contexts.

Referring now to imperatives in =ga (IMPm), rather than precatives.

> Usually, you command a group of people in the form: V=i ga!  But if
> you are conveying someone else's command, you can cast it in the form:
> N V=bi ga!, where N is the name of the party whose command you are
> conveying!

I think the only examples are instances of

maNc^hu is^ta'z^ide   uihe    thi=dha=bi=ga  hau
Red-eyed Grizzly Bear to join pass along     DECLm
Go to REGB to fetch the meat!
D90:43.12

Dorsey glosses this "grizzly-bear eye-red to-come-for-the-meat pass-ye-on"
showing the idiomatic sense of the phrase, referring to the women being
summoned to carry home the kill.

I think that Rory is exactly right here and the use of =bi conveys that
the summons was issued by someone else and is being reported on behalf of
the original summoner.  I suspect this is at least one variant of the
standard message to this effect, delivered on behalf of the hunt leader.

> ... In these cases, I don't know whether =bi would be used in the
> singular or not. ...

As far as I can tell, the =i ~ =bi here is always plural (with the
unmarked second person of the imperative form).

[I now skip a large section which I hope to ocmeback to, including, in
fact, the comments on songs and names.  JEK]

JEK said:
> > Anyway, there's no doubt that both the true Osage
> > plural/proximate and the Omaha plural/proximate are
> > cognate with the Dakotan plural.  They simply have
> > different modern patterns of allomorphy, and LaFlesche's
> > Osage Dictionary, for unknown reasons, but undoubtedly
> > reflecting the Omaha ethnicity of its compiler, has the
> > Omaha pattern.  This does not seem to reflect anything
> > about actual Osage usage at any point.
>
> The "name defense" and the "song defense" both rested
> on the assumption that =i was a recent derivation from
> =bi.  If these riders go away, then I'm not sure that
> that assumption itself is necessary either.

Mississippi Valley Siouan *=pi

Te   OP                   Os                    IO   Wi

=pi  =i ~ =bi ~ =b(=az^i) =pi ~ =p(=a) ~ =p(=e) =wi  =wi

All of these forms condition the a-grade of ablaut.  All occur with first,
second, and third person as well as imperative plurals.  It has been
mentioned that =pi can be considerably reduced in Teton fas speech, and in
some other Dakotan dialects I believe it is sometimes reduced fairly
regularly, though I'm not positive I recall the details correctly.  In
Dhegiha the alternants also occur with certain third person singulars, as
has been seen.  The =i alternant is the less marked form in OP.  The =bi
occurs in the marked context or contexts under discussion.  The loss of
the final vowel in Dhegiha is essentially due to elision of i before
another following vowel.  I think all Dhegiha languages lose final i
before the negative =(a)z^i, in favor of the a.  Osage happens to have
male and female declaratives =a and =e that provide quite frequent
contexts for loss of i.  In fact, I think =p=e is far more common than =pi
(because most of the last speakers are female).

Why Omaha-Ponca so regularly lost the b instead of the i, and came to
retain or restore b in a grammatically conditioned context is not clear to
me, but loss of the b (or *p) is not especially exceptional in Siouan
developments of =pi.  The w in IO and Wi is the regular development of *p
in those languages.

Ironically, most modern Omaha speakers have lost =i itself in the
environment ...a=i##, which is simply ...a##.  If there is any change to
-a, like lengthening or a if there is a voiceless =i in this context, I
missed it.  It reappears when various particles (like =ga) follow. I'm
have the impression Ponca speakers largely retain it, and Mark Swetland
once mentioned an Omaha speaker he encountered in Omaha who apparently
usedretained final =i.

> John and Regina have both been arguing on the basis
> of this assumption, that =i is a reflex of MVS *pi,
> and that its existence in that form is a quirk unique
> to OP.  Regina has suggested that Osage might have
> borrowed =i from OP, or that =i might simply be a
> speech variation of Osage =pi, to explain the =i forms
> that show up in the La Flesche dictionary of Osage.
> Against this, John points out the geographical
> separation of Osage from OP, and the fact that both
> modern Osage and a set of early ritual texts use =pi
> for pluralizing; he suspects that La Flesche's Omaha
> background may somehow have corrupted the dictionary.

I might add that occasional real Osage forms occur in the Dictionary
itself, for example in the appended text, or in entries like a-xo-ba-bi
'inviolable'.

> In OP, we are fortunate enough to have a very rich
> literature recorded from fully fluent speakers in the
> late 19th century, which provides a wide variety of
> grammatical usages.  In that language, =i and =bi
> are radically distinct elements which contrast with
> each other, while simultaneously signalling several
> different semantic implications, not just plurality.
> Given how deeply and subtly embedded these particles
> are in 19th century OP, can we really be sure that
> related languages like Osage did not have a comparable
> contrastive pair?

I really don't see any evidence to the contrary.  Osage reaction to the
use of OP =i in the LaFlesche dictionary is pretty decisive.  "This is not
Osage!" about sums it up.  I admit I have this information at second hand
from Carolyn Quintero, and may have misunderstood her, and that many other
factors, including such simple things as writing ptk as bdg and using
anachronistic and rather florid definitions enter in to this, but I think
there is no doubt on that score . In addition, though I have not gone into
it, my understanding is that Kaw has forms similar to Osage (i.e., mostly
=b(=)e, the last speaker being, again, female).  Quapaw has =wi or =we, if
I recall, but my unpacking hasn't progressed far enough to provide me with
something that I can look that up in!

> I've looked at the short collection of Osage sayings
> at the end of the dictionary, which I understand are
> supposed to be basically correct, and not from
> La Flesche.  There is one case in which =i appears,
> in the tta=i tHe form which is common in Omaha, and
> which in the context indicates a very certain future.
> There are also two or three cases in which =bi is
> used for what is singular in the translation.  Both
> =azhi and =bazhi are used for the negative plural.
> If this material is valid, it seems unlikely to me
> that Osage =pi was simply a pluralizer at the time
> it was collected.  It is certainly true, though, that
> =bi (=pi) occurs in many places where we would find
> =i in 19th century Omaha.

The occurrence of =tta=i=the for the 'future of certainty' or future +
evidential is interesting, and may point out an environment in which Osage
does have an =i, perhaps suggesting the source environment of =i in OP.
This environment has another unusual thing about it, whichis that the i-
and non-i-variants (in Omaha-Ponca) are =tta=the and tta=i=the, i.e.,
there is ablaut of =tte before =the.