More plural.

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> These are some very interesting ideas.  One possibility that occurs to
> me for that -a- is that it might signal something like active
> responsibility or intention on the part of the actor.

I'm not sure I would agree with this assessment.  If -a in ablaut
signified intention, then it would be more likely to be characteristic of
the first person than the third singular and the plurals (not to mention
the negative).  If a- (and a-ablaut) in the progressive and future forms
marked intention, then it would not be in all forms.

In fact, positional-initial-a and a-ablaut are synchronically different
things, and, in spite of the list of ablauting forms below, neither seems
to be particularly associated with intention.  They both behave more like
arbitrary morphological patterns.  They're more thematic than categorical.
All I was trying to suggest myself is that they are somewhat arbitrary
morphological facts about the initials of postverbal positionals and the
pre-enclitic finals of verbs, leaving us with two traces of a sort of
"intervening-a" between verb and enclitics.  However, as an intervening
marker this a would be more a Pre-Proto-Dhegiha (Proto-Mississippi Valley
or Proto-Siouan) phenomenon than a fact of contemporary Dhegiha languages.


> Also, the -e final verbs they use always seem to go to a-grade ablaut.
> Compare the two sentences from the Dorsey dictionary /akha/ entry that
> I posted earlier:
>
>   ShoNge akha wahaba khe dhatha'=i ha.
>   The horse ate the corn of his own accord.
>
>   ShoNge thoN wahaba khe dhathe'=e ha.
>   The horse ate the corn given him to eat.

> In the first sentence, both the positional /akha/ and the declarative
> =i take a leading a-, while in the second sentence the positional is
> plain and the declarative becomes =e without leading a-.

Except that =i is not really a declarative, but that "plural/proximate"
marker that I still suspect is derived from =bi as well as being in the
same inner (but different outer) contexts.  The declarative (masculine)
here is the (=)ha (modern =ha=u (=ho)).

Actually, a better potential example of going to a than the second above
might be the third from the original set you cited:

      ShoN'ge akHa' waha'ba kHe dhatHe' akHa' ha
      The (motionless) horse is eating the corn
                  (which he should not eat).     [...]

But here we see that the progressive use of akha doesn't condition a-grade
ablaut in an e-final verb, while use of akha does do that in the e-final
future.

> If this were the case, we'd have to suppose that the "will" forms of
> the future imply intent, as opposed to the passive potentiality of
> /tte/.  Command particles would also imply intent.  The only case that
> would be problematic to this idea would be the "not" forms, which
> always cause a-grade ablaut, but which today at least can be used for
> stative verbs as well as active ones.  Perhaps these are just a
> generalization on earlier active-only forms?

I think I've missed something.  Why are we supposing that a-grades can't
occur in statives?  I have the impression they did as far back as we can
tell.  I admit I'm catching up here, reading some newer things before some
earlier ones!

JEK