Osage Plural

[Koontz John E]

I've consulted Carolyn Quintero's dissertation now, and can report that
she gives the plural enclitic as api, following Bob's argument that ablaut
is elision of the final vowel of the preceding form in favor of the
initial vowel of a following enclitic.  This approach works especially
well in Dhegiha where the operation of ablaut favors the "underlying e"
approach and is in general much simpler in operation than in Dakotan.

She reports that api + dhe, the declarative, yields ape.  Also the
positionals akha and apa + dhe yield kxai and (a)pai.

She reports eliciting one instance of future + evidential (what I've
sometimes called the 'future of surity' though maybe future of assurance
or evidential future would be better).  This example was aNka'hi hta
ch<schwa> (i.e., probably ... hta che) 'we will be there'.  Note that this
agrees with OP in having the a-grade of ablaut.  It is probably a dual
inclusive, but might be plural.  It lacks a plural marker, in any event,
but *the takes the expected form che (tsHe).

Looking in Dorsey's Osage Traditions, I find various examples of this
evidential future in the form:

JOD 1888:382.16

z^iNka z^uika aNkukice        htache
child  body   we seek our own FUT EVID

This would be analogous to OP

z^iNga z^uga aNgugine ttathe

I also find find a plural form

1888:383.28

aNka'ghe htapeche
we make  FUT EVID

Analogous OP would be

aNgaghe ttaithe

Another example of the plural (actually proximate in this case) is apiNtau
'he really said', which appears in every line of the tradition.  I take
this to be something like a=pi(N)=t(h?)au.  The first part would be like
OP a=i 'he said' (or a=bi in a=bi=ama 'he said, they say'), though the
nasalization is puzzling.  The latter part is obscure.  I suspect it might
be something like the EVID + (dh)a=u DECLm, but that would mean that che
EVID had an underlying form the in which th was retained if elision
removed the root vowel e.

Another example of a simple proximate occurs in 1888:393.46

nihkas^iNka wiN sikdha=pe che
person      a   has left a trail

Like OP

nikkas^iNga wiN sigdha=(b)i=the

Of course, it could be argued that everything here is referred to
authority, and so would take =pi, but if there were ever an =i, it seems
surprising that it should be eliminated in favor of the much more marked
=bi form (the opposite of affairs in OP).  In fact, it seems that only OP
ever had a form =i, which I continue to feel is more likely to derive from
=bi than an ancient parallel marker =i lost everywhere else.

JEK