More plural.

[Rory M Larson]

Well, let's see if the third time's the charm in
getting this thing to post!  It's amazing how much
trouble a slight change to one's return address
can cause.


John wrote:
> 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.  [...]
>
> 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.

That's the time frame I had in mind.  I was responding to
your original suggestion that the leading a- of /akha/ and
/ama/ might be a separate element appended to the /khe/ and
/ma/ positionals, and that the same -a- was also appended to
pluralizing particles to produce a-grade ablaut in that case.
You said that you didn't know just what this a- meant, but
had thought it might be a nominalizer.  I made the suggestion
that it might have signalled intention or responsibility of
the actor, and discussed that possibility in the context of
OP.  I didn't mean to suggest that our hypothetical -a- element
was still productive as such in OP or any of the other
historical languages!


>  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.

I wonder if you could elaborate on this argument; I'm not
following it.  Why would you assume that an element signalling
responsibility or intentionality would be more likely found in
the first person than in the third?  If you're speaking of
your own actions, isn't your intentionality either obvious, or
perhaps too delicate an issue to discuss?  And in any case,
are we sure that this -a- wasn't originally used in first
person singular?  If we once had something like /*pre-a/,
"I go intentionally", and /*re-a-ire/, "They go intentionally",
then simple reduction processes might have clipped the first
to /*pre-/, and the second to /*ra-ire/.  The fact that we
find a-grade ablaut before different particles of plurality
likely just means that an original -a- particle was locked in
place when it was followed by another particle such as a
pluralizer or a command particle, while it would simply be
dropped without affecting preceding -e if nothing followed it.
Compare the situation in modern Omaha, where last century's
ubiquitous =i particles all seem to have disappeared except
when followed by command particles or /the/.



>> 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)).

I don't think the =ha/=he particles are exactly declaratives
in OP.  They can be used to terminate not only a statement,
but a command.  In this case they are added after the command
particle.  In either case, they are optional.  My sense of
them is that they constitute an emphatic period to the
sentence.  They seem to mean: "Hey! Wake up and grasp what
I just said!"

On the other hand, I believe the =i and =e particles (and
the =akha in the example given below) are functioning as
declaratives.  They are not optional; you need one of them
here (in 19th century OP) to complete the sentence.  The =i
is certainly not a pluralizer in this context, though it is
probably historically derived from one.  I don't think the
term "proximate" is entirely well defined yet for OP.
(Wouldn't these two sentences be a classic example of the
difference between "proximate" and "obviative"?)  In any
case, declaring proximativity shouldn't make =i any less
of a declarative.

What do you mean by inner and outer contexts?


> 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.

Again, I agree with you that ablaut is a feature that
goes back to PS or MVS.  This progressive use of akha is
transparent by present or recent OP rules of sentence
construction, and would have nothing to do with ancient
ablaut.

I would suppose that the general future form *kte=a=POS
goes back much farther, and appears in Dhegiha as *tta=POS.
More recently, the positional akha would have been
substituted for POS, keeping the preceding tta by analogy.
That tta=akha is a grammatically recent innovation is shown
by the fact that our hypothetical -a- is now doubled here,
which would not have happened if it were still active and
semantically understood.


>> 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!

To the extent that a-grades occur with statives, problems
are raised for my hypothesis that -a- marked intentionality
or responsibility of action.

In OP, we have the following possible reflexes of our
hypothetical -a-:

  a=kha and a=ma.
    These two positionals imply intentional or responsible
    action, or the role that you describe as "proximate".
    The presumed root positionals khe and ma do not.
    Hypothesis works.

  a-grade ablaut before command particles.
    We command someone to take intentional, directed action.
    I don't believe we ever use a command particle with
    a stative verb in OP; e.g. /saba ga!/, "Be black!"
    Hypothesis works (I think).

  tte=>tta before POS to indicate intentionality for the future.
    Hypothesis works.

  a-grade ablaut before NEG.
    Here, I believe that we can have stative verbs preceding
    NEG that take a-grade ablaut.  I can wriggle out of this
    by assuming that the present NEG form with a-grade ablaut
    was secondarily extended to cover stative verbs as well as
    active, but my hypothesis takes a hit.
    Hypothesis fails.

  a-grade ablaut before =bi and =i.
    These are presumably pluralizers historically.  Either an
    active verb or a stative verb can potentially be pluralized,
    but only an active verb should ever have a particle of
    intentionality or responsibility associated with it.  Hence,
    if we should find that one of these particles could be used
    for both active and stative verbs, then my hypothesis would
    predict that it would condition a-grade ablaut for at least
    some (most) active verbs, but not for stative verbs.  For
    OP, =bi and =i always produce a-grade ablaut, but I don't
    think they are ever used with stative verbs.
    Hypothesis not contradicted.

Can you offer any information on a-grade ablauting
with statives?  Comparative Siouan is fair game!

Rory