OP stative verb ablaut?

[Rankin, Robert L]

> Mark and I were told in our
> session on Friday that this is how one gives a comparative in Omaha:
>
>   toN'ga - 'he is big'
>   toNga' - 'he is bigger'
>
>   oNtoN'ga - 'I am big'
>   oN'toNga' - 'I am bigger'

> Interesting.  It may not be a comparative in the strict sense, but it
does seem like some sort of focus-based accentual shift.

In Kaw it seemed to me that accent shift in words like tto'Nga 'big,
great' was related to where the accent fell on the preceding word in the
clause.  Basically, there seemed to be a constraint against two accented
syllables juxtaposed across a word boundary.  "Comparison of adjectives"
only exists if a language has real adjectives, of course.  I confess I'm
deeply suspicious about finding it in languages where the noun modifiers
are essentially verbs.  Most Siouan and Muskogean "comparative"
constructions I have been able to elicit were adverbial or nominal in
nature.  So 'Bill is taller than Sam' would come out 'Sam is tall: Bill
is a lot tall', or something very close to that.  And in naturally
occurring texts, there just weren't any "comparatives", of course.  I
can't say what is happening here, but it looks very much like some sort
of suffix.  I seriously question whether there is real comparison of
"adjectives", and I suspect we should look at some other kind of
explanation.  It is perfectly natural for anyone whose primary language
is one like English to want/expect to find an exact equivalent for every
grammatical category, and I'm sure that every language can express
degrees of some quality in some way.  All I can say for sure about these
Omaha forms is that I didn't get anything like this in Kaw when I tried
out comparatives.  It will be interesting to see what you guys can
discover about this.  It's fascinating data.

Bob


> If the neutral form ends in -e, this accent shift causes ablaut.
>
>   oNha'hade - 'I am light (weight)'
>   oN'hahada' - 'I am lighter'
>
> However, this same mechanism also seems to be used sometimes in place
> of the wa- pronoun to indicate plurality:
>
>   gdhe'ze             - 'it is striped'
>   woN'oNgidhe gdheza' - 'they are all striped'
>
> Anyway, that's where we seem to be at right now.  It's quite probable
> that I'm are confused on some things.  Any further suggestions or
> comments on this would be very welcome!

I wonder if some of the accented vowels are just long (...a=i > a:).
This is one of the contexts where I used to think maybe there was
length.

It would be interesting to know what the pitch contours over these forms
are.  I suspect one of the things that trips people up in listening for
accent is associating it with length (which is more or less an
appropriate cue in English).