Historical Explanation for *pi as Plural and Proximate and Nominalizer

[REGINA PUSTET]

--- "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

>
> The CSD file for this item also mentions the Dakotan
> particle /ob/
> 'with' as a possible cognate, in which case Dakotan
> would have developed
> doublets.

If someone asked me to guess what the origin of ob
'with' might be, I'd spontaneously come up with the
verb opha 'to join (someone in doing something)'.
Lakota has lots of postpositions that have arisen from
full verbs, which are often subject to truncation
(i.e. the final vowel is dropped and the voicing of
the now word-final consonant changes) in the process
of grammaticalization. An example of this is kah^log
'though', which originates in kah^loka 'to pierce'.

Regina




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