Active & stative verbs in biclausal sentences.

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> In a paper on "Time and tense (not!) in Quapaw" I did at the Typology
> Centre "down under", I used 'having' as the translation, since egaN
> seems to be the cognate of Dakotan k?uN (as we've said before) and
> contains the frozen auxiliary 'do, done'.  So {VERB-x} egaN, {VERB-y} is
> 'X done, Y happens/happened'.  I've been assuming that it sequences
> events/states temporally, egaN signalling anteriority.  I guess this
> doesn't really add much to the discussion though.

I like "having", I just think it might be a little learned or written.
In actual speech I'd probably use something else myself.  So I'm think it
might be difficult to elicit egaN constructionswith "having" examples,
htough it might not be.  They match up pretty well.

I found this example in Dorsey 90:375.1-2:

Dhe'=dhiNkhe NudaN'agha uga's^aN   hi'                  e'=de
this one     N.         travelling he has arrived there "but"

i'dhiNge t?e   gdhi.
tired    dying he has has arrived back here.

The "but" is, I think, essentially a cleft or relative in e with =de
'unexpected' attached to it.  So, the whole is something like "This
NudaN'agha is someone who managed to reach his goal and has returned all
worn out." Maybe are more literal match would be "This N. who reached his
goal has returned worn out." (In this case a relieved father is reporting
the safe return of his son from a not very successful first war party.)

A similar example in Dorsey 91:61.13-14

ma'dhe gdhe'baN naN'ba kki  edi   s^a'ppe
winter ten      two    when there six

s^ethaN' wadhi'tttaN=i    e'=de, iN'thaN uz^edha=i
so far   they have worked "but"  now     they are tired

e=bdh=e'gaN.
I think

They (are ones who) have managed to hold onto their offices for 26 years
and I think they should be ready to move on by now.

Unfortunately, in thesese examples, although i'dhiNge 'be tired' looks to
be an experiencer verb, it's hard to be sure of the mix of verbs, or they
are simply both transitive.

Examples with egaN:

Dorsey 90:454.19

uwa'z^edha=i e'gaN, nikkas^iNga aN'guxdha=b=az^i=i.
                                w(a)-aNg-uxdha-b(i)-az^i-i
we were tired as    men         we did not overtake them

This is clearly we-experiencer, we-active.  No gapping, of course.

Dorsey 90:455.1

naNppe=awahiN=i e'gaN, uwa'z^edha=i, aN'guxdha=b=az^i
we were hungry  as     we were tired we did not overtake them

This is we-stative (or experiencer), we-experiencer, we-transitive.
However, it's not clear that the last clauses is not something analogous
to a "comma splice."  We have Dorsey's assessment of this as a single
sentence, but it may not be.

We might suspect that uz^e'dha 'be tired, be weary' is an experiencer verb
with the hint of the "stative" inflection plus the semantics and that
locative u - in what? - but fortunately we have confirmation from these
clauses:

Dorsey 90:581.2

GaN'   waz^iN'ga=ama bdhu'ga=xti  a'hiN uz^e'dha=bi     egaN', ...
and so birds     the all     very wing  they were tired as

And as all the birds were wing-weary (or had tired wings), ...

Dorsey 90:592.14

Is^ta'ha=khe uz^e'dha=bi     egaN',
eyelids  the they were weary as

Dorsey 90:70.5

hi'  aNwaN'z^edha agdhiN' ha
legs I was tired  I sat
     u-aN-z^edha

The next example is a bit different, in that the nominal patient is not a
body part.

Dorsey 91:61.3

wadhi'ttaN=the aNwaN'z^edha he'ga= m=az^i
work       the I am tired   little I NEG

I am rather (or not a little) tired of the work

Note that the accompanying nominal patient has the standard inanimate
articles when definite, and that the verb does not agree with it, unless
we allow for a "zero" 3rd person marking.  The experiencer is either zero
third person (possibly plural and governing bi) or, in two of the
examples, a first person with patient pronominals.

We can certainly call verbs like uz^e'dha stative in a purely
morphological sense, if we decide we are comfortable with wa- and u- and
i- and so on in stative morphologies.  But I think that the minute we
address the existence of the extra nominal argument (when it is explicit),
we have to concede that there is a big difference between this clause
pattern and the stative pattern as it is usually conceived.  It is true
that a distressingly large number of the verbs that are comfortable with
non-third person patient subjects turn out not to be stative verbs by this
token, and that a lot of the most characteristically "adjectival"
statives turn out to be quite uncomfortable with non-third person
subjects, but I don't think this means that we really just have one class
of verb, "stative" to deal with.  Rather, I think it means we have let
morphology thoroughly dominate our perception of Siouan verb classes.

We might want to think of a verb like uz^e'dha as a transitive verb with
an impersonal third person subject, but notice that this impersonal third
person subject is fictitious in ways that the body part is not, that the
body part takes a non-subject article, and that the body part is
apparently governed by the u-locative prefix, which is certainly not
typical of either subjects or locatives.  As far as these uz^edha clauses
seem to have subjects, in fact, it seems to be the patient-concorded
"experiencer."  I have not offered any test for subjecthood, but notice
that when there is an auxiliary verb it agrees with the experiencer:

hi'  aNw-aN'-z^edha a-gdhiN'
legs I was tired'   I sat

not

*hi'  aNw-aN'-z^edha gdhiN'=i
 legs I was tired    they-sat

(Sit is probably the wrong positional durative for legs, I grant.)

wadhi'ttan=the aNw-aN'-z^edha he'ga=m=az^i
work           I am tired     I not a little

not

*wadhi'ttaN=the aNw-aN'-z^edha he'ga=z^i
 work           I am tired     it not a little

I don't know if I understand the syntax well enough to claim that that
either of these constructions serves to prove that the experiencer s the
subject, but I think it is clear that the experiencer is central in ways
that the body part or other additional patient is.

===

There is one interesting issue with naN'ppe=...hiN 'be hungry'.  Clearly
this is structured as an experiencer, being something along the lines of
NOUN=PAT-VERB.  But once something incorporates its patient like this, and
no external nominal argument is possible (as far as I know), maybe it is a
stative, albeit a derived one.  That is, the clause syntactic argument is
gone.

With the wa-statives, like waz^a'z^e, wakhe'ga, etc., it might be argued
that the same argument applied, since wa generally precludes a nominal
argument, and wa cannot be removed from these verbs.