OP stative verb ablaut?

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Could you elaborate on this for someone who is a bit challenged
> on the linguistic jargon?  In OP we have a series of things that
> I have been calling positionals:
>
>   akHa'        dhiN            kHe
>   ama'         tHoN            tHe
>                dhiNkHe'        dhoN
>                ma              ge
>                dhoNkHa'
>
> I've understood that the two on the left marked proximate, and
> all the others marked obviative.  Bob recently posted a very
> interesting item noting the absence of the first two in Quapaw,
> using the term 'positional' as exclusive of the akHa' and ama'.
> Now you seem to be using the term 'article' for only the proximate
> two on the left.  Do we still have a term for all of these together?

I think he meant that only the first set was missing, including ama (apa,
aba in Osage, Kaw), but not the ma (pa, ba) in the second set, which iss
present (in Osage, Kaw, Quapaw).  In OP it is reasonably clear that this
second set form is just =ma, but this seems less clear to those studying
the more southerly Dhegiha languages, or maybe the initial a- of the first
set is less clear or both.  Note that in Osage and Kaw the analog of the
OP akha article s (a)kxa and the analog of the OP thaN article is txa(N),
often kxa(N), while the male declarative form (?) of *=pi is =pa (or =ba)
(< =p(i)=a ?), and it requires a certain amount of divine inspiration to
make out the various =kxa and =pa (=ba) enclitics of nouns and sentence.

It's not clear to what extent the inanimate markes in the third column
mark obviative or are independent of the whole obviative/proximate thing.
It's not clear if inanimates (marked with column 3, as opposed to column
1) can be subjects.

> Then what about 'topic' and 'focus'?  I've generally understood
> a topic in Siouan as a noun phrase that the verb comments upon,
> but that's apparently not what you mean here.  I was using 'focus'
> to mean entities "which are of central concern, centerstage in
> narratives, topic of conversation".  Apparently 'focus' has some
> other formal meaning.

I'm going to shy away from this, except to say that I have myself no doubt
been guilty of saying "focus of attention" in a very loose way where
topic, or even definite, would be more appropriate and was guiltily aware
that Ardis might well be chiding me.  I haven't looked yet!  The problem
is that linguists are now very technical with these terms and their use of
focus is only partly in accord with the popular understanding of the term.
In popular usage "the topic of the discussion" (the particular subject ewe
discussed) and "the focus of the discussion" (what we kept coming back to,
or what we were concentrating on) are more or less synonymous, though not
precisely.  In linguistic usage the topic is the "old information in a
clause" ("the dog" in "the dog caught a rat") and the focus is "new
information, with attention drawn to it," more or less, e.g., "a rat" in
"it was a rat that the dog caught."  A collection of clauses can share a
topic, but a coherent set can hardly share a focus.  I hope somebody who
is full touch with current practice will take this up and correct my
errors!  (Here and earlier.)