ie 'speak' again.

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, R. Rankin wrote:

> It occured to me to wonder whether there are any verbs in these languages that
> begin with the vowel /i/ that do NOT inflect with the pronominals "infixed"?

Well, idhe 'to speak of' differs in its treatment of inclusive aN, as I
mentioned, but I don't know of any verbs that start with vowels that don't
get handled as locatives or preverbs.

One group of additions are roots that are or maybe just V, e.g., perhaps e
in i'e, which might be *i...he, or, as you argue, *...ie.  And then in OP
the root of ai' 'to come' is just i (cf. vertitive gi, not *khi, and
Dakota (hi)bu with the same stem.  The verb 'to day' seems to be just
e(e)' in the third person, but this is suspect of being contracted from
*e...he.  However, in the present context we need polysyllabic verbs with
initial i.

> We cannot automatically assume that every verb that begins with /i/ has
> a 'locative, directional' or 'instrument' prefix.  Some roots must
> simply begin with /i/.  But if every verb that begins with /i/ inflects
> like an instrumental, i.e., infixed, then it appears that there has been
> analogical leveling, so that both instrumental/locative verbs AND verbs
> simply starting with /i/ are treated alike.  And if this is so, then
> {ie} 'speak' may or may not be, or have ever been, bimorphemic.  In
> other words, infixed conjugation wouldn't enable any of us to determine
> the morphemic status of i-.  Only determining the meaning or function of
> i- in this particular verb would permit us (or native speakers) to do
> that.  And I, for one, see no identifiable meaning or function for the
> /i/ of {ie} 'speak'.  One can do virtually anything with enough semantic
> latitude, of course, but there's nothing there that is at all obvious to
> me.

The verb does also seem to have infixed derivation, as in the case of
i'gie 'speak against someone', and the i is accented, but apart from that,
and a suggestion that somebody who can should try various sorts of
complements with it (in various languages), I don't know how to counter an
argument like this.  It's certainly not unreasonable to consider the
possibility that i'...e is reformulated from *...ie.

Verbs of speaking and saying and telling are one of the many rather under
investigated areas in Siouan.