Complementation of i'e

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> In class, I'm pretty sure we have been using UmoN'hoN ie from the
> beginning for 'Omaha language', and I don't recall the speakers ever
> objecting.  (We have a vested interest here, as Mark will have to
> re-write his dissertation if we can't use ie with UmoN'hoN as a
> complement!)

Probably you're OK, but notice that the ladies you work with didn't
correct you from UmaNhaN ie a ga to UmaNhaN ia ga until very recently. I
think Omaha good manners might sometimes prevents correction of things.

For what it's worth, I've also noticed that in English I hear people using
complementation structures that I wouldn't use myself, and even though I'm
a kind of captious, outspoken person I don't necessarily correct them.
Ex. I hear "rob something from someone" where I'd say "steal something
from someone" or "rob someone of something."  I think off-kilter
complementation structures just bother most people less than mangled
morphology.  For one thing, it's often harder for a non-linguistto explain
what bothers them.

And by now, of course, if there were a problem originally, things may have
started sounding right that way, another standard elicitation problem.
Enough repetitions and sometimes even the wrong stuff sounds OK.

What I might do in a situation like this - and this is more instinct than
vast experience - is to ask for unrelated sentences (to try to escape any
"training" effect) like "I speak Pawnee." or "They were speaking Kiowa, so
I didn't understand them." "In Dakota you say it about the same." and so
on, and work up to "Please say ... in Dakota."  Then, all you have to do
is substitute Omaha for Dakota.

Another thought, in a lot of places in America one talks a language rather
than speaking it.  I forget how it works in Nebraska.

It wouldn't hurt to try a variety of sentences with talk, speak, say,
tell, think, suspect, etc., and various argument structures.

Slightly off topic, but I remember when working with Omaha speakers that
if I said "How do you say 'I am hungry.'?" I'd usually get "You're
hungry." but if I said "How would you translate 'I am hungry.'?" I'd get
the first person.  Another thing I noticed was that if I went through a
paradigm I'd get 'I am hungry', 'you are hungry, too', 'he is hungry,
too', and so on.  In other words, the paradigm acted as a conversational
context.  I realized that a sequence of questions would build on one
another whether I intended them to or not.

> I would understand u-kki-e as 'in-RECIPROCAL-say', or 'say things to
> each other', 'converse', 'talk to someone'. This can also be translated
> as 'speak' in English, but the emphasis here is on saying things to
> somebody, or a dialogue. The word ie seems to be i-e, 'INST-say', 'to
> say by means of (some protocol)'.  In this case, the emphasis is on the
> tools of speech, i.e. the words or the language.  This conception in
> turn might extend to cover 'monologue' or 'oration', and hence 'speak'
> in that sense of the English word.

Verbs of speaking seem to me to a bit like verbs of motion.  They don't
translate individually, but as systems.  You have to understand the
parameters of the two systems before you can pick a term from one system
to equate to the other in a given context.  That's probably true of all
vocabulary, but with some domains you can get further by ignoring the
parameters and trying to match one word to one word (or two) and vice
versa.