Complementation of i'e

[Rory M Larson]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> FWIW Kaw speakers could/would say "Kka:Nze ie" for 'Kaw language'.  I
think you
> and Mark are on solid ground.  I took it as a compound at the time (since
the
> modifier preceded the noun).

Yes, that's the way I was taking it at first too.
That may still be the correct interpretation.
See below.


John wrote:
> UmaN'haN i'e is Omaha language, too.  The only question really is how to
> say 'say xxx in Omaha, and maybe 'to speak Omaha', albeit i'e being a
verb
> as well as a noun offers a hint there.

I worked briefly on this last night with one of the speakers,
Alberta Canby.  She was dealing with a persistent cough and
losing her voice at the time, and she was preparing to go the
the funeral the next day of a cousin who had been her favorite
source for asking about Omaha words, so conditions were not
ideal.

My half-baked idea was that if ie was i-e, INST-say,
"say by means of (Omaha)", as I favor synchronically at least,
and if ukkie was u-kki-e, in-RECIPROCAL-say, "talk to one
another", "converse", then it should be possible to combine the
two forms as i-u-kki-e, INST-in-RECIPROCAL-say, => udhu'kkie,
which should be able to take UmoN'hoN as a complement in the
same way as ie.  Thus:

  UmoN'hoN udhu'kkie  ==  'speak to someone in Omaha'

After a couple of tries, she did accept udhu'kkie as a word.

I then tried to build up from (hypothetical) e', 'say':

At first, I tried to get "Say 'dog' in Omaha!"  This failed,
as the predictable answer to that was "s^i'nuda".  When I tried
casting the sentence in Omaha myself, leaving the English
word "dog" in the sentence, I got corrected on grounds that
"dog" was not proper Omaha; the word was "s^i'nuda".  Okay,
so forget situational logic and go for straight-up Omaha:

  S^i'nudoN UmoN'hoN ia' ga!

This worked, but now she tended to gravitate toward a
different formulation:

  S^i'nuda UmoN'hoN ie' thE a' ga!

This is about what I had been trying before, except that
she closed off the UmoN'hoN ie' with a thE, which is the
standard way of changing a verb phrase into an abstract
noun.

Somewhere in there, I believe I tried, and was rejected
on:

  S^i'nudoN UmoN'hoN a' ga!

Then I shifted to ukkie.  I think I started out asking
her: "How would I say, 'Speak to me in Omaha'?", and
immediately got:

  UmoN'hoN i'e oNwoN'kkia ga!  (i.e. u-oN'-kki-e)

This seemed clear enough to leave it alone, though
there was no thE in this one.

Finally I tried my acid test phrase for "Speak to
(somebody) in Omaha!":

  UmoN'hoN udhu'kkia ga!

She said you could also say

  UmoN'hoN i'e ukki'a ga!

When I pressed for which of the latter two phrases
sounded better, she said they meant the same thing,
and that both worked.

This doesn't prove my hypothesis about i-e, of course,
since instrumental i- can be added to ukkie with no
implication that it is the same i- as in ie.  But it
does raise a few more issues.

First, ie thE, or UmoN'hoN ie thE, seems to be a
commonly accepted way of referring to the language,
and it may be most explicit and formally preferred.
Mark has this formulation in most of his chapter
titles, and I understand that he carefully worked
it out with the speakers.

Second, i'e, or UmoN'hoN i'e, can be used by itself,
in certain contexts at least, without thE.  John has
been systematically referring to this word with the
accent on the first syllable.  My tendency has been
to accent the second syllable.  I'm starting to
suspect that i'e is a clear noun, while ie or ie'/ia'
is a verb.  When I was first formulating the sentences,
I was accenting the second syllable:

  X UmoN'hoN ie' a' ga!

I was eventually corrected to:

  X UmoN'hoN ia' ga!

But perhaps it would have been acceptable if I had
said:

  X UmoN'hoN i'e a' ga!

My notes from last night have the second syllable
accented in the UmoN'hoN ie' thE phrase, but I only
have one example and may have made an error as I was
scribbling down the transcription.  Mark's chapter
names carry no accent mark on the ie.  Possibly the
accent is neutral in this case, especially if it is
being sucked into UmoN'hoN as an appendix.  Otherwise,
we might have the more interesting possibility that
UmoN'hoN i'e == "Omaha speech", while
UmoN'hoN ie' thE == "Omaha speaking"-- the abstract
nominalization of a verb phrase.

Hope that gives us a little more to chew on!

Rory

P.S.  I also asked about patient wa- in "us" and "them"
      forms.  I was assured that there was no difference
      in pronunciation, and indeed both versions seemed
      to my dubious hearing abilities to be short.