Michigamea (Re: (O)maha)

[Rankin, Robert L]

When Ives did his paper this weekend, Eric Hamp made the point that
there are scarcely any languages that haven't shuffled their negative
morphology rather completely over a 2K year period.  Even Breton and
Welsh, which are very close, have gone their separate ways on negation.
So apparently these combinations of 'adversative', 'dubitative',
'negative', etc. are very common -- more so than I had realized.  So
Siouan /s^iN/, /ku/ and /riN/ aren't alone in finding themselves
combined and re-combined periodically.  Along with various intensifiers,
diminutives, etc., all of which are common participants in negation.

Bob

> 's interesting that negatives and dubitatives intertwine in
Algonquian, since similar things seem to occur in Siouan.  It certainly
seems natural enough, but you like to see it happening elsewhere and
even in the neighborhood, if possible.

>  I had to explain Mandan wa- (and maybe Michigamea *we-) I think I'd
be inclined to see it as a somewhat heavily modified version of *wiN-...
'one', or, in effect, as an analog of the post verbal elements in more
familiar European circumfixal negatives, e.g., French ne VERB pas,
point, etc. 'not VERB a step, a bit' cf.  wa-VERB-NEG < 'one' VERB-NEG
'to not ... one(ce)'.  The form of PS 'one' is somewhat difficult
because of the amount of similarly arbitrary ammendment in the daughter
languages.  Bob Rankin probably knows the material better.