OP /the/ vs. /dhaN/ (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 18 May 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> I decided to wait till I had checked with the speakers again before
> replying to this thread, and by now John has gone far beyond me!

It is, of course, delightful that you can do this!

> Elongate, not horizontal.  But I think John and Catherine have
> already taken that position.

Elgonate certainly seems to describe the usage better with body parts and
maybe tools (or perhaps artifacts would be a better word).

> When I first asked the speakers about body parts a couple of months
> ago, it seemed they consistently preferred /tHe/ for a set.  When I
> brought the discussion around to eyes, I tried the idea of 'cross-eyed'.
> Their first response was /iNs^ta' dhoN/ (are crossed).

I think the difference here is subtle, and that /the/ for sets (tHe in the
Macy Schools orthgoraphy, with H representing superscript h) works when
either the settedness is quite important or when it is a case of an
organized set across multiple individuals - like the eyes of the coyotes
below.  I think in this case =the works a lot like =ma for animates.  But
=ge can occur in some cases for multiple body parts, possibly to indicate
lack of organization - no long part of body, or selected randomly from the
whole number available.  Normally when referring to one or both (all) of a
bodypart from a particular individual one uses the appropriate "singular"
article, which seems to be mostly =dhaN (thoN) 'non-elogate' vs. =khe
(kHe) 'elongate', though a few body parts seem to use =the (tHe).

I'd wonder if you couldn't get i(N)s^ta'=the 'eyes' in cases like 'he was
blind in both eyes' or 'both his eyes were itching a lot' or maybe 'one of
his eyes was light colored' vs. 'both of his eyes were light colored'.
But the difficulty of fishing with examples like this, though, is that it
can deaden the sensibilities of the speakers - everything sounds right,
even if it isn't - and/or back them into insisting on a certain perception
of the situation among several that might be possible.  When either of
these situations arises you get cases of a speaker allowing or insisting
on version a one day, and then insisting on version b another.

In this particular case, it's possible that without just the right, rather
marked conception of the situation one might normally still use =dhaN.
It's safer to provide lots of examples taken from some sort of neutral
source or to watch for examples in context and then ask about those.

> I asked if you could say /iNs^ta' tHe/ (are crossed), and they said it
> sounded better that way.  This past week, after John's posting, I asked
> again.  This time they flatly denied that you could say /iNs^ta' tHe/
> for human eyes; it must be /dhoN/ even in the plural.  So for
> 'cross-eyed' we now have:
>
>   iNs^ta' dhoN xa'wiN         iNs^ta' [dhoN] dhixa'wiN
>   "s/he is cross-eyed"        "s/he crossed his/her eyes"
>   (stative verb form)         (active verb form)

Eyes from one individual.

> For animals, however, we can say /iNs^ta' tHe/, as in the following
> example they gave me:
>
>   iNs^ta' tHe unaa'goNba
>   "their eyes light up"
>     (referring to the eyes of coyotes at night in the headlights)

Eyes from multiple individuals, real or hypothetical.  What would happen
if speaking of humans generally or in a group and saying 'they squint or
blink their eyes in bright sun'.

> With legs, they agreed that it could be either /tHe/ or /kHe/
> depending on how you were using it.  But in specific examples,
> they seemed to use these to distinguish the set from the singular:
>
>   z^ega' tHe              z^ega' kHe
>   "both legs"             "one leg"

Which is where I'm coming from with my "both eyes" examples.  However, the
whole predicate has to make sense with the conception both and that might
vary with the language.  Even so, in English "both eyes were crossed"
might be a bit moot, since, while the irregularity is esentially in one
eye, the perception is that the alignment of both eyes - the whole gaze -
is affected.

> Tangentially to this inquiry, I learned some nuances to the 'leg' terms.
> It seems that /z^ega'/ is the term for the whole (mammalian) leg.
> Previously, I had thought it just referred to the thigh.  Fletcher and
> La Flesche have either /z^i'be/ or /hi'/ for 'leg'.

I think Dorsey often specifies that z^i'be refers to the lower leg, though
he never actually says 'shin'.

> Our speakers do not seem to recognize /hi'/ as an independent term for
> 'leg' at all, though it is still good for 'trunk', 'stalk' or 'stem'.

I wonder if this might be different between Omaha and Ponca (or even among
a really large group of Omaha speakers).

> They consider /z^i'be/ to be 'leg', especially the front from the knee
> down, or in other words the shin.  The shin bone itself is /noN'xpahi/.
> The metatarsal segment, the part of the foot between the ankle and the
> toes, is /sihi'/.

I've been wondering about sihi', which turns up in the Dorsey texts.

> On horses, this seems to hold for front and back legs: the entire leg is
> /z^ega'/, while the metatarsal or metacarpal segment down to the hoof is
> /sihi'/.  For a /wagdhi's^ka/, the class of crawling creatures that
> includes insects and lizards, the whole leg is /sihi'/.