OP articles.

[R. Rankin]

> It's begining to be clear that you'd probably have to list articles or
> something about articles with the nouns in an OP dictionary.  There
> certainly seems to be some degree of conventionality regarding what range
> of articles you can use with particular nouns and what the implications
> are of using (each of) them. Some (inanimate) nouns might be dhaN/the/ge
> or khe/the/ge, others dhaN/the/khe/ge and so on.

Nick Evans in Melbourne asked me about this and I really couldn't answer
authoritatively.  He felt after my presentation that this was a transparent,
descriptive, positional system.  I said I didn't believe that ANY such system
was really semantically natural, whether it involved gender, position, animacy,
shape, texture, or whatever.  Classificatory systems that see a lot of use (such
as articles) *always* get conventionalized to one or another extent.  I'd be
willing to stick my neck out and claim it as a universal.

It's probably worth doing a comprehensive search of the entire set of Dorsey
texts for a listing and then comparing and adding to that with the kind of
checking Rory is doing.  I think it is important to double check all the various
experiments with Ponca speakers in Oklahoma in order to eliminate any effects of
lessened use of the languages in their respective communities.  The forms that
match after the 100 year+ separation should be considered established
(especially if they agree with Dorsey 1890).  The ones that don't match we can
wonder about.

Bob