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

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 19 May 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Rory wrote:
> > For 'hand', I still like the concept of it being a set
> > of fingers.  Since *naNpe is newly adopted to mean 'hand'
> > in MVS, could its original meaning have been 'finger'?
> > This wouldn't affect 'foot', which is older, and probably
> > was not derived as 'set of toes'.
>
> I should have added that this hypothesis depends on OP tHe going back
> approximately as far as MVS.  Perhaps John or Bob could comment on
> whether that's possible?

The morpheme =the is that old or older because there are cognates (used as
auxiliaries and positional verbs) across MVS.  Use of *the as an article,
however, seems to be a Dhegiha innovation.  The whole Dhegiha article
system seems to be a Dhegiha innovation.  It's more likely, though this is
not entirely clear, that Dakotan *ki(N) ~ *k(?uN)was an article or
something like one in PS as a whole.  As I recall there are some similar
forms (among others) in Biloxi.

Articles are not an area where you expect to see a whole lot of historical
stability, however.  Repeated reinnovation from the domain of third person
pronominals/demonstratives is more the rule.  I've always thought
Greenberg's article on the origins of gender marking was very interesting
in this line, and Bob's article on auxiliaries and positionals is also
extremely important, not to mention being especially germain from a Siouan
point of view.

In any event, if =the indicates sets (among other things) you wouldn't
need to be able to appeal to a PMV set meaning for *naNaNp-e to justify a
"hand-as-set" analysis within a given Dhegiha language, or so it seems to
me.