Dorsey Demonstrative Footnote

[Koontz John E]

An interesting footnote appears in Dorsey 1890 on p. 18.

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[In regard to] ppa[']he s^e[']hidhaN[']di, [p.] 15, [line 3]:

Let A denote the place of the speaker;
B, ppahe s^ekhe, that visible long hill, a short distance off;
b, ppahe s^edhaN, that visible curvilinear hill, a short distance off;
C, ppahe s^ehikhe, that visible long hill, reaching a point further away;
c, ppahe s^ehidhaN, ditto, if curvilinear;
D, ppahe s^ehidhekhe, that visible long hill, extending beyond ppahe
s^ekhe, and ppahe s^ehikhe;
d, ppahe  s^ehidhedhaN, that visible curvilinear hill, extending beyond
ppahe s^edhaN and ppahe s^ehidhaN.

[I've adapted the prthography.  There follows a diagram in which X
represents an oblong box orthogonal to the line of sight, Y an oblong box
extending along the line of sight, and Z a circle.  JEK]

A ... BX ... CX ... DX;
A ... BY ... CY ... DY;
A ... bZ ... cZ ... dZ.
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The ... represents a line of dashes labelled "line of sight."  I take the
reiteration of two lines with orthogonal and parallel oblongs to mean that
the length of the hill could be aligned in any way with respect to the
line of sight.  Basically he's saying that it was explained to him that
s^e' refers to something a short distance off, but visible, usually
glossed by him (and therefore probably by his consultants) as 'that' or
'that near you', s^e'=hi refers to something visible but further away,
glossed 'yonder', and s^e'=hi=dhe refers to something visible but even
further off, glossed 'that distant' or 'that yonder'.

For the record, at least once (Dorsey 1890:33.4) he does gloss ga'=ge as
"those (unseen and scattered)," so I wasn't totally hallucinating on this,
as I feared I might have been, to be perfectly honest.  However, examples
in which ga-things are quite clearly visible and near at hand are also
found.  I haven't looked into this extensively yet.  Incidentally, I think
we may have covered some of this ground before.  The script - "X about
demonstratives," said JEK; "But not really X," said someone else; "Oops,"
said JEK, face red - that (near at hand and visible) seems familiar.  But
I think the enlightement, in this case what Rory and the folks he's been
working with have been able to explain about s^e=hi and ga - might have
been different last time around.  I will try to track down the last round.

John E. Koontz
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz