Siouan Infinitives

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
> This discussion of infinitives or lack thereof leads me to a Siouan
> question: I know in Cherokee, from what I know so far, there is an
> actual infinitive form of the verb.  But it seems to me that Hidatsa
> does not have an infinitive form, and I believe that the third person
> "unmarked" form of the verb is considered the "neutral" or dictionary
> form.  (John B., please correct if I'm wrong.)  Do other Siouan
> languages have infinitives, or do they simply have the "unmarked" form
> of verbs like Hidatsa?

I don't believe any of the Siouan languages have a specific nominalized
form, infinitive or otherwise.  A possible exception to this
would be the *aru- and *awu- (not sure I have this right!) forms
in Crow-Hidatsa and their agnate forms in Mandan.  Perhaps these can
receive inflection?

Apart from this, however, it appears that different ablaut grades are
preferred for citation form than for third person singular in some
languages:

- I think a-grade is preferred for citation forms in Dakotan.  I'm not
convinced I understand the rules or conventions behind this, however.

- Randy Graczyk has pointed out that the ablaut grade of the citation form
of various Crow verbs can differ from the ablaut-grade of predicative
forms.

- Something incipiently like this occurs in Dhegiha where third person
singular proximate takes the a-grade (and the plural marker), but citation
forms usually take the e-grade.  I believe this is more or less a
nominalized form, or, to be more precise I believe that there is a
tendency for obviative forms to occur more often in nominalized clauses
than in main clauses.  I don't know what the precise conditioning is.  If
anyone has worked this out, I'd be delighted to hear about it!  I have
also seen pairs of male and female imperatives used as citation forms in
some cases in the Swetland "UmoNhoN Iye of Elizabeth Stabler" for Omaha,
and they are all a-grades.