Siouan "have" verb

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004, David Kaufman wrote:
> Also, as concerns "have," if other Siouan languages do have this verb,
> is it simply one verb form regardless of what is possessed (as in
> English)?  I ask this, because I know in some other Amerindian languages
> of other families, such as Cherokee and Navajo, different forms of the
> verb "have" are used depending on things like size, shape, and texture
> of the item possessed.  To give a Cherokee example: a-gi-ha "I have
> (something weighty of indefinite shape)" vs. a-quv-ya "I have (something
> long, narrow, inflexible)."  How does Siouan handle this?

This pretty much depends on the language, I believe.

The OP verb 'to have', cognate with similarly glossed verbs in the rest of
MVS (except Dakotan) is adhiN (popular othographies would be athiN, with N
coming out as raised n).  In the Dorsey texts this is used with a variety
of things, but not all things.  Examples in the first person:

zaNzi'-maN'de abdhiN'=tta=miNkhe 'I will have an Osage Orange bow.'
Ttiu'dhiNba iz^a'z^e abdhiN 'My name is Lightening in the Lodge'
eda'daN abdhiN' gdhu'ba=xti dhidhi'tta 'everything I have is yours'
naNbe'=the abdhiN' agdhi ha 'I brought the hand back' ('I hav ethe hand I
  returned')

s^aN'ge=thaN abdhiN'  akhi'=      thaN  a'agdhiN
horse   the  I had it I returned  which I sat on it
'I rode the horse that I had'

I thought I'd better gloss the last example more carefully as it is the
first relative clause I've noticed with 'the' internally and externally.
I have the impression that with horses it might be more normal to phrases
things with the tta 'alienable possession' form, but these don't get
glosses 'have'.  I think adhiN' is normally 'have' in the sense of having
something that can exist without being possessed.  So it wouldn't be
normal with kin.

wamu'ske abdhiN' bdhu'ga=xti  'all (the) wheat I had '

However, for kin, the causative is normal:

ihaN'=adhe his-mother=I-made-her 'I had her for a mother'

But:

PpaN'kka iNs^?a'ge wiN abdhI 'an old Ponca man I had' (Dorsey thinks
  someone unrelated living with the family, somebody supported out of a
  sense of responsibility - "I kept him" - but I wonder if the letter's
  author means a father-in-law.)

didhadi    dhathaN'    ede=s^te
his-father you-had-him unexpected=soever
'even if you had a father'

Here I think the use of thaN might be dictated by the skepticism.  I have
corrected Dorsey's s^athaN (s^ with c) to dhathaN (Dorsey would have cent
sign for dh).

Also:

z^u' dhathaN' 'you had a body'

This verb thaN is sometimes translated 'be plentiful', but I think it is
possibly more like 'be provided with'.  Dorsey writes it explicitly as
thaN, with an opening apostrophe, but I am not sure it isn't ttaN.  I
don't really trust his explicit aspiration marking in OP, because of
several cases where it turned out not to be correct.

'not to have' is done with the experiencer verb dhiNge' 'to lack, not to
have'