Siouan "have" verb

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> We've recently asked our speakers about this, and I think we got a
> strong affirmation that the word is indeed ttaN, not tHaN.

Thanks!

> I've always wondered about that rare "opening apostrophe" in Dorsey.
> So it is supposed to indicate explicit aspiration?

That's my understanding of it.  Dorsey's use of apostrophes has to be
watched closely.  He uses closing apostrophe after stops for ejection, and
opening apostrophes for aspiration, though as seen I'm not sure his
judgements of aspiration for Omaha-Ponca are reliable.  He also uses
opening apostrophe after fricatives for glottalization, and between vowels
or initially for glottal stop, so context determines what opening
apostrophe means.  I've seen opening apostrophe used initially for three
different cases:

a) Words like (?)aN that fall into the Proto-Siouan glottal stop stem
category, though the only form in which glottalization could appear would
be initially in te third peson.  I don't hear these forms as any more
glottalized than any other vowel initial, but I'm not sure I ever really
examined them carefully enough.

b) Words like ?i 'give' which have glottal stop from *k? and *x?.  Again I
hear nothing special initially - i.e., maybe there is a glottal stop - but
there is definitely a glottal stop when a V final pronominal follows.

c) Words like (?)idhe 'to speak of' in which I again detect nothing
special, and have no reasons historical or contemporary to suspect a
glottal stop.


> But don't we also encounter it after the 'd' in d(u'ba, 'some', as
> opposed to du'ba, 'four'?  (My opening parenthesis being used for
> Dorsey's opening apostrophe here.)

And then there's "d(uba" which I think represents j^uba.  But why Dorsey
writes d(uba and not djuba I am at loss to say.  At least he never writes
djuba, as far as I can tell, and j^uba definitely occurs.  Maybe he was
early on impressed by a slow and careful du'ba with the expected
glottalized vowel of CV'CV forms?

> > 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'm pretty sure I've seen ttaN used in Dorsey for a man "having" a son,
> in a situation that I don't think was in any way irrealis.

I hadn't really thought of it in terms of irrealis.  It's more in the way
of belittlment, though I guess irrealis is fair.  Still, it sounds like I
had better go back and see what the options are for kin terms and/or ttaN!

> I wonder if ttaN and the causative don't reflect two different levels of
> "kinship-having", rather like the stereotypical "Anglo-Saxon" and
> "Norman French" levels in English.
>
> > However, for kin, the causative is normal:
> >
> > ihaN'=adhe his-mother=I-made-her 'I had her for a mother'
>
> The word ttaN would be "Anglo-Saxon".  It would be the original basic
> word for "having" a relative, where one is speaking of blood
> relationship and real nuclear family dependencies.
>
> The causative would be "Norman French".  It would be used for
> relationships assumed for high-level social, economic and political
> purposes.  ...

There might well be some sort of connotative distinciton.  I don't know
how widely the *htuN verb is attested with kin.  I think it's widespread
in the sense of 'for a resource to occur', i.e., as 'be plentiful', which
would be consistent with 'be provided with'.  The causative construction
is pan-Mississippi Valley.  I'm not sure about Ioway-Otoe, but it's found
in Dakotan, Dhegiha, and Winnebago.  This wouldn't prevent it from being
an upper register form in OP or Dhegiha, of course.

> > Also:
> >
> > z^u' dhathaN' 'you had a body'
>
> Yes.  And nE'xetti-sihi'-ttaN, 'a skillet with legs'.
>
> "Having" a body, and "having" certain parts characteristically,
> seem to be in the realm of ttaN.
>
> > This verb thaN is sometimes translated 'be plentiful', but I think it is
> > possibly more like 'be provided with'.
>
> I agree, though there does seem to be some connotation of
> abundance, too.  Perhaps 'be _comfortably_ provided with'?

That more or less fits the context with 'father' and 'son', too.  It might
not work with 'spouse' or some other relationships.

I won't include the rest of Rory's comments here, but it's clear that the
folks involved in the classes at UNL have been doing some interesting and
useful things with 'have' as well as everything else!