*V-stems (Re: verb suppletion)

[ROOD DAVID S]

Lak. has unaspirated "t" in both yuta (wate, yate) and wote (wawate,
wayate, wote, i.e. the form with the wa- prefix and the (now obsolete)
rule that -ayu- goes to -o-.  I'm not sure what you mean by 'eat
physically'.

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, R. Rankin wrote:

> I think the real question I have about 'eat' is whether
> the Dakotan 1st and 2nd person forms with the accented
> /a/ have a plain /t/ or an aspirated /th/ in them.  I
> know that yuta has a plain /t/, but 'chew, eat
> physically' has /th/, and in fact has PSi *th (one of
> very few forms in which *th isn't from *rh).  I showed
> that in Hochunk and Chiwere *th and *t will have
> identical outcomes, so those languages aren't
> diagnostic.  If Dak. has wate, yate, then I think John
> is right and some other explanation is in order.  It
> occurs to me that we already know that the sequence *wu
> (including wuN) is highly unstable in Siouan, and that
> normally it dissimilates to either /ru/ or /wa/, i.e.,
> either the vowel or consonant changes.  That being the
> case, the 1st person of 'eat', *w-ute could give /wate/
> regularly.  Then only the 2nd person requires
> accounting for, and an analogical explanation, ad hoc
> as they may seem, based on the 1st sg. plus the
> existence of a near synonym, /yatha/ 'eat', is pretty
> reasonable.
>
> I don't think we've really ever figured out the precise
> status of /?/ and/or /r/ and /w/ in the putative
> vowel-initial verb stems.  The question is whether they
> are organic or epenthetic, or both, and there are still
> a lot of imponderables (several of which John points
> out below).
>
> Bob
>
> > On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, R. Rankin wrote:
> >> I think the pronouns in these 'eating' verbs are the
> >> same conservative
> >> pattern you get with 'be sitting' (ra:Nke) and 'be
> >> lying' (ruNke), verbs
> >> in which the initial glides may be epenthetic.  The
> >> only difference is
> >> nasality of the V.  I think John is expecting a
> >> somewhat more innovative
> >> pattern.
>
> > That's true.  I was thinking of *raathe as taking an
> > r-stem inflectional
> > pattern, because it does in Dhegiha.  However, there
> > are verbs that take a
> > pattern of A1 wV..., A2 s^r-..., A3 r... as Bob says.
> > Usually the stem
> > initial vowel is nasalized and A2 s^- has been lost
> > before r, so that
> > after all the sound changes have worked out you get a
> > pattern of A1 m...,
> > A2 n..., A3 r... (or A3 w...).
> >
> > Anyway, with that inflectional pattern A1 *waathe, A2
> > *s^raathe, A3
> > *raathe might occur, and mixing with A1 *prute, A2
> > *s^rute, A3 *rute you
> > might get quite interesting things, especially if the
> > language also merged
> > *t and *th as *t (or *d) as Winnebago and IO do.  I
> > hadn't allowed for
> > that.  However, though it would be exciting to have
> > an(other) oral
> > instance of this pattern, I still tend to feel that
> > this verb doesn't
> > exhibit it, on the strength of the Dakotan forms,
> > which don't have
> > aspiration as far as I know.
> >
> > In regard to the *V-initial stems, I have the feeling
> > that the m/n/(*r ~ w
> > ~ 0) pattern they exhibit is essentially an outgrowth
> > of the *?-stem
> > pattern (m/*y/0).  I apologize for the mixed notation
> > immediately
> > preceding.  I think that the basic pattern for
> > *?-initial (or maybe it's
> > *V-initial) stems (and others) was
> >
> >   *V-stems      *Regulars      *r-stems
> >
> > A1 *w-V...       *wa-CV...       *p-rV... < *w-rV...
> > A2 *y-V...       *ya-CV...      *s^-rV... < *y-rV...
> > A3   *V...          *CV...         *rv...
> >
> > The *V-stems stems in question are mostly nasalized -
> > though *o 'to wound'
> > and *u 'to come (head this way)' seem to be oral -
> > and mostly have some
> > element before the inflectional slot that conditions
> > an epenthetic *r or
> > *w in the A3 form, e.g.,
> >
> > A1 *i-w- uNghe 'I question'
> > A2 *i-y- uNghe 'you question'
> > A3 *i-  ruNghe 'she questions'
> >
> > leading to paradigms like
> >
> >   Proto-Dhegiha    Omaha-Ponca
> > A1 *imaNghe         imaNghe
> > A2 *iz^aNghe        *iz^aNghe
> > A2 *iraNghe         idhaNghe
> >
> > except that the second person appears instead as
> > is^naNghe (later
> > inaNghe), which amounts to substituting an A2 form
> > from the *r-stem
> > (dh-stem) paradigm, presumably by analogy with the
> > apparent *r-stem
> > (dh-stem) form in the third person.  Sometimes
> > (across Dhegiha) you find
> > the first person in dh-stem form, too, e.g.,
> > ibdhaNghe, or the third
> > person might have epenthetic w instead of epenthetic
> > dh (*r), e.g.,
> > iwaNghe.
> >
> >> As I recall, 'sit, stand' and 'eat' are among the
> >> very few verbs with
> >> the archaic (V-initial?) conjugation pattern.
> >
> > The pattern that appears with *i-(r)uNghe 'to
> > question' also appears in
> > Dhegiha with some of the positionals, e.g., dhiNkhe <
> > *(r)iNk- 'SITTING
> > ANIMATE' which inflects
> >
> > A1 miNkhe      I-the-sitting
> > A2 (s^)niNkhe  you-the-sitting
> > A3 dhiNkhe     she-the-sitting
> >
> > (And has the same pattern of inflection for the
> > suppletive stem dhaNkha <
> > *uNk- in the plural.)
> >
> > I regard the *?-stems as cases of this pattern, too,
> > because I've noticed
> > that the Dakotan and Winnebago patterns for those
> > stems match this mixed
> > *V-initial/*r-initial pattern, cf. Dakotan
> >
> >   Dakotan          Winnebago
> > A1 muN              ha?uN
> > A2 nuN < *s^-nuN    s^?uN < *s^-?uN
> > A3 ?uN              ?uN
> >
> > (Winnebago forms from memory and I'm not sure about
> > length.)
> >
> > In the same stem Omaha-Ponca has
> >
> > A1 maN
> > A2 z^aN < *y-uN
> > A3 aN
> >
> > OP z^ and Da n don't correspond (and neither does
> > Winnebago s^?), but if
> > the Da n is from s^n and that s^n is an analogical
> > importation from
> > *r-stems, then everything makes sense.  (I assume
> > Winnebago has rebuilt
> > things on the assumption of a root *?uN.)
> >
> > Of course, there's a rub, which is that I do have to
> > assume that all
> > *V-stem (or *?-stem) verbs in Dakotan were switched
> > to the mixed
> > *V-stem/*r-stem pattern, even when there was no
> > initial element to
> > condition epenthetic *r in the third person.  By
> > contrast, in Dhegiha it
> > seems that the switchover affected all stems with
> > epenthetic *r, plus a
> > few more (the positional auxiliaries), but not the
> > glottal stop stems.
> >
> > If one is uncomfortable with different languages
> > exhibiting different
> > degrees of extension of the same analogy, then I
> > think that to be
> > consistant one has to recognize the following classes
> > of verbs:
> >
> > I)   to question
> > II)  auxiliaries with *r
> > III) auxiliaries with *w
> > IV)  *?-stems
> >
> > There is some potential for combining I-III, and it's
> > pretty clear that
> > the second persons of IV in the various languages
> > don't correspond with
> > each other, though some of them clearly do match
> > second persons in the
> > I-III classes.  In short, the purer you get, the more
> > you sense that
> > you're overlooking the obvious.  At least this was my
> > progression to these
> > conclusions:  careful insistence on regular
> > correspondences => numerous
> > implausibly similar mini-paradigms => an assumption
> > of differential
> > degrees of analogical leveling.
> >
> > My understanding of the "degrees of analogy" thing is
> > that (a) the
> > original IV (*V-stemor *?-stem)  pattern is quite odd
> > relative to other
> > patterns in each language - we'd expect Dakota to
> > have A1 muN, A2 *c^huN,
> > A3 uN, for example, by analogy with OP A1 maN, A2
> > z^aN, A3 aN, and OP A2
> > z^aN is quite a surprise as it is.  Hence, there's an
> > obvious motive for
> > analogizing pattern IV away.
> >
> > Then, (b) some verbs like *i-(r)uNghe 'to question'
> > carry their own
> > epenthesis conditioner with them.  Others, like the
> > auxiliaries, acquire
> > the conditioning only in situ as a positional
> > enclitic following a
> > suitably preceding noun or verb, e.g., *(r)iNk or
> > *(w)uNk - think
> > *s^uNka=r-iNk 'the sitting dog'.
> >
> > Still other verbs lack the environment at all, e.g,
> > forms like *uN 'do',
> > though some of them may also occur in contexts like
> > *i-(r)uN 'do with,
> > use' that condition it.  Result - transfers from
> > *V-stems to
> > *V-stem/*r-stem mixed-stems occur in different
> > degrees in different
> > environments in different areas of the
> > Proto-Mississippi Valley dialect
> > continuum and when the regional dialects become
> > distinct branches of PMV
> > they show different patterns of behavior with stems
> > that occurred in
> > different environments.  Eliminate random forms over
> > a long period of time
> > and you end up with the different patterns we see
> > today.
> >
> >
>