*V-stems (Re: verb suppletion)

Wed Apr 6 23:01:42 UTC 2005

/rathe/, Lak. yatha'  is 'chew' in most Siouan
languages.  EJ translated it as 'gossip' in Lak.  "Eat"
can be either physical or metaphorical, as in 'dine' I
guess.  The Yatha cognate set includes all MVS
languages and Biloxi and refers to the physical act of
eating something, i.e., chewing.

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "ROOD DAVID S" <rood at spot.Colorado.EDU>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: *V-stems (Re: verb suppletion)

>
> 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.
>> >
>> >
>>
>