Winnebago Inclusive/Exclusive and Minimal/Augmented Pronominals

[Rory M Larson]

I'd like to thank both John Koontz and Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht for their
excellent recent postings.  I think they have opened up a very exciting
perspective on the whole topic, and it certainly helps me to understand the
motivation for the use of the terms "inclusive", "exclusive", "dual", "12",
etc.  I'm also happy to learn that a near-perfect example of a
minimal/augmented system is preserved in a language as close to home as
Winnebago!

The idea of an ancestral language with four persons-- +speaker/+listener;
+speaker/-listener; -speaker/+listener; -speaker/-listener-- with an
augment to indicate additional others, seems to be a very good explanation
for the inflectional pattern we see in Siouan.

It appears from some of the examples given that languages that use the
minimal/augmented system often have different augments depending on whether
the number of additional others is one, (two), or many.

Hocank (Winnebago) apparently does not make this distinction semantically,
but it does have two different augments, =wi (< MVS *pi), and =ire.  John
points out that =ire has cognates in IO, Mandan, and Tutelo, and that both
augments occur in the third person in both IO and Hocank:

> The -ire plural has cognates with the third person in
> Ioway-Otoe, Mandan, and Tutelo, so this is apparently
> a retention from Proto-Siouan.  IO also alternates it
> with =wi in the third person.

I would suggest that in the proto-language, one of these augments was a
+one augment, and the other a +plural augment.  We might be able to figure
out which is which from a careful review of the semantic context for the
alternations in Hocank and IO.

One quibble:

> I want to draw particular attention to your
> correction of the plural marker to =wi from
> my =i.  That was contamination from Omaha-Ponca,
> where it is =i (~ =bi ~ =b etc.).

At one time, OP =i was regarded as a simple allomorph of =bi.  I think John
and I are in agreement now that these are semantically different morphemes
in 19th century OP.  I am skeptical of the view that they are historically
cognate, though there may be evidence for this in Osage, Kaw or Quapaw of
which I am not yet aware.  Unless there is a very strong argument for this,
I think that we should consider the alternative possibility that OP =i is
related to Hocank =ire, not to MVS *=pi (> OP =bi, H =wi).

Rory