Male vs. female speech

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, David Kaufman wrote:
> As I've been perusing the Dorsey/Swanton Biloxi dictionary and texts,
> I've been noticing many instances of male vs. female speech patterns.
> The one simple example I can think of at the moment is the optional
> declarative particle na for a male speaker, and ni for a female speaker

This is consistent with a slight Siouan tendency to final a in male
particles and e in female particles, though o (au) vs. a also occurs.

> (and, if I remember correctly, the question particle wo for male, wa for
> female).  It seems to be most prominent in commands, and there appear to
> be different command forms of verbs for male to male, male to female or
> child, female to female, female to male, etc.

I'd say this is true most places where "sex" of speaker particles occur:
prominent with imperative, common with declarative, trailing off into less
frequent categories.

I think I remember noticing that the female to male imperative was
homophonous with the optative.

> I'm wondering if this is a common feature of all Siouan languages, or is
> Taneks different in this respect.

This pattern occurs in Mississippi Valley except for Winnebago, where as
far as I can recall it is absent, even though the very similar Ioway-Otoe
has it.  The patterns in Dakotan and Dhegiha are fairly similar, though
different in detail.  Ioway-Otoe is a bit different.  Systems also occur
in Biloxi and I think Tutelo.   I can't remember for sure for Tutelo, Ofo,
and Crow and Hidatsa.

Mandan uses a similar system to mark sex of addressee.

I recommend acquiring a set of non-Biloxi grammars for comparison with
Biloxi, including Boas & Deloria "Teton," Lipkind "Winnebago," Whitman
"Ioway-Otoe," Kennard "Mandan," and maybe the Swanton & Boas "Siouan" and
Boas "Ponca."  More recent Dakota grammars like Rood & Taylor and Ingham
are also great references, and at this point I think Bob's Quapaw sketch
is going to be much more useful than Boas's Ponca one.  For Hidatsa at the
moment you're pretty much stuck with Matthews.  For Crow Randy's grammar
is almost out and much better than Lowie.  Robinett's Hidatsa grammar and
Kashcube's Crow grammar are pretty easy to track down, but take a bit of
work to understand.  Stripped of the formalism there's not a lot there,
though it's more detailed on morphology than Matthews or Lowie.

In the absence of a comprehensive set of reference grammars for Siouan
it's helpful to have a full set of brief documents available for the
various languages.  If you can't find something in one, go next door.  If
it occurs it's bound to be similar enough for the discussion to be
helpful.