Male vs. female speech

[Rankin, Robert L]

Sara Trechter has a paper she did comparing the gender-sensitive modals
in the various Siouan languages.  I don't remember if she published it
or not.  The Mississippi Valley languages all mark gender of speaker
(except Winnebago/Hocank), but Mandan and Biloxi mark gender of
addressee (and Biloxi, the speaker as well), and at least one of the
particles was cognate between MA and BI.  There is a good deal of
cognacy within Mississippi Valley as I recall.  The Biloxi data deserve
a lot more attention.  Most of us have only looked at the tabular data
in Dorsey & Swanton.  The texts contain a lot on usage as well.  I can't
recall how much Einaudi might have said about them.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Koontz John E
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 4:30 PM
To: Siouan List
Subject: Re: Male vs. female speech


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.