Dakotan T-words and their equivalents in Siouan

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006, Rory M Larson wrote:
> John may have already sent you the OP question words to match your list,
> but I haven't otherwise seen a posting for OP.

I've been intending to, but it's a longish list and I haven't had time!

> I've been going through (~ the first 50 pages of) Dorsey's Dhegiha
> Language texts along with our Omaha class, and have been pulling out the
> words and sorting them into categories.  Here's what I've gotten so far
> for "Question Words":
>
> a'gudi            where? (location)

I make this (etymologically) a-gu-di or, in PMV terms, *(h)a "T" + *ku
'yonder' + *tu LOCATIVE.  It reminds me of naval "where away?"

> a'qtaN            How possible?

I'm thinking that the reading for this one is more like "how on earth"
than "how can," but I'd be very interested to heat the contemporary take
on this!  I think the morphosyntax is a=xt(i)=aN, with aN being the aN
that appears more below.

Is there a variant eaxtaN, or am I crossing this up with something else?

> a'naska           what size? (probably a'raNska in modern Omaha)
> a'ttaN            why?

Also eattaN, I think, though the e may belong syntactically to the
preceding phrase, making it a cleft or focussed element.  OK, I see it
below!

> atHaN'            What time (of day)?
>
> a'wakHE'di        in what place
> a'wahnaNkHa'ce    which one of you?
> a'waraN           Which/What/Where is (globular object)?
> a'watHe'gaN       of what sort?

These forms have the awa(N) 'which of two (or several definite
possibilities) prefix.  This reading is rather notional on my part,
however.  The -kHe- element is a positional, as you see, other forms with
-tHe-, -dhaN- (or -naN-), but not, I think, -ge-, turn up.  Even some with
animate positionals, i.e., hnaNkHa=s^e 'you-all-the-sitting', which I did
not recall!  Nice!

The final elements are (nil) 'what/which', di 'locative', gaN 'kind', so
the general formula is awa + POSITIONAL + NATURE.

> ea'ttaN           why?
> ea'ttaN a'daN     why?  wherefore?
> ea'ttaN e'daN     why?  wherefore? (in thought)

The -daN element, also in dadaN 'what' is throughout the texts for "in
thought" and seems to mark a contingent quotation in those contexts.  I
have been thinking of it as a marker of "contingency" or "dependent
conditionality."

I assume that adaN and edaN have a contrast something like interrogative
vs. demonstrative, but e tends to wander into question forms instead of a
or in addition to it (e-a-).  Since the inspiration came to me that -e in
various contexts is a "cleft" or "focus" marker, I've tended to see the
intial e-'s in question forms in that light, but fused proclitically to
the following element rather than enclitically to the preceding.

> e?aN'-qti         what great (person)?          [023:12]

In effect "who on earth"?

> E'be              who?

See if you can find a consistent difference between e'be and ebe'.  Dorsey
suggests there is one.  This could be right or wrong.

> iNda'daN          what?; something
> eda'daN           what

I gather than no one hears a difference between these today?  I think that
there is one in the texts, along the lines of indefinite (no particular
answer imagined) vs. definite (some particular set of answers imagined,
i.e., more like which).

> wiN'aNwa          which one?
> wiN'aNwatta ?     in which direction?

I take these to be awa(N) forms with prefixed wi(N).  It may be that the
the nasality percolates through from wiN, rather than being part of awa
itself, except that there are those aNwa or awaN forms meaning 'other'.
(In which w is often m.)

> I also have a subcategory entitled "-soever":
>
>   a'gudi ratHi' e'iNtt(H)e - wherever you may have come from

Basically, a(a)'gudi 'where' plus dhatHi 'you arrive here' + (e)iNtHe
'perhaps', though 'perhaps' is a gloss of convenience.   I think (e)iNtHe
and some similar elements including maybe (e)de and (e)daN are OP modals.

> atHaN'-qti        whenever; when (I next touch ground ...)

Hmm.  I wonder if this is atH(e) + aN=xti 'when on earth', by analogy with
(e)axtaN 'how on earth' and eaNxti 'who on earth'.

> da'daN            what, whatever
> eda'daN           what; whatever (eda'd ?i'rai - what they speak of)
> ede'he            what I say

In effect, the last is a verb e-d(a)-e-PRO-(h)e 'to say something, to say
what'.  I've always found this a bit astounding, but similar forms,
differing somewhat in morphology, appear in Dakota, etc., too.

In this category also go forms like g(a)-e-PRO-(h)e 'to say what follows'
vs. e-PRO-(h)e 'to say what precedes'.  Dakota also have forms of 'to say'
with the various demonstratives.  These forms tend to suggest that e, the
demonstatives, and the interrogative-indefinites are a class historically,
while also showing that e- in the intials of verbs of speaking and
thinking has become opaque and is no longer seen as a demonstrative.

> Ebe'ctE           anybody at all  (Ebe'ctE ua'kkie ma'ji - I wasn't talking
> to anyone)
> INda'daNctE       whatever
> cte'cte           soever
> cte'ctewaN'       soever

The forms with s^te are pretty regularly translated with -(so)ever by
Dorsey.  (Warning:  It took me the better part of a day once to realize
that =j^te or something like that in modern speech was =daN=s^te said
really fast!)  This =s^te enclitic is analogous syntactically to =xti
'true(ly), very' (just like English very < vrai), =s^ti 'too', =s^naN
(=hnaN, =naN) 'exclusively, only' > 'habitually'.

Rory, any ideas on when it's =s^tes^te not =s^te (reduplicators take note)
or =s^tewaN?  I assume the latter is =s^te=waN or =s^te=aN, where perhaps
the (w)aN has something to do with the aN that appears with =xti and =naN
when they are inflected (e.g., =xti=maN, =xti=z^aN).  Bob suggests this is
an old perfective auxiliary.

What is the linguistic approach to "(so)ever"?  It seems to have something
to do with there being a class of things over which the reference ranges.
There is a name, for example, GdhedaNs^temiN, that seems to be 'any hawk
(so-ever) woman', and then there is also the clan name We'z^iNs^te 'Elk',
which seems to be 'any (or all) willful (or angry?) ones', from wa-iz^iN
'to think (suspect?) something; to be angry, to be willful'.  The glossing
may need a lot of work here.

> A few common modern ones haven't shown up yet, at least in the usual form.
> These include:
>
> awa'tta           where, in what direction
> eaN'              how

I've also seen cases of just aN for 'how', and sometimes just aN appears
as a conjunction in lieu of egaN.  That may be dialect usage, since it's
rare and a speaker that does it tends to do it consistently, as far as I
can recall.

> awiN'aNwa         which one

a "T" + wi(N) + awa(N)

> a'naN             how many

Definitely in the texts.

> ede'              What did s/he say?
> ede's^e           What did you say?
> ede'pHe           What did I say?

Cf. edehe above.

> a'watHe'gaN       X UmaN'haN ie' tHE a'watHe'gaN?
>                   How do you say X in Omaha?

Or awa 'which of several' + tHe positional for stack + gaN 'manner',
although relative to tHe, notice that it also concords with UmaNhaN ie
tHe.

Note that Rory and I are writing H (superscript h) as a reflection of the
new "popular" orthographies.  I'm neglecting E (which Rory thinks may
contrast with e) in these contexts because I think the "eh" pronunciation
in tHe and kHe reflects the affect of aspiration on the vowel.

Rory seems to be writing r now for dh (popular system th), which makes
perfect sense.

> So to match with your Dakotan list:
>
> taku 'what, something"                    iNda'daN, eda'daN
> tuwe/a 'who, someone'                     ebe'
> tukte 'which'                             awiN'aNwa(N)
> tuktel 'where, somewhere'                 a'gudi  (-di postposition)
> tokhiya 'where to, somewhere'             awa'tta (-tta postposition)
> tohan/l 'when. sometime'                  atHaN'
> tona  'how many, some'                    a'naN
> tokhel 'how, somehow'                     eaN'
> tokha 'what happened, something happened' ?

While the use of particular forms may have become somewhat stylized, today
and in Dorsey's time, too, I think that the OP forms may require a bit
more of a matrix for 'where, when, how X' where X = many, far, high, etc.:

agudi   |    ( ( a | (wiN)awa ) + (POSITIONAL) + KIND )

Substitute (edadaN | iNdadaN) for agudi and omit KIND and you get the
'what/which' formula.

For 'how' it's (e)aN.  For 'why' it's (e)attaN.  (I've nver been quite
sure if it was =ttaN or tHaN here.)  The difference between 'how' and
'why', or the usage of them, is not the same as in English.

> It looks like 'who', 'when' and 'how many' probably have cognate roots.  I
> wonder if Dakotan taku matches the root part of OP a'gu-di, which would
> make the OP word for 'where at' mean "at what".

I think so.  Winnebago has j^aagu 'what'.  I assume that *ku in these
forms once meant something like 'remote' or 'away from here' and that
perhaps use of localizing particles in company with interrogatives was
more general in PMV than it is in the modern languages.  A few relicts
remain without the localizing sense.

> The use of awa- with positionals is interesting.

I notice that positionals aren't used with (h)a-.  This may be because the
awa(N) expressions were originally not interrogative in morphology, and so
have more features of standard noun phrases.  However, there are some rare
a-POSIT- forms.