(in)direct reports in Siouan

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, Daniel Altshuler wrote:
> I was wondering if other Siouan languages are subject to the same
> restrictions.

Um, "No, or, er, I haven't noticed."

> Has anyone done any work on this topic?

If you are interested in this, you have the field mostly to yourself, and
not because it isn't full of interesting stuff.

In many ways Siouan is virgin soil.  There are languages where no one can
tell you how relative clauses work.  Actually, outside of Dakotan and more
recently Crow-Hidatsa, very little is known of the syntax or even the more
complicated morphological issues.

> Also, I wonder if there are verbs closely related to "said" and "think"
> (e.g. "tell", "concieve", etc.) that function differently.

Well, 'say' itself is usually quite complex morphologically, with a lot of
suppletion and strange interactions with the demonstratives (including
usually 'to say what' as in 'what did he say?').

Both 'to say' and 'to think' that take quotations seem to involve focus
constructions - the initial e= is a focus marker for the preceding
quotation.

The form of 'to say' that uses the remote demonstrative usually is used to
indicate that the quotation follows.

In OP and probably in Dhegiha generally indirect discourse uses a
different form of the plura/proximate marker.

OP has udha 'to tell' (cf. OP odhaka) which doesn't take direct discourse
and similarly ez^=iN 'to suspect'.  (If I am recalling the form.)

> For example, is the "said" that is only used in direct reports similar
> (semantically) to "utter" in English? What about other attitude report
> verbs like "realize", "believe", "remember", "see", "feel", etc.?

Couldn't tell you.

> Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I was going to say that!