Lakota chaNnuNpa

[Rankin, Robert L]

Yes, David's absolutely right.  Even Boas and Deloria were fooled into thinking that 'sit' (maNka, naNka) and 'lie' (muNka, nuNka) were somehow "stative".  They're just using nasalized w- and y- (earlier r-), allomorphs of wa- and ya-.  And, yes, the pattern is found in all the languages that haven't leveled out virtually all "irregularities".  Even Biloxi has the pattern.  Historically it's what happened to vowel-initial stems (that often have a glottal stop).  The only oral vowel stems like this that we have data for are the ones we discussed a few weeks ago like /?o:/ 'to wound' and /u/ (sometimes hu) 'come'. 
 
BTW. sorry if I'm recapitulating mail that's already been exchanged.  I'm reading 174 messages that arrived while I was away in order of reciept.
 
Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of ROOD DAVID S
Sent: Thu 6/15/2006 11:45 AM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Lakota chaNnuNpa



On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, REGINA PUSTET wrote:

> This m-/n-class is getting more and more exciting. I'm wondering how
> this pattern arose and if it is old or more recent. Do other Siouan
> languages have similar patterns? I think I heard that there is a
> connection with the stative paradigm ma-/ni-. How robust is this
> hypothesis? Once we know more about the history of the class, we might
> know more about its degree of (ir)regularity.

        Bob Rankin will have to respond to the comparative questions, but
I think that internally within Lakota it is both old and expected.  There
is NOT a connection with the stative paradigm, although that mistake has
often been made.  Proof is that the -m- pronoun and the -ma- pronoun can
occur in contrast with the same verb.  imuNge 'I asked him a question' vs.
imayuNge 'She asked me a question'.  Another example is found with maNke
'I sit':  Sometimes, in colloquial Lak., when yaNke is in construction
with a transitive verb, you can move the transitive object affix to the
main verb.  So 'He saw me while I was sitting' can be either waNmayaNke
maNke or waNyaNke mayaNke. I may not have all the pronouns in the right
places here -- it's been a long time since I thought about this issue, and
I don't know where to look it up in my notes right now.  What I am sure
about, however, is that "maNke" and "mayanke" are both possible, and
"maNke" is not a funny version of mayaNke.  (I have seen it asserted that
the 'sit' and 'lie' verbs are stative, based on this paradigm; that goes
against a lot of expectations w/r/t position verbs, which strongly tend to
be active cross-linguistically in stative/active systems.)

        It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that the ma- and ni-
stative/object pronouns never have any allomorphy of any kind (unless you
want to argue about "chi"), whereas the agent/subject forms show up in
several variants.

        I think the "m" and "n" are expected variants of "wa" and "ya"
before nasal vowels.  The rule deleting the first V of a VV sequence would
produce *wVN and *yVN, and the nasaliztion would be expected to spread
into the sonorant.  The nasal versions of "w" and "y" are "m"  and "n', of
course.  I am not at all sure I understand how some "y"-initial stems
crept into this class, but Lakota "y" is funny in other ways, too.  I
think it is often epenthetic, though I can't prove that to my own
satisfaction.  I think Bob and John have a story about "y"  (from PSi *r)
that I've forgotten, but I am pretty sure we can make a case for two
different kinds of "y" on both synchronic and historical grounds.

        And I guess that's another, somewhat more abstract, reason for me
to think that these verbs are not "irregular": their pronouns are just
phonologically conditioned allomorphs of the "regular" wa- and ya-.


David
>
>       Regina
> ROOD DAVID S <rood at spot.Colorado.EDU> wrote:
>
> Buechel suggests that chaNnuNpa derives from chaNli 'tobacco' plus uNpa
> 'to smoke'. Many speakers change "l" to "n" after a nasal vowel when the
> consonant closes the syllable (e.g. akaNl is often pronounced akaNn), so
> the development chaNli > chaNl > chaNn is probably regular, and the
> etymology would be chaNli-uNpa.
>
> Regina makes that point that there is vowel deletion in the third person
> forms of these verbs if the underlying sequence includes VV; chaNnu-m-uNpa
> in the first person is chaNn-uNpa in the third, echa-m-uN 'I do' is echuN,
> and echamiN 'I think" is echiN. It doesn't happen in iyuNga/imuNge
> because of the /y/. Again, for my taste, this process is completely
> regular as an application of the phonological rules of the language: there
> are no VV sequences anywhere; either a vowel is deleted or a glide is
> inserted to prevent them. So there is no need for a "special" statement
> about irregularities -- the problem is not with the conjugation, but with
> permitted phonological sequences. The sequence echa-uN is doing exactly
> what it is supposed to do.
>
> Now back to 'smoke'. If the synchronic stem is chaNn-uNpa, first person
> should be *chaNn-m-uNpa. Here, then, we have a genuine irregularity in
> development; an extra /u/ has appeared from somewhere (the ever-powerful
> tool of the diachronist, "analogy", comes to mind), and this word does
> seem to be "irregular" in that its behavior is not predicted by rules
> otherwise needed in the language.
>
> So I return to my original objection to the overuse of the notion
> "irregular". All of the behavior of these verbs except the extra -u- in
> 'smoke' can be stated by rules that apply wherever the environment is
> right. That makes them rule-governed, even if they are few in number
> (recall that "irregular" means "not rule-governed"). I think the REAL
> irregularity is the occasional use of -mn- instead of -m- for the first
> person of some -yVN- stems.
>
> >From a pedagogical point of view, you may want to relax the definition of
> "regular" and make it mean "most common", but I don't think that's good
> descriptive linguistic practice.
>
> David
>
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu
>
> On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, REGINA PUSTET wrote:
>
> > I wonder if this - a bit weird - construction is due to the fact(?) that
> > it is a verbalization derived from the noun _chaNnu(n)pa_ - pipe/calumet
> > which literally has nothing to do with 'to smoke' rather than being a
> > compound meaning 'two-woods' (chaN-nuNpa), i.e. 'bowl and stem'. Or - as
> > though pretty obvious and convincing - would you call this 'folk etymology'?
> > If so, and there actually is an (original!) verb for 'to smoke' _uN'pa_
> > (-> uNmuN'pa, uNnuN'pa, uNkuN'papi), what then is the meaning of _chaN-_
> > forming another existing verb for 'to smoke'? Why then (and for what
> > reason at all) this compound(?) verb has an additional -n- inserted
> > (chaNnuNpa - to smoke/s/he smokes)?? Consequently forming chaNnuNmuNpa,
> > chaNnuNnuNpa etc.). I'm quite hesitant assuming that _uNpa_ was first in
> > the sense of egg and hen.
> >
> > Hard to tell. My instinctive feeling is that uNpa 'to smoke' is the basic form, and chaNnuNpa 'to smoke' is derived. This is supported precisely by the 'irregular' m/n-inflection (yes, I'm using the term again) of thís verb which should be ancient because irregular paradigms, in general, are older than regular ones.
> >
> > I don't really believe in the chaN 'wood' plus nuNpa 'two' etymology because what we're dealing with here materially -- which was probaly the same in precontact times -- is a piece of wood and a piece of rock, rather than two pieces of wood. But who knows about the smoking habits in the Americas before recorded history. Or about the exact meaning of the historical precursor of chaN. But I wouldn't deny that chaN 'wood' might be involved here. Etymologically, my analysis would add up to chaN 'wood' plus uNpa 'to smoke', and I have to admit that I don't know either how to account for the missing n.
> >
> > Regina
> >
> >
> > "Alfred W. Tüting" wrote:
> > >> I don't understand.'I smoke' is, as far as I remember, chanumuNpa,
> > chanu - m -uNpa; how is that reduplicated? The second person
> > looks reduplicated (chanu-nuNpa), but I think that's just the "n"
> > pronoun appearing where it's supposed to go. <<<<
> >
> >
> > > The third person of âEUR~to smokeâEUR(tm) is chaNnuNpa. If the verb were a
> > regular m-/n-verb, the third person would have to be chaNnuâEUR(tm)uNpa to get
> > first and second person chaNnumuNpa and chaNnunuNpa. We could actually
> > posit chaNnuâEUR(tm)uNpa as basic root and analyze the third person as a
> > contracted form, but still, we need that contraction rule which moves
> > this verb a little farther away from being a âEUR~regularâEUR(tm) m-/n-verb. The
> > transitive version uNpa âEUR~to smoke (a pipe etc.)âEUR(tm) has first person muNpa,
> > second person nuNpa and is therefore a âEUR~regularâEUR(tm) m/n-verb. <<
> >
> >
> > I wonder if this - a bit weird - construction is due to the fact(?) that
> > it is a verbalization derived from the noun _chaNnu(n)pa_ - pipe/calumet
> > which literally has nothing to do with 'to smoke' rather than being a
> > compound meaning 'two-woods' (chaN-nuNpa), i.e. 'bowl and stem'. Or - as
> > though pretty obvious and convincing - would you call this 'folk etymology'?
> > If so, and there actually is an (original!) verb for 'to smoke' _uN'pa_
> > (-> uNmuN'pa, uNnuN'pa, uNkuN'papi), what then is the meaning of _chaN-_
> > forming another existing verb for 'to smoke'? Why then (and for what
> > reason at all) this compound(?) verb has an additional -n- inserted
> > (chaNnuNpa - to smoke/s/he smokes)?? Consequently forming chaNnuNmuNpa,
> > chaNnuNnuNpa etc.). I'm quite hesitant assuming that _uNpa_ was first in
> > the sense of egg and hen.
> > I'd easily imagine that in this case the verb (to smoke) might have
> > derived from the noun chaNnupa. Cf. German Pfeife - pfeifen (pipe - 'to
> > pipe' = to wistle).
> >
> > I'd be interested in your knowledgeable opinions.
> >
> >
> > Alfred
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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