Positionals

[shokooh Ingham]

Dear Siouanists,
Caroline Quintero and myself are trying to put
something together on positionals in Siouan.  We have
information on Osage, Mandan, Lakota and Omaha, but
are lacking anything on Crow or Winnebago and wonder
whether anyone can help.  Obviously  this enquiry is
aimed mainly at Randy and Johannes, but if anyone can
help from those or other languages, we would be
grateful.  The positional so called are elements which
refer to the attitude, standing, sitting, lying or
physical shape of items, rather in the way that Lakota
uses yanka 'sit', han 'stand', hpaya 'lie' and hiyeya
'be scattered' to refer to the existence of items
which are respectively compact, tall, horizontally
arranged and numerous.  In Mandan I notice that this
sort of distinction is shown in demonstratives and
even in verbs by suffix.  By  comparison I know that
Yurok has a distinction of different forms of numerals
for different noun classes of a similar type.  So this
type of distinction can be shown in various word
classes.   We would be grateful for any contributions

Bruce


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