Positionals

[Johannes Helmbrecht]

Dear Caroline, dear Bruce,

excuse me for not responding earlier to your inquiry. Of course, I am 
willing to provide the desired Hocank data with respect to positionals. 
Unfortunately, I have no ready to distribute paper on this topic in 
Hocank. So, perhaps, some general remarks on the positionals in Hocank 
will help for the beginning; illustrating data have to be extracted 
then from our text corpus later on.

1) The positionals are frequently employed as auxiliaries together with 
a full verb [V + POS]. In this construction, they indicate either 
progressive aspect, or the spatial position (sitting, standing, lying) 
of the transitve/ intransive subject (S/A in typological terms), or 
both.

2) They are personally inflected for S/A, but the conjugation pattern 
varies between the first conjugation (quite regular), second 
conjugation (regular, too) and some irregular mixture of of both. We 
find cases in which only the full verb is inflected in this 
construction, we find cases in which V and POS are both inflected, and 
we find cases in which only POS is inflected. I have to admit that I 
did not find a rationale for the distribution of the personal 
inflection among V and POS yet.

3) The positionals can also be used as auxiliaries with a nominal 
predicate indicating the spatial position of S, but this usage is 
rather rare and dispreferred by speakers. Clauses with non-verbal 
predicates are usually formed with other auxiliaries of 'being'

4) Besides the three basic positional auxiliaries, =naNk (sitting), 
=jee/ =jaa (standing), and =ak/aNk (lying), there is a fourth one 
=naNaNk (with a long nasalized vowel)for 3PL, but without any spatial 
meaning (this semantic component seems to be neutralized in this form).

5) All four positionals are combined with deictic affixes to produce 
demonstrative pronouns distinguishing proximate and distal, sitting/ 
lying/ standing, and sg and pl. These demonstratives can be used as 
nominal attributes (determiners), or as independent referential 
expressions, i.e. heads of a NP.

6) These demonstratives can also be used as relative pronouns 
indicating both, the spatial position of the S/A of the relative 
clause, and progressive aspect of the predicate of the relative clause.

I guess these are the essentials with regard to positionals in Hocank. 
I'll tell you, if further important aspects of the positionals in 
Hocank come to my mind.

Best,
Johannes


Datum:   	Thu, 2 Nov 2006 22:14:52 +0000 (GMT)
Antwort an:     	siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Von:            	shokooh Ingham <shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk>
An:             	siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Betreff:        	Positionals

> 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
> 
> 
> Send instant messages to your online friends
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 


--

Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht
Universität Regensburg
Institut für Medien-, Informations-
und Kulturwissenschaft (IMIK)
Universitätsstr. 31
93053 Regensburg

Tel.: ++49(0)941 943-3388
         ++49(0)941 943-3387 (Sekr. Frau Stitz)
Fax: ++49(0)941 943-2429
E-Mail: johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de