Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

Thu Dec 13 10:22:45 UTC 2007

Regina, 

I fully agree with this conclusion. I have always been under the
impression that the vertitives are possessive forms of the
"non-vertitive" verbs. 

u    ->   ku
hi   ->   gli
ya  ->   gla
i    ->    khi

The only one that doesn't fit in (synchronically) is khi 'to arrive back
there', but I am sure there is some diachronical explanation for the
aspiration in it. Could some one elaborate on that?

Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of REGINA PUSTET
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:54 AM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

(quoting Bob)
>Mississippi Valley Siouan *k-ri (syncope always applies) > Lakota gli,
Dak. hdi, etc. 'arrive >back'. I'd reconstruct all of those initial
vertitive g- (and k-) in Lakota as originally proto->Siouan *ki-, with
the vowel present in other subgroups. Come to think of it, I guess it
>doesn't "surface" in Lakota. 

Now I understand. The reason I didn't make that mental connection is
that I thought that the ki-prefix, which indeed doesn't really surface
in Lakota motion verbs such as gli 'have arrived at home', gla 'go
home', and ku 'come home' but whose historical presence somehow imposes
itself when you deal with these verbs systematically, is acually the
POSSESSIVE ki-. Wouldn't that make sense? All these verbs imply 'home,
place where one belongs', i.e. a location that you are possessively
attached to, as the destination of the act of moving. I haven't immersed
myself into historical studies regarding this issue tho, so chances are
that this analysis can be ruled out on the basis of comparative data.
Regina

"Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

I'm sorry; I do have trouble sometimes looking at these problems from
the Lakota point of view, since Lakota is not on my list of
accomplishments! I was looking at vertitive from the point of view of
languages like Tutelo, where 'to go home' (Sapir's translation)is gi-li,
cf. Biloxi ki-di, but Mississippi Valley Siouan *k-ri (syncope always
applies) > Lakota gli, Dak. hdi, etc. 'arrive back'. I'd reconstruct all
of those initial vertitive g- (and k-) in Lakota as originally
proto-Siouan *ki-, with the vowel present in other subgroups. Come to
think of it, I guess it doesn't "surface" in Lakota. 

Allan Taylor's article in IJAL from the early/mid '70s details some of
the interesting idiosyncracies of the motion verbs, and Linda Cumberland
has done interesting recent work on how they structure. 

This discussion of 'become'/'become again' is really interesting to me,
as I had overlooked it in Boas and Deloria and have only the very few
cases in Dhegiha. I wonder how much I missed in Kaw from simply failing
to ask the right questions? Now I'm really curious about how they are
conjugated. I hope someone will ask. 

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of REGINA PUSTET
Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:09 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'

Thanks Bob, that helps a lot.

>All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive' with
verbs of motion, but >only a few seem to have generalized a relatively
productive use with non-motion verbs.

Off the top of my head, I can't come up with examples of vertitive ki-
with motion verbs in Lakota (although khi- 'separative etc.' does occur
with motion verbs, but that's probably irrelevant here, unless there is
a connection between vertitive and khi-). Which does not mean, of
course, that historically speaking, Lakota ki- 'to become' cannot be
analyzed as a vertitive.

>So the syncope rule is only productive with motion verbs, while its
(apparent) extension to >other verbs and nouns seems to involve only
invariant ki-. 

At least in Lakota, motion verbs exhibit morphological irregularities
that are not found in any other part of the grammar -- they are
strcuturally special. This might be the case in other Siouan languages
as well, I just don't have the necessary background to judge the
situation. At any rate, if motion verbs have a special status in Siouan
in general, it wouldn't surprise me if they showed idiosyncratic
behavior wirh respect to ki-syncopation.

Regina

"Rankin, Robert L" wrote:

Looking at the verb prefix templates and examples of the prefix orders
in several languages and comparing Jan's Lakota examples, it appears
that the ki- we are discussing is more closely related to the vertitive
than to either reflexive or instrumentals. The most general use of ki- I
have found (outside of Jan's and Regina's new [to me] Dakotan cases) is
in Mandan, where Mixco and others have a generalized ki- that occurs
immediately preceding the verb with the meaning 'become'. Some posit a
homophonous Mandan prefix ki- meaning 'again', but I tend to think of
these as a single affix, especially in light of Jan's observations. 

All other Siouan languages without exception have ki- 'vertitive' with
verbs of motion, but only a few seem to have generalized a relatively
productive use with non-motion verbs. There are one or two differences
in the behavior of these prefixes however. The ki- of kini does not seem
to undergo syncopy like the vertitive with motion verbs. Otherwise I
would expect something closer to g-ni 'recover', which does not occur in
any Siouan language. Similarly, we might expect to find g-luzahaN 'to
get fast' or k-haNska 'to get tall', neither of which occurs. So the
syncope rule is only productive with motion verbs, while its (apparent)
extension to other verbs and nouns seems to involve only invariant ki-. 

Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Jan Ullrich
Sent: Tue 12/11/2007 2:20 AM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Lakota ki- 'to become by itself'

I think it should be noted here that the meaning of the prefix ki- is
not "to become" but "to return to the original state". Notice kini 'to
come back to life', not 'to become alive'. The prefix is used with this
meaning throughout the text corpus. Most of the words with ki- given in
Buechel's dictionary originate in his translation of the Bible History
texts (for instance ki-sagye - 'to turn into a cane' is used in the
story about Moses) and are not attested by contemporary speakers. 

It is true that some younger speakers today use ki- with the meaning 'to
become', but its use is semantically restricted, occurs for instance in
kiwichas^a - 'to become a man'. Deloria (in her grammar) defines
kiwichas^a as 'to become a man again (like a human who in a tale had
appeared in animal shape)' and kiwiNyaN as 'to become a (respectable)
woman again'

In my experience and fieldword data, the prefix is not productive. So I
am a bit surprised by some of the words in Regina's list. If the words
come from eliciting rather than texts, I would recoment caution and
cross checking.

> ki-ska 'to turn white'

Deloria and a couple of my native informants give "to fade (to return to
an original white color)" See also Bushotter's sentence: ... oowa uN
owapi tkha hechunpi chan echakchala kiska s'a - 'when they painted
(those things) with colors they often faded'

> ki-suta 'to get hard'

'to become hard again' as in mazasu s^loyiN na kisuta 'The bullets he
melted became hard again'

> ki-bleza 'to become conscious'

'to become clear-minded or conscious again, come to one's senses', this
is often used for 'to sober up'

> ki-was^tecaka ye! 'behave yourself!'

This is a dative. It means "Be nice to him/her." Very common phrase.

> ki-thamahecha 'to get skinny'

> ki-haNska 'to get tall'

> ki-ksapa 'he got smart'

> ki-luzahaN 'to get fast'

> ki-'okhate 'to become warm inside, like when turning up the heat'

These are all somewhat surprising to me.

Notice also, that for instance kini 'to come back to life' is an active
verb (1s wakini), but kibleza 'to conscious again' is treated as a
stative verb (1s: makibleze). This makes me wonder whether some of the
ki- words actually originate in dative, just as akisni - 'to recover
from smth, as a sickness (1s: amakisni)' or iyokiphi 'to be pleased
with' 1s: iyomakiphi). 

Regina, what does your data say on conjugating the verbs in your list?

Jan

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