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

[REGINA PUSTET]

(Jan) 
  >Is it possible that the possessive ki- and the 'return' ki- have a
>common source?
   
  That's precisely what I was wondering when I was reading Jan's last contribution to the list. My feeling about vertitive ki- 'go back' and possessive ki- with a possible interpretation 'go home' is that they are not that far apart semantically. My recent work on Lakota motion verbs suggests that the ones that historically contain ki- do not have to interpreted that narrowly as referring only to 'home' as destination. It is sufficient if the agent has some kind of more or less abstract connection with the destination, which could be rendered by 'place where he/she belongs'. The destination with such verbs could, for instance, be the birthplace of the agent, even if the agent doesn't live there at the moment of utterance. I still think that this implies a possessive connection of some sort.
   
  Regina
  


Jan Ullrich <jfu at centrum.cz> wrote:
  David, 

Thanks for clarifying that. I don't have enough background in historical
and comparative linguistics to decide between the two ki-, but I do
agree that vertitives mean "come/go back" rather than "come/go home".
Is it possible that the possessive ki- and the 'return' ki- have a
common source?

Jan


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of ROOD DAVID S
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:10 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Siouan ki- 'become (again)', 'return to'



Jan, that's how I interpreted Bob's suggestion that the -ki- 'revert; 
become' is historically related to the -ki- of the vertatives, and 
distinct from any of the others. I think we're saying that the morpheme

in the vertatives is NOT the possessive. But Bob will have to supply
the 
cross-linguistic data for that.

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Jan Ullrich wrote:

>
>> I'm going to side with Bob on this one. It seems to me that the 
>> basic
>
>> meaning of the vertatives is not 'toward home' but 'back (again)'.
> Over
>> and over in the texts we read "i na gli na...." -- 'went there and
> came
>> back and...' without the concept of 'home' anywhere around.
>
> I fully agree that the vertitives mean "back" rather than "home". I 
> didn't think that was in contradiction to the possessive analysis that

> I sided with, but perhaps it is. Or are you suggesting that the ki- 
> that potentially formed the vertitives is the same ki- 'return back to

> the original state"? I might be missing some e-mails from this thread 
> as it seems my spam filter has been acting up lately.
>
>> Allan had an explanation for khi but I've forgotten it -- and I can't
> put
>> my hands on the paper right now, either. Bob?
>
> Would be good to know.
>
> Jan
>



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