another Siouan question

[REGINA PUSTET]

The animacy issue can be resolved if we assume, as I have suggsted a few messages ago, that kichi- is the "real" reciprocal and ichi- is simply a prefix that indicates, loosely speaking, contact etc. I wasn't even sure that ichi- is a person marker (in the sense that it occupies the slots for person marking in the verb) when I looked at my own data, and now that I've seen Jan's last example, I'm even less sure. kichi-, on the oher hand, is a person marker, and it also inflects for person (yechi- second person, uNkichi- first person). ichi- does not inflect for person, as far as I know. As a genuine reciprocal marker, kichi- can be expected primarily with animates because animates are the entities in the universe that usually 'do' things to each other, while inanimates are normalyy inert. So this might explain strong statistical correlations of animates with kichi- in texts and other corpora.
  Regina

shokooh Ingham <shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
  My impression with the -ichi- versus -kichi- is that when reciprocal the ichi- occurs with inanimates and that the kichi- usually with animates.  Is that the case with your examples Jan?  This looks a little bit as though we have a verb class division rather as in Cree  and perhaps other Algonquian languages, where verb types, but not necessarily stems, are specialized for animate or inanimate subject (maybe agent).  This would mean that basically ichi- is inanimate reciprocal as in ichihkoyaka 'be linked to each other' ichipawega 'cross over each other', ichicawinga 'go back on the previous one (of paths)' , but if you have an animate agent, the reciprocity is born by the objects (patients?) as in ichiwanyanka 'compare, see one in relation to another', ichipasisa 'pin one to the other' etc.  Similarly icihipasisa could mean 'be pinned to each other' if the subject was inanimate.
Bruce

Bruce

Jan Ullrich <jfu at centrum.cz> wrote:       
    
  (quoating Regina)
  >>  iyeciNkyaNke ki ichi-yaphapi  'the cars bumped into each other, in an accident' 
  >>  a-kichi-phapi  'they hit each other' 
   
  >I would argue that these don't represent a minimal pair. ichi-yaphapi comes from ichi + >iyapha whicle akichiphapi originates in aphA and kichi-.
   
  That's what I was trying to say, if you agree that kichi- is the reciprocal marker here. 
   
  I am not sure I follow, Can you explain?
   
  Jan

    
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