Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha"

[REGINA PUSTET]

 (quoting Clive Bloomfield)
  > Is "eyas^" there on its way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? 
  Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a suppressed concessive clause, or such.)
   
  (quoting Willem DeReuse)

> There is only one eyas^; no 

syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated.  If the 

conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed.  You have 

the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's 

examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, 
  but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..."
   
   
  Like Willem, I'm hesitating to postulate two distinct eyasˆ-morphemes. But then, what Clive describes is exactly what happened to the coordinator tkha 'but', which now marks various modal and aspectual categories, such as irrealis, counterfactual, and avertive. The meanings involved include 'would have', 'should have', and 'almost'. All these originate in the elliptical sentence types Willem illustrates with English examples. This is what I'll talk about at SCLC in October, if my abstract is accepted.
  Thanks for the clarification regarding kechaNmi, Clive!
   
  Regina
  
 

       
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