IO Causative (Re: your mail)

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote:
> "gi-" would be the dative (to/ for) and
> yes,  hiN-  (me) is the direct personal pronoun, but if used without the gi-, 
> then would it not gloss to be...
> 1. I am jealous  OR
> 2. I cause another to be jealous

Or, rather, I think, 'Someone makes me jealous', right?  I think the first 
person agent of the causative is =ha(a).

> WHEN the intent is that because of the actions of the other person, that 
> person and her actions the the source of "I, myself" being jealous of her and 
> her actions.
>
>> We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki,
> ??????   Well, I see my original sentence got chewed up, and the SIL font 
> didnt carry over.

Yes.  For those of us not using Windows, the SIL fonts are not visible and 
turn to soup, though I think the result was more or less interpretable in 
this case.

Note also that I don't see any special fonts, any color, any italics, etc. 
I could manage something spiffier, but I think it is best that I be at the 
lowest common denominator, since that means if somebody can't see it 
somewhere, then I am in the same boat.

> Wáße irókunpi náha aré áma wáñi mínachi ñíthinhingihi ki,
> Wange irokuNpi naha are ama wanyi mina-chi  nyithiNhiNgihi  ki.
>
> Perhaps, that is more clear.

Improved, if less beautiful!

So, nyithiN=hiNgihi       k(h)i

     jealous P1-DAT-CAUSE  DECLf

Am I right in understanding that in nyithin=...gihi the nyithiN is 
invariant, and only the =hi is inflected?

Of course, you're right, the -gi- before the -hi CAUSATIVE makes it 
dative.   Somehow I lost track of that -gi-.

Or is this gi- the suus or reflexive possessive?

I think that 'she makes me jealous' or less literally 'I am jealous of 
her' are reasonable translations.  As for why it is dative and not simply 
transitive *nyithiN=hiNhi, I think that the implication is that the 
underlying verb is transitive, not intransitive.  The underlying verb may 
not occur, but it would be, hypothetically, something like

(?) nyithiN 'to envy something'

For example, (?) ha-nyithiN 'I envy it (her popularity)'.  Might have to 
be possessive, like (??) ginyithiN 'to envy someone's'?  (Or would that be 
(??) garanyithiN?)  I forget how the prefixes work in IO and Winnebago!

So, when this is causativized the underlying agent becomes the dative (as 
in nyithiN=hiNgihi 'she makes for me to envy it'.  Not that it works that 
way, with 'for', in English, where we have to say 'she makes me envy it', 
but it does in a lot of languages, and perhaps we can see the me in 
English as dative, too.  And, of course, we are translating 'to make 
someone envy something' as 'to make someone jealous of something'.  Here 
I'm just retailing an abbreviated version of Bernard Comrie's discussions 
of the case structure of causatives.

Generally speaking, Mississippi Valley Siouan languages do show dative 
forms of the causative with underlying transitive verbs, and simple forms 
of the causative with underlying intransitive verbs, but there's not 
always a simple correlation, and in some cases - Dakotan? - it more or 
less arbitrary.

I think the simple and dative causative stems are:

          simple        dative

Da       =ya           =khiya 
OP       =dhe          =khidhe
IO       =hi           =gihi (?)
Wi       =hii          =gigi   (PreWi *=ki-khi)

I make the Proto-Siouan forms:

PMV      *=h(i)-PRO ~ *=PRO-re  *=PRO-k-hi ~ *=PRO-k-hi-re

PS       *=hi#PRO-e             *=k-hi(#PRO-e) ~ *=PRO-k-hi(ra)

I assume hi is something like a subordination marker, e.g., the "for" in 
'I intend for (you to attend)."

The original causative root is *e, which has epenthetic -r- (*-re) when a 
pronoun like *wa- or *ra- is prefixed.  However, in Winnebago and IO, 
*hi-a-E (first person a < *wa) and *hi-ra-E (second person ra < *ya) 
appear as =haa and =raa, reflecting contractions and elisions.  Either the 
-re was never there, or it was lost.  I rather suspect the latter.

In general the hi seems to have been handled later on as a pre-verb, and 
in Proto-Mississippi Valley the dative stem seems to have been formed in 
*k- on the hi, i.e., like the datives of h-stems.  In Dakotan and Dhegiha 
the simple causative is from *-re (with pronoun preceding it) and the 
preceding *hi is lost.  In Winnebago and IO it appears that the *hi is 
more or less merged with the following pronoun, and the *-re is lost.