Siouan positional verbs

[David Kaufman]

Sorry, Dan, but I'm afraid I don't follow what you're saying.  Can you elaborate?

As a follow-up to my first email, I wanted to pass along a message I received from a fellow anthro grad student whose grandfather lived in SE Kansas for 95 years, though he was born in Italy:  

"My Italian grandfather would say a field lies and a boundary-less piece of land sits, and the ocean sits and the rivers lie."

While this may seem like an unlikely source of support for this argument, we suspect that his grandfather talked to indigenous peoples perhaps from the Oklahoma nations, which, particularly if these were Siouan and/or Muskogean, would make sense.

Dave

--- On Sat, 12/12/09, Dan Folkus <dan.folkus at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Dan Folkus <dan.folkus at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Siouan positional verbs
To: siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU
Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 2:43 PM

This boundedness flucuates in the case of the river, so the river lies
across a land that sits there. The riverbed is temporary, I think. But
a river lying on a bed that sits, well that seems normal, even if the
river recedes.

On 12/11/09, David Kaufman <dvklinguist2003 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello everyone:

I'm
writing my third Field Statement (Anthro precursors to a dissertation)
on positional verbs in Biloxi and Siouan, and I'd thought I'd see if
any of you had comments on a couple of things. (I realize Siouan
languages vary considerably in how they use positional verb
classifiers.)  (BTW--yes, I'll be doing my diss on Biloxi - I've
switched my focus from Algonquian back to Siouan.)  

In
Biloxi, positional verb classifiers are used, apparently as in other
Siouan languages, to denote shape or position along vertical 'stand',
horizontal 'lie-recline', or neutral 'sit' axes.  Some of these
are obvious while others are not.  What I'm really curious about
is their use in natural landscape objects, such as lake, river, land,
field, etc.  I find it interesting that, in Omaha-Ponca, land (in
general) 'sits' (neutral/unmarked) (maNzhaN dhaN) while a field
'lies/reclines' (u'e dhe-khe).  Streams, rivers, bayous seem to
'lie/recline' (both Biloxi & OP), although a lake 'sits' in BI but
'lies' in OP.  In BI a forest also 'sits'.  I'm wondering
then if the difference between this 'sit' and 'lie' might be one of
boundedness - unbounded/non-delimited/invisible
boundaries 'sit' (land [general]/forest/lake?) vs. visible
boundaries/delimited 'lie/recline' (river/field/lake?).  While it
seems intuitive to think of a river as flat/horizontal (which it is!),
we can also see it as being bounded (you can usually see both banks of
a river) and a field is usually partitioned off or small enough to see
its limits.  (Koasati Muskogean also has towns, fields, rivers, as
'lying/reclining' - bounded?).  As for the lake 'sitting' in BI
vs. 'lying' in OP, this may well be something that is language- or
culture-specific depending on the size of particular lakes in a
cultural/linguistic area.  Perhaps the Biloxis saw a large lake
(the Gulf?) of which they could not see its edges or boundaries, while
Omahas saw a smaller lake with well-defined boundaries.

The
other curiosity is the use of positional verbs with body parts. 
In BI, an aching body part 'stands' (e.g., my head stands = I have a
headache).  A hand in OP always seems to 'stand' regardless of its
actual position at any given time, but I don't know about other body
parts and in what context these are used.

I hope this makes sense!  Any thoughts, examples, counter-examples anyone?

Dave



      




      
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