Siouan evidentiality

[Justin McBride]

Dave,

Dorsey's Kaw text collection seems to suggest a three-way post-verbal evidential distinction. His most straightforward clauses tend to end with a male gender particle ao, or just o in modern speech. Dorsey didn't have any female Kaw consultants that I'm aware of, but they would probably have given him a form something like that used by Bob's 20th century female consultant Maude Rowe, (y)e. This gender-sensitive set corresponds to events and states directly witnessed by the speaker, and is thus a declarative particle. But since it seems to vary with other evidentials, I've included it here. At the extreme opposite end of evidentiality, there's the particle skaN, which tends to appear together with the pronoun e, 'that,' as skaN e. This one is used for things the speaker cannot possibly have witnessed, such as the traditional myth stories, making this construction something akin to the English expression, '...or so it goes.' Somewhere between these two lies the narrative particle c^He, which seems to be used much as the OP particle tHe described by Rory below. There are combinations of these, most notably c^He ao, which is probably still in the c^He category. Since skaN is definitely way out beyond c^He in terms of evidentiality, the distinction between the gender set and c^He is probably the fuzzier distinction. I'm not sure of where the line is drawn between o/e and c^He, but I'd suspect there is a line there somewhere.

Hope this helps,
-Justin
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rory M Larson 
  To: siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:01 PM
  Subject: Re: Siouan evidentiality



  Hi Dave, 

  I'll offer what I know from Omaha/Ponca.  John Koontz and Bob Rankin may have a slightly different view. 

  There are at least four particles that are relevant to evidentiality: i, bi, tHe and ama.  These are all post-verbal, and to my knowledge, except for i, are only used in the third person. 

  The i and bi particles come immediately after the verb (or in one case in Dorsey, after the noun, in a sentence that didn't have a verb).  For the most part at least, they are mutually exclusive.  Next may come tHe, and ama comes at the end of the sentence. 

  The i and bi particles are a bit of a puzzle, and I've had a lingering debate going on about them with John and Bob since about 2001 or so.  Prior to then, the wisdom seemed to be that they were simply alternates of the same particle, in which i was just a reduced form of bi.  The two both belong to a small class of post-verbal particles that cause ablaut; i.e., cause a preceding verb that ends in -e to change its ending to -a when the particle is present.  bi is surely cognate with Dakotan pi and Winnebago-Chiwere wi, which both are involved in making the action of the verb plural.  In Omaha/Ponca, i is used in some contexts to mark plurality, as for commanding more than one person, or any plural declarative (we, you or they).  It also seems to be used in constructions describing general behavior, even to the point of a quasi-passive sense: "they do it" => "it is done", like Dakotan pi. 

  However, i is actually used most commonly as a third person singular declarative.  In the third person singular, there is apparently a subtle difference in meaning, depending on whether the verb is followed by i or not.  John Koontz has proposed the distinction of "proximate" vs. "obviative" for this, with the subject being "center stage" for the proximate (with i), and "off-stage" for the obviative (without i).  My sense is that you use i when you focus on the action as a narrative event, and do not use i when you want to make the listener visualize the verbal action as a condition or context, as when a character encounters someone else doing something.  In modern Omaha, declarative i has been truncated off, and only the -e verbs ablauted to -a remain.  Our modern speakers overwhelmingly prefer the -a form as normative for third person singular.  They generally explain that the -e form is present and the -a form is past.  This explanation makes some sense if the -e form declares condition and the -a form declares narrative event. 

  At any rate, the i particle was used declaratively for events directly experienced, or at least not doubted by the speaker, as you describe for Biloxi naxo.  In contrast, the bi particle is used when the speaker wants to raise the preceding material to an idea or hypothesis to be considered, rather than declaring it to be the straight goods on the speaker's own authority.  This includes anything that is hearsay, as well as cases where in English we might use "the supposed", "the alleged", "the putative", or such and such a hypothesis or idea. 

  The ama particle is closely tied to bi, in the very common form: [Sentence] bi-ama.  This is the way most sentences narrating the actions of mythological characters end.  However, bi, like i, seems also to imply narrative action rather than visualized condition.  Many sentences visualizing condition do not end in a regular verb at all, but in a positional which tells how a scene is laid out.  In this case, no bi or i is used.  For a declarative on the speaker's own authority, the positional ends the sentence.  But when visualizing a scene from a mythological account, the positional is followed by ama.  Thus, the ama particle largely equates to your Biloxi kane, to refer to 'hearsay', or things 'not experienced'. 

  When a narrative sentence is composed of multiple clauses, the clauses before the end may end in i or bi prior to the conjuction.  In the older speech pattern that is usual in the mythological stories recorded by Dorsey, these clauses would normally end in bi for mythological narrative, and only the final clause would end in bi-ama.  Later, I think already in some of the material recorded by Dorsey, the entire biama package would sometimes be used to end prefinal clauses.  In modern Omaha, the two particles tend to be fused, and it seems to be uncommon for them to be used separately.  In fact, even the meaning of 'hearsay' in current usage is in doubt.  I have had speakers insist that biama is simply the required declarative form in some cases (I forget- I think it was plural, past, or both). 

  The remaining particle is tHe.  This one is also a bit of a puzzle, and seems to me to have changed its meaning.  John Koontz refers to it as EVID in his analyses: the evidential particle.  Modern speakers back him up.  In this case, [Sentence] i tHe means [Sentence] *evidently* took place; *apparently* [Sentence] happened.  This is different from the kane-naxo axis of distinction.  naxo: "it's so, straight goods, take it from me";  kane: "this is what the story says";  tHe: "this is probably the case, given the evidence at hand". 

  Most of the time in Dorsey, however, tHe seems to be a straight-goods declarative that something has happened.  I see it as something of a perfective marker that throws the action into the past prior to the time of the narrative in such a way as to affect conditions at the time of the narrative.  It can be used after i, or between bi and ama. 

  For 19th century Omaha/Ponca: 

  [Sentence] i ha/he.  Straight-goods declaration of action. 
                                  (ha and he are respectively male and 
                                  female emphatic/declarative particles. 
                                  These seem to have become "old-people" 
                                  speech in the early 20th century and 
                                  dropped out of the language along with 
                                  the preceding i, leaving only -e verbs 
                                  ending in -a to mark the lost i in 
                                  20th century Omaha.) 

  [Sentence] i tHe.    [Sentence] has happened; straight goods. 
                                  (In 20th century Omaha, this means 
                                  [Sentence] has *apparently* happened.) 

  [Sentence][positional].  Picture [Sentence], laid out as 
                                          [positional], straight goods. 

  [Sentence][positional] ama.  Picture [Sentence], laid out as 
                                          [positional], that's the story. 

  [Sentence] bi ama.  This is what he did, according to the story. 

  [Sentence] bi tHe ama.  This is what someone had done, 
                                  according to the story. 



  Hope this helps!  I'll post this to the list, in case other Dhegihanists have any comments to add. 

  Best, 
  Rory 
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