Siouan evidentiality

[Rory M Larson]

Thanks for the addition, Justin!  So to pull Kaw and Omaha/Ponca together 
comparatively:

OP tHe and Kaw c^He are presumably the same word, and are used similarly. 
I suppose this means in the evidential sense, correct?  Any trace of 
perfective use?

The Kaw declaratives ao and (y)e would surely correspond to OP ha-u and 
he.  In the 19th century, the u that frequently followed male ha in OP was 
still a separate particle.  It apparently functioned as a "Hey, you!" 
attention getter when calling to somebody.  Only males were rude enough to 
do this, so it stuck to the ha as a male emphatic.  If you already had 
someone's attention, you could just use plain ha.  In 20th century Omaha, 
ha-u, usually written as ho, is still used.  It's not an obligatory 
declarative ending, but conveys manly emphaticness and seems to be 
appreciated like a firm handshake.  /o/ => /u/ in OP, so the 
attention-getting particle is old in Dhegihan, and was originally o as in 
Kaw.  The original system would be:

a - men's emphatic/declarative => OP ha
e - women's emphatic/declarative => OP he, Kaw (y)e 
o - attention getting particle, used only by men, and often attached to 
male a as a-o => Kaw ao/o, OP hau/ho

Do you ever have anything like i or bi before ao/o?  What about the 
circumstances for the sometimes-y in front of the female particle?  Is 
that conditioned by a preceding front vowel, or could it be a Kaw version 
of the OP i particle?

I can't think of anything like skaN e in OP, but that seems to ring a bell 
for the 'hearsay' final in some other MVS language I've looked at in the 
past, either Dakotan or Winnebago-Chiwere or both.  I suspect that is the 
original, which has somehow been replaced by ama/biama in OP.

Rory
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