Locatives and wa- problems.

Tue Sep 10 15:24:15 UTC 2013

I was the one who was questioning the –wi suffix as a 3rd-person dual for verbs.  That conjugation is in newer material but as of yet I have been unable to find it in older material.  Rev. Hamilton in his An Ioway Grammar jumps straight from 3rd-person singular to 3rd-person plural (-nye).  It was only recently that the idea of questioning –wi as a 3rd-person dual was put to me.  So I am in the middle of investigating it right now.  However I do have a bit of anecdotal evidence that might support the use of –wi in this context.  I have to set this up a bit so please bear with me ☺.

Since I’ve started working with Otoe-Missouria (and Ioway), I’ve noticed patterns when comparing Otoe-Missouria to Ponca (my wife is Ponca).  Where Otoe-Missouria has “ch” or “j”, Ponca tends to have “d” or “t”.  For example:

“Ponca/Otoe-Missouria” formatting in the list below.

te/che – buffalo
inde/inje – face
ti/chi – house/live (the context of “live” here seems to be older in Otoe-Missouria…nowadays this mostly refers to “house”)
tade/taje – wind

Another pattern is where Otoe-Missouria has “ð (dh)” or “th”, Ponca tends to have “s”.  For example:

mase/maðe – metal
ska/thka – white (although a few Otoe-Missourias today still use “ska”)
si/thi – foot
si/ði – yellow

The older Otoe-Missouria language material (Long, Maximilian) is chock-full of “s” where nowadays we have ð or th.

All of that was to show a few patterns I have found and which are probably old news to you guys.  Still, there is another pattern that I found that made me think again about the use of –wi to indicate they-dual.  This pattern is based on a conversation with a linguist at the recent Breath of Life I attended this past summer.  He mentioned studying Lakota and mentioned that the term “tipi” literally said “they-live” (I haven’t studied Lakota so I can’t claim how accurate this is).  This made sense to me in that I was aware of the t/ch as a possible swap and that our term “chi” does carry a context of “live.”  But the ending “-pi” had me curious because of our –wi which is supposed to indicate they-dual.  So I started looking for that particular pattern (b-p/w) and sure enough I found entries like:

sabe/thewe – black (that one has both the s/th AND b/w swapped…an older form for “thewe” is “sewe” which is used as brown nowadays)
nomba/nuwe – two (the “nomba” is based on Maximilian/Thwaites’ spelling)
nombe/nawe – hand (ditto on the spelling)

(There may be an example of a reversal of this with Hamilton’s entry of “wą” (page 39 of his An Ioway Grammar) to indicate surprise where nowadays you hear “bą” around here.)

Ok, so using that pattern, would it be possible for the 3rd-person dual “-wi” in question to be a form of the Lakota “-pi” that was told to me?  And if so, it would certainly explain its existence.  And if so, what context does “-pi” have?  Does it also represent 3rd-person dual?  Does it refer to “they” when “they” are known to the speaker and listener and not just they in general?

What do you guys think?

PS I am not well versed in Ponca so I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies there ☺.

Sky Campbell, B. A.
Language Director
Otoe-Missouria Tribe
580-723-4466 ext. 111
sky at omtribe.org

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Rory Larson
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 3:58 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Locatives and wa- problems.

Ø  Does this answer your question?

Yes.  And thank you especially for the more complicated answer!

You are right about the Chiwere claim; the one that came up recently I think is specifically about Otoe.  Apparently the -wi particle is supposed to imply two actors when used in the third person.  But this is not attested in older sources, so the question is whether that usage is a recent development, or a misunderstanding by recent linguists, or whether the older linguists just missed it.  I thought getting a Hoocąk perspective might help in evaluating the claim.

I don’t have much to add to that other than in connection with the two different positionals, jee/jąą, that you mention.  In Omaha, in fact, we do have two ‘standing’ positionals, tʰe and tʰaⁿ.  The first is used for inanimates, and the second (rarely) for animate beings.  If I recall the sound shift rules I once learned from John and Bob correctly, MVS */tʰ/ should stay /tʰ/ in Omaha and go to /j/ in Hoocąk, so I think those two pairs should probably be cognate.  Bob might be better able to comment on this.

Best,
Rory

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Iren Hartmann
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 2:17 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Locatives and wa- problems.

Hi Rory,

the quick and simple answer to your question is no. There is no interchangeability between the two PL markers in Hoocąk. -wi is not used to mark 3rd PL subject. However, I recall that this has been claimed for Chiwere, maybe there it is indeed possible.
The more complicated answer to your question is, that there is one sort of exception that I know of:
For all full verbs 3rd PL subject is -ire in Hoocąk. And this is also true for all auxiliaries, except in the case of the positionals. With them -ire cannot be used, they inflect irregularly anyway.. There the third PL form is always nąąk (long version of the sitting/neutral positional), so that position is neutralized. However, there is a very curious form that one encounters every so often, which is hająwi = they exist. It consists of ha-(collective marker) jee (vertical positional, sometimes used as existential) and -wi (PL). This would be the only case in which you could get a -wi for 3rd PL subject. BUT it does NOT alternate with -ire, and it has to co-occur with the collective. I think there might have been two diferent "positionals" jee/jąą at some point and they got mostly conflated nowadays. This rare form here is a reflex of the one that was only used with animates and it is still in some use as an existential (hence also the curious nasalization). So really there is NO alternation bewteen -ire and -wi in Hoocąk ever.
Does this answer your question?

Best,
Iren

One other question that has come up that you might want to comment on:  Does Hoocąk ever use the -wi particle in the third person?  I thought a long time ago I had read that in the third person plural, either -wi or -ire could occur, but with somewhat different meanings.  Is there anything to that, or is my memory mistaken?

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/siouan/attachments/20130910/86958afe/attachment.htm>