source of GL (was BL accent patterns)

[Rory Larson]

Jan,

Thanks for that.  I’m glad to confirm that it works that way in Dakotan too.

Sorry for the confusion about ‘vertitive’.  I was a bit fuzzy on that term, but googling and looking at a few entries just now I see the word is pretty much pegged to the concept of traveling back to an original point, which wouldn’t apply here.  The other two terms mentioned were ‘reflexive’ and ‘possessive’.  Would this be ‘possessive’, ‘look in at one’s own’, or ‘reflexive’, ‘look in at oneself’?  Is there actually a difference in the protocol of the language, either synchronically or diachronically?

If the gla- does in fact originate from the combination of the prefix ki- with the instrumental ka-, then that blows away my analysis below.  If that is the case, I also hope that someone who understands how that works better than I do will correct me.

Regards,
Rory


From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Jan Ullrich
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 2:56 AM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
Subject: Re: source of GL (was BL accent patterns)

Rory,

If the proposed etymology of míyoglas’iŋ is correct then what is involved is a possessive, rather than a vertitive, I think.
In possessive forms the instrumental prefix ka- becomes gla-, as in:

kaksá ‘to cut sth’ --> glaksá ‘to cut one’s own’
kahíŋta ‘to sweep sth’ –> glahíŋta ‘to sweep one’s own’
okáštaŋ ‘to pour sth into’ --> ogláštaŋ ‘to pour one’s own into’

This is why I think that oglás’iŋ (possessive) comes from okás’iŋ, although the former is not used as an independent lexical unit. It is not uncommon, however, that possessives (and other forms) of some verbs are used only in compounds.

I think that historically the gla- form originates from the combination of the prefix ki- with the instrumental ka-. I hope that colleagues who have been working on the diachronic analyses will correct me if this is not the case.

Jan



Rory wrote:

>> In this case, I think there has been an analogical replacement of a difficult *k-k- series that speakers didn’t want to hack their way through.  When they hit the first *k-, they were momentarily confused as to whether it was the k of the *ki- or the k of the *ka- their verb started with.  They opted for the latter.  Then they wanted to make it vertitive, and remembered from all their *kru- and *kra- and *kre- verbs that *kr- did just that.  The [a] that followed was the [a] of the *ka- rather than that of *ra-.  They just infixed an *r into the *ka- prefix to make it vertitive.  The resulting GLa- thus became vertitive for both *ra- and *ka-.  The difference is that for *ra-, it is the G makes it vertitive, while for *ka-, it is the L that signals vertitive/reflexive/possessive.

>> Now if we could peep into something by means of our mouth, perhaps Lakhota would describe this with the verb **óyas’iŋ.  The vertitive form of this would be óglas’iŋ, and a mirror that we use our mouth to look into would be a miyóglas’iŋ.  This would have five syllables, counting the underlying *ki- that is represented by the G.  But the actual word is the homonym miyóglas’iŋ which is based on ókas’iŋ.  We do not have an underlying affixed *ki-.  We have only the instrumental prefix ka- which has been modified with an infixed L to signal vertitivity.  Assuming this analysis of the vertitive/reflexive/possessive of *ka- verbs is correct, I think the phonological argument would indicate that while miyóglas’iŋ, a mirror that we look into by means of our mouth, has five syllables, its homonym miyóglas’iŋ, a mirror that we look into forcefully, has only four.

>> Hoping that Willem, Jan and David still support my etymology for miyóglas’iŋ, and otherwise ducking and running for cover,

Rory

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