Locatives and wa- problems.

Mon Sep 16 16:05:43 UTC 2013

Does this shifting mentioned here have an official name?  The reason I ask is I have been working on a parsing program to help me translate sources like Merrill and Hamilton.  I’ve gotten very familiar with their respective orthographies, but sometimes an obvious “translation” doesn’t appear in my head.  So while I was bored on the plane to the Breath of Life this past summer in D.C., I began writing this program (Jill Greer got to see it in action in its infancy).  What the program does is take in a particular source’s orthography and converts it into ours for easier reading (and therefore translating).  And where the source could go either way (for example, Merrill’s “h” could either be an “h” or an “x”), the program cranks out all of the possibilities.  For example, Merrill has an individual’s name as “Mehlhunca” in his diary.  Input that into the program and you get 8 possibilities (because 3 of those characters can go one of two ways, therefore 2 x 2 x 2 = 8).  The output would be:

mihahąnche
mihahąnje
mihaxąnche
mihaxąnje
mixahąnche
mixahąnje
mixaxąnche
mixaxąnje

Now I can use these to try to figure out what they say.  Now I can eliminate what I don’t want and work with the others.  Turns out number 4 is what works for me.  The output “mihaxąnje” is actually Miha Xąnje (Big Second-Born Daughter (an Otoe chief)).  So if I’d been having trouble with “Mehlhunca”, I could use this to help.

Now that the explanation is out of the way, I can use this same kind of parsing to work with the “shifting” that we’ve been talking about.  What I’d like to know is if there is a sort of list of shifting guidelines (I know things are rarely locked in stone.) that I could use to attempt to pattern out the shifts in the language.  As was mentioned by Rory:

Ponca [s] = Otoe-Missouria [th]
Ponca [z] = Otoe-Missouria [ð]

Now I can take matches like these and use them to try to work backwards in some situations and forwards in others.  So let’s say I didn’t know what “maðe” meant and wanted to browse possible cognates.  The “ð” would be linked to “z” (using the above guidelines) and would give me “maze” as a possibility.  Then if I found “maze” in Ponca and saw it was translated as iron/metal, that would be pretty good evidence for that translation to apply to my “maðe.”  If I want to get fancy (maybe later down the road ☺) I can try to calculate the timeframe for multiple shifts using the documentation as a guide.  For example, it looks to be about 100 (or slightly less) years to shift from “s” to “th.”  I’m basing that on the name “Wathake Ruje” (Raw Eater) which was listed in the late 1800s but was also rendered as “Wasake Ruje” in Stephen Long’s material from 1817 (two separate individuals).

So what I’m after is a list of guidelines for these shifts.  As Rory mentioned, d/t can shift to ch/j when followed by a “front vowel.”  Is there a list like this out there that I can plug into my program?  Ultimately I’d like to link this program to a Siouan dictionary file and anything that is outputted can be checked against that file for a match (yet another feature for down the road…will need to have a Siouan dictionary, first!).

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: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 1:27 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Locatives and wa- problems.

Hi Sky,

Ø  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:

Ø

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

Ø

Ø  te/che – buffalo

Ø  inde/inje – face

Ø  ti/chi – house/live (the context of “live” here seems to be older in Otoe-Missouria…nowadays this mostly refers to “house”)

Ø  tade/taje – wind

Notice that these cases are all followed by a front vowel, [i] or [e].  When we make a front vowel, we arch our tongue up forward in our mouth so that it runs parallel to our palate.  Then, when we try to make a consonant next to that front vowel, it tends to slur to the middle because the tongue isn’t pointed where it needs to be.  So after or before an [i] or [e] sound, [t] or [d] at the front and [k] or [g] at the back often tend to slip toward the middle and become something like [ch] or [j].  This is called palatalization, and it happens in the evolution of a lot of languages, sometimes one way and sometimes the other.  The letter C in Latin was originally always pronounced [k], and the letter G was always hard [g].  But in time, whenever these came before [i] or [e], G came to be pronounced as [j], and C to be pronounced first as [ch] and eventually as [s] in French (and French words in English).

Palatalization has gone from the other direction here.  The Ponca form is more like the original.  In Otoe-Missouria, the original [t] has slid backward to become [ch], and original [d] has slid back to become [j].

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

Ø

Ø  mase/maðe – metal

Ø  ska/thka – white (although a few Otoe-Missourias today still use “ska”)

Ø  si/thi – foot

Ø  si/ði – yellow

Ø

Actually, Ponca should have both [s] and [z].  Omaha certainly does, and Ponca is very close.  For some reason, Fletcher and La Flesche decided to write both of these sounds with a c-cedilla, ç.  That has causes a good deal of unnecessary confusion, and has cost me a couple years of my life working with my Omaha speaker to untangle the words in the Stabler-Swetland dictionary that was built on their orthography.  This pattern should actually be:

Ø  mąze/maðe – metal

Ø  ska/thka – white (although a few Otoe-Missourias today still use “ska”)

Ø  si/thi – foot

Ø  zi/ði – yellow

Here, the correspondence is:

Ponca [s] = Otoe-Missouria [th]
Ponca [z] = Otoe-Missouria [ð]

The difference is simply that the Otoe-Missouria sound is pronounced with the tongue further forward, against the back of the front teeth instead of on the alveolar ridge behind them.  From the Ponca point of view, Otoe-Missourias are lisping.

Ø  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:

Ø

Ø  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)

Ø  nomba/nuwe – two (the “nomba” is based on Maximilian/Thwaites’ spelling)

Ø  nombe/nawe – hand (ditto on the spelling)

Ø

In general, I think you’re absolutely right there, though I suspect the actual Ponca cognate to Otoe-Missouria thewe would probably be sebe rather than sabe.  We have both in Omaha, and they are obviously closely related.  The general term for ‘black’ is sabe, but sebe means a kind of shadowed dark, as in the woman’s name Mi-sebe, meaning “The Dark of the Moon”.

I’m sure your linguist friend is correct about “thi-pi” meaning ‘they live’, or rather ‘they dwell’.  I’ve always understood that the *hti term can be used either as the noun ‘house’ or as the verb ‘dwell’.

Ø  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?

Ø

Ø  What do you guys think?

Ø

Going back to the common ancestor language, yes.  That would be Mississippi Valley Siouan, which includes Lakhota, Hoocąk, Otoe-Missouria, Ponca and Omaha, among others.  The presumed ancestral particle here is *(a)pi, which Bob and I often argue about.  In the Dakotan branch, it stays (a)pi.  In the Hoocąk-Ioway-Otoe-Missouria branch, I think it is always (a)wi, as you have it.  In these two branches, it is a pluralizing particle.  In Hoocąk-Ioway-Otoe-Missouria, it is apparently used normally to pluralize only ‘you’ and ‘we’, and in Hoocąk, ‘I’, while a different particle like -ire or -nye is used to pluralize the third person.  In Dakotan though, I think it is used as commonly in the third person as for ‘we’ and ‘you’.  In Omaha and Ponca, the cognate particle should be (a)bi, but in these languages it conveys an entirely different meaning, and apparently lives almost exclusively in the third person, both singular and plural.

So going back to the common ancestor of all these languages, MVS, it is very likely that the particle was used in the third person, though it is not so certain that it meant plurality then.  Going back only to the nearer common ancestral language, Hoocąk-Ioway-Otoe-Missouria, it almost certainly meant plurality, but it may have been restricted to ‘you’, ‘we’, and perhaps ‘I’.  However, it is possible that the *ire ending had not yet achieved total dominance of third person plural then, and that *(a)wi still lived along beside it in the third person to some extent.  Then, perhaps that *(a)wi took on the specialized sense of duality in contrast to the broader plurality of ire/nye in the line that led to Otoe-Missouria, and was able to maintain itself in that niche, but was overlooked by early linguists who never ran across this dual form.  The hypothesis is reasonable; it’s just thin on evidential support at the moment.

By the way, very nice comparative work!  I look forward to seeing how you develop it.

Best,
Rory

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Campbell, Sky
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 10:24 AM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Locatives and wa- problems.

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<mailto: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<mailto: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?

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