Question re: Dhegiha and other Siouan quotatives

[Sky Campbell]

Your mention of the Lakota term "okihi" has me very interested and also ties
into these serial verbs.  Hamilton has in his "An Ioway Grammar" book on
page 52:

--------------begin Hamilton---------------

This mood does not express power or ability to do an act, as its name might
seem to imply. Ability expressed by can in English is not properly expressed
by any one of the moods, but generally by the subjunctive and potential
together; as,

Ha-u e-ha-tu-ka-na-skæ, ha-u-hna-sku. If I willed it, I would do it.
Literally: I do, if I will it, I may do it.

--------------end Hamilton---------------

Here Hamilton is referring to what he calls the "potential mood."  I'm
curious about Lakota having the one word for "to be able" ("can") whereas
Hamilton says it isn't that simple in Ioway.  But on the subject of serial
verbs, the above shows 3 verbs (2 of them being the same):

ha'u - I do/work/make/create

ihaduganasge - if I willed it (I've seen this also as "ihadugra" (minus the
-nasge))

ha'uhnasgu - I may do it (here is the same verb "ha'u" with a few extra
suffixes to change the meaning a bit)

So here again we have 3 verbs all conjugated.  I wasn't sure I'd find one
beyond something along the lines of bring/take something somewhere.  But the
mention of "to be able" reminded me of Hamilton's above phrase.


Sky



-----Original Message-----
From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Jan
Ullrich
Sent: Saturday, March 1, 2014 4:31 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Question re: Dhegiha and other Siouan quotatives

> Several people have noted (not sure whether published or not) that 
> Lakota
complements 
> to verbs that require same-subject for both verbs (e.g. 
> 'try') do not allow affixes on the first verb, while those which 
> permit a
change of subject (like 'want') 
> do require that both verbs be marked.  

I have been under the impression that there are only two Lakota verbs that
require both verbs in a complex predicate to be conjugated. They are chin
'to want' and okihi 'to be able to'. 
If there is data pointing to other verbs that behave like this it would be
useful to know.

Jan