[Possible SPAM] Re: Aho!
John Koontz
jekoontz at MSN.COM
Thu Mar 6 03:00:05 UTC 2014
I would guess this pair contrasts something analogous to Omaha-Ponca 'to say' vs. 'to say to'. The 'say' stems are highly irregular in Omaha-Ponca like most Siouan, but underlyingly they are something like e=...he vs. e=gi=...he. So the first persons are ehe 'I said it' (from something like Proto-Dhegiha *e=phe) vs. egiphe 'I said (it) to him'. The third persons are a=i 'they said' vs. ega=i 'they said to him'. I've reconstructed the plural from memory of the logic of the system. What I remember is the unpluralized from ege (e=g(i)...(h)e). The gi element is the dative marker of course and the weird thing about (OP) 'say' is that that comes *before* the pronoun. When gi is followed by the root (h)e it contracts with it. I'm not sure the root is really -he in the third person. The first and second persons are clearly built on e=(gi)=...he, but the inclusive is usually from another verb entirely, and the third person behaves like e by itself in the simple stem and e=g(i)=...e in the dative. The initial e= is presumably an incorporated e 'the aforesaid'. And, of course, this is the quoting verb that follows a quotation. There's a form with initial ga 'yonder' that is used preceding a quotation. The third person is essentially always seen as a=(nothing) or a=i or a=bi with the plural-proximate marker following e and conditioning the a-grade of the stem. (So you almost never get a singular looking form, and if you did it would be just e, and so hard to know from a demonstrative e.) The =(nothing) form of the plural-proximate is current now when no other particle follows. Dorsey always has a=i or a=bi (the latter when the quotation is itself quoted in some way).
Anyway, making allowances, I hope, for my poor grasp of IO, I make these
e=wa-a naha 'the one who says something'
vs. e=wa-g(i)-a naha 'the one who says (something) to someone'
I hope I correctly remember naha as an article of some sort. If not ...
When you add a dative to something then the object is the dative object and the "direct object" sort of falls out of the agreement pattern. Sometimes it hangs around in the sentence as a noun (or quotation) without governing anything in the verb. What the relationalists called a chomeur.
I may have found a clue for “ka.” Dorsey has the term:
e-wa-na-ha – the speaker; the one speaking
Then he has the term:
e wa-ka-na-ha – the one who is meant; the person addressed
I’m not sure how (or even if) this is related to the “ka” I am asking about but I’m trying to look at it in different ways to see if it fits somehow.
Sky Campbell, B. A.
Language Director
Otoe-Missouria Tribe
580-723-4466 ext. 111
sky at omtribe.org
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