Jun. 15th, 2005 09:51 am
Stop me before I conjugate again!
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muckefuckNot half an hour after my previous post, I found confirmation of a suspicion I scarcely dared harbour: Use of a continuative auxiliary with a form of kõða and an embedded verb!
Let me break this down a bit: Osage uses a series of conjugated auxiliaries to mark continuative aspect. The form is something like the English progressive (e.g. "I'm typing it up") in that it expresses continuance of an activity over a period of time. What's most interesting about these auxiliaries is that they reflect the position of the subject at the time the action took place.
For instance, the sentence wabraahtã mĩkše is glossed as "I'm sitting here drinking", mĩkše being the auxiliary that expresses "I'm sitting (or lying) down as I do this". If I were moving about, however, I'd use ãã(ðĩ)he; for standing, atxãhe. These are only the primary meanings, however. The "moving about" auxiliaries also imply that the action has been taking place for some time. wabraahtã ããhe usually corresponds to English "I've been drinking". "Standing" implies immediancy, such as being about to start doing something. So wabraahtã atxãhe for "I'm about to start drinking".
So what? So let's go back to our monster predicate ðahkišpižõ škõšta. As it stands, it's unmarked for tense or aspect. It could mean "You want to learn it for yourself" as well as "You wanted to learn it for yourself". That's why I keep supplying glosses like "you want/ed [it]"; without additional particles or context, the form is ambiguous as to time. Tacking on a continuative axiliary adds some clarification. So now we have:
Now I'm going to quit while I'm ahead (or ludicrously over-the-top, depending on how you look at it).
Let me break this down a bit: Osage uses a series of conjugated auxiliaries to mark continuative aspect. The form is something like the English progressive (e.g. "I'm typing it up") in that it expresses continuance of an activity over a period of time. What's most interesting about these auxiliaries is that they reflect the position of the subject at the time the action took place.
For instance, the sentence wabraahtã mĩkše is glossed as "I'm sitting here drinking", mĩkše being the auxiliary that expresses "I'm sitting (or lying) down as I do this". If I were moving about, however, I'd use ãã(ðĩ)he; for standing, atxãhe. These are only the primary meanings, however. The "moving about" auxiliaries also imply that the action has been taking place for some time. wabraahtã ããhe usually corresponds to English "I've been drinking". "Standing" implies immediancy, such as being about to start doing something. So wabraahtã atxãhe for "I'm about to start drinking".
So what? So let's go back to our monster predicate ðahkišpižõ škõšta. As it stands, it's unmarked for tense or aspect. It could mean "You want to learn it for yourself" as well as "You wanted to learn it for yourself". That's why I keep supplying glosses like "you want/ed [it]"; without additional particles or context, the form is ambiguous as to time. Tacking on a continuative axiliary adds some clarification. So now we have:
ðahkišpižõ škõšta ðaĩše "You have been wanting to learn it for yourself"Sextuply inflected? I think I can make a case for double inflection in ðaĩše. Note the first-person forms, ãã(ðĩ)he and ãkaðe (singular and plural, respectively). There's a change not only in the prefix, but in the stem as well--and as we've seen, š is a common variant of the second-person agent prefix. That would make for a grand total of seven agent inflections in a single verbal complex.
Now I'm going to quit while I'm ahead (or ludicrously over-the-top, depending on how you look at it).
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