akísue hta mĩkšé

[muckefuck]

waðáhkištõpapi hkõbra
wa-á-Ya-hkik-Ya-tõpe-api Wa-kõ-Wa-da
P1P-LOC-A2S-REFL-A2S-look-PL A1S-PREV-A1S-want
"I want you to look down upon us."

I've been trying to give examples from Osage to illustrate various linguistic phenomena lately and, unfortunately, I've been screwing some of them up. This entry should help by serving as a quick reminder of a couple of things: (1) patient personal prefixes precede agent prefixes; (2) the reflexive prefix is hkik (as opposed to suus kik and dative ki) and it takes agent inflection independent of the main verb; (3) tõpe "see" is a fortisizing stop stem.

The title, btw, translates as "I am going to remember it". (kisúðe, an active transitive verb with lexicalised dative ki, which doesn't fortisize or contract.)

Comments

[fainic-thu-fein.livejournal.com]

*adds Osage to ever-growing list of Amerindian languages to learn*

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Good luck. I still haven't been able to find a dictionary; the LaFlesche is (a) rife with errors; (b) written in a misleading orthography; and (c) out of print. Supposedly, Carolyn Quintero's been working on one, but it doesn't seem to have been published yet. Her First course in Osage is out of print, making her excellent Osage grammar my only source for information on the language.

You might want to tackle Omaha-Ponca or Lakota first and then try figure out the peculiarities of Osage. (All-time favourite phonological rule: /kð/ > [l].)

[fainic-thu-fein.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'm not likely to make an earnest effort to learn Osage anytime in the near future. There are several other Amerindian languages taking priority, namely Navajo, Inuktitut and Ho-Chunk, not to mention my continued obsession with all tongues Celtic and a burgeoning interest in languages of the Caucasus. I can only hope there will be better resources available by the time I'm ready to tackle Osage.

So many languages, so little time.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Let me know how you make out with Navajo. Every time I've tried to learn it, it's totally kicked my ass. Osage has some crazy morphophonology, but it still can't hold a candle to the conjugations of Navajo.

I keep saying I'm going to learn Miami in order to have an Algonquian language under my belt, but I haven't really done anything. It just hasn't grabbed me in the same way that the Siouan languages have. I'd rather learn Mobilian Jargon or Chinook Jargon.

[fainic-thu-fein.livejournal.com]

I was keen to satisfy my Algonquian cravings by taking Ojibwe at UW-Madison, but the class filled up before I could register and auditing it wasn't an option. In its wake, I've casually considered studying Piscataway, originally spoken in my neck of the woods, but I gave up the ghost on that pretty quickly. A recent trip to the Blackfeet Reservation in MT has ignited in interest in their language, though. I'll get my Algonquian fix one way or another.

As for Navajo, the myriad prefixes and classificatory verb stems are kicking my ass as well but I just keep coming back for more. Call me a masochist. How can you not love a language with an entire verb stem dedicated to mushy things?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

As a learner of Korean and Chinese, I'm no stranger to classifiers. Osage also has a number of instrumental prefixes which work along similar lines. No, it's the variation among the stems and prefixes that cause me trouble. The personal prefixes of Osage may have many allomorphs, but these are mostly phonetically determined. They don't very by such factors as tense, aspect, mood, and so forth; that's all handled with post-verbal agglutinative suffixes.

It's the same probably I had with Chickasaw. Conjugating a verb takes me ten minutes or more, what with having to determine the conjugational class, the appropriate stem formation, the appropriate personal prefixes, and so forth. It's not something I could get a grip on without a lot more study than I'm willing to devote right now.

[fainic-thu-fein.livejournal.com]

Classifiers are completely new to me, but prefixes are more troublesome still. I'd love to devote more time to Navajo (and Welsh for that matter) if I could, but Irish looks to be my sole preoccupation for at least the next three years.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

There are worse fates!

When people ask me why I never did grad school, I tell it's because I couldn't imagine constantly studying the same thing for years on end. At heart, I'm a dilettante.