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Preverbs and Particles in Algonquian

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Preverbs and Particles in Algonquian Preverbs and Particles in Algonquian DAVID H. PENTLAND University of Manitoba In his comparative Algonquian sketch, Bloomfield (1946) distinguished three classes of words: nouns, verbs, and particles. Within the particle category he further distinguished pronouns (subdivided into personal pro­ nouns, demonstratives, indefinite pronouns, and interrogative pronouns), preverbs (defined as particles which freely precede verb stems, including some particles which never occur anywhere else), and prenouns (particles which similarly appear before nouns). Other scholars have found it useful to set up separate word classes of pronouns and numerals (e.g., Goddard & Bragdon 1988, Nichols & Nyholm 1995), and nowadays most Algonquianists treat preverbs and their kin as a separate category, rather than as a sub-class of particles. Beyond this there is little agreement. For example, in his sketch of Malecite-Passamaquoddy, Teeter (1971:203) divided the words we are concerned with into the categories prenoun, preverb and adverb - the last roughly equivalent to Bloom- field's particle. LeSourd (1993:8) more closely followed Bloomfield in stating that there are only three parts of speech, noun, verb and particle, but went on to note that there are also "loosely joined modifiers known as preverbs and prenouns" (LeSourd 1993:16) which may precede verb stems and noun stems, though he does not seem to have defined "modifier" in rela­ tion to the parts of speech. Leavitt (1985) introduced a distinction between "separate" preverbs and "attached" preverbs. However, in practice his "separate" preverbs include not only what others call preverbs, but also initial elements (i.e., "attached preverbs") which happen to be followed by an HI in derivation. In this treatment, the important distinction between initials (roots and longer strings which may begin a word) and non-initials (medial and final elements which can never occur at the left edge of a word) has been lost. In his Ojibwa dictionary, Rhodes classified his entries into nouns, verbs, adverbs, numbers, particles, pre-nouns, and pre-verbs. He noted Papers of the 36th Algonquian Conference, ed. H.C. Wolfart (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2005), pp. 323-338. 324 DAVID H. PENTLAND that "all forms which do not readily fit in one of the other classes are treated as particles" (Rhodes 1985a:xv). Rhodes eliminated Bloomfield's pronoun category, correctly identifying the Ojibwa members of this class as nouns. However, as with Teeter's Malecite-Passamaquoddy classifica­ tion, I think all his adverbs could be labelled particle without any loss of precision; the Nichols & Nyholm dictionary (1995) adopts this solution. Furthermore, the items Rhodes identified as pre-nouns and pre-verbs have a wider distribution than the terms imply: mno 'good' is labelled a pre-verb, but it also occurs before an "adverb" in mno-mnik 'quite enough' and (in other Ojibwa dialects, at least) it can occur before various nouns; de 'enough' is listed as both a pre-noun and a pre-verb, but the only "pre-noun" example cited is the "adverb" de-mno-mnik 'that's enough'. Valentine (2001:101) listed the Ojibwa parts of speech as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, numbers, particles, prenouns and preverbs. He later added a category "pre-adverb" to account for forms like mno-mnik (cf. above), but did not mention the "pre-pronoun" ge, as in ge-niin 'me too; I, however'. In Nichols & Nyholm (1995) all the prefixed elements are called pre­ verbs, subdivided into four position classes. A new category, defined as "a lexical prefix forming a particle from a noun stem," is given the label prenoun; I think the class-shifting properties of this category are overesti­ mated, and would prefer to reclassify them all as preverbs. Twenty-five years ago, I suggested that the term preverb be used for all the elements that can be loosely attached before a pre-existing full word - not only Bloomfield's prenouns and preverbs, but also the less frequent pre-particles (Valentine's "pre-adverbs") and pre-pronouns\ unfortunately, I buried this suggestion in a footnote in my dissertation (Pentland 1979:46), so it had little impact. As far as I can tell, the only restrictions governing the occurrence of preverbs are semantic: the pre­ verb meaning 'good' (Ojibwa mino, from Proto-Algonquian *melwi) can occur before a verb (as in mino-ayaa 'he is good, well, content' and mino-waawiinjigaazo 'he has a good name, is well spoken of), a noun (such as mino-ayaawin 'good health, contentment'1 and mino-manidoo 'good spirit, the Holy Spirit'), or a particle, as in Rhodes's example mno-mnik 'quite enough'. I therefore proposed the consistent use of the term preverb in its etymological sense of "something that occurs before PREVERBS AND PARTICLES IN ALGONQUIAN 325 another word," without any limitations at all on what class the following word should be. Like so many other terms traditionally used in Algonquian linguis­ tics, preverb was first used to label a feature of Indo-European languages. In Indo-European, however, the term refers only to forms used as verb prefixes as well as prepositions (or postpositions) or adverbs, e.g., Latin trans 'across' in Rhenum transire 'to cross the Rhine' beside trans Rhenum ire (Baldi 1999:88-89). Unlike Algonquian preverbs, their Indo- European counterparts are generally limited to forms with spatio-tempo­ ral meanings, and are perhaps better called "locative auxiliaries" (Friedrich 1976:468-469). When I suggested that the term preverb be used to cover a much broader range of items, however, I was not aware that I had lumped two distinct kinds of elements into the one category. Bloomfield (1946:103) had mentioned that some of his preverbs never occur except before a verb stem; he also noted that most preverbs end in the particle suffix *-i - but did not specify that these two observations refer to different sets of words. Only the forms which never occur anywhere else - Bloomfield's "parti­ cles [which] occur only as prior members" - were original members of the preverb category. At the 24th Algonquian Conference (October 1992), Ives Goddard gave an impromptu presentation during a coffee break in which he explained how preverbs of this kind were formed in Proto-Algonquian: a final obstruent consonant was replaced by *h, while a final sonorant con­ sonant was lost without a trace, as shown in (1) and (2). (1) Roots ending in an obstruent: (la) *ki-s- 'finish' -> *kvh past tense (> Cree ki, East Cree ci, Ojibwa gii('), Potawatomi gi, Fox kvh, Arapaho-Atsina nih, Cheyenne n§h) (lb) *ke-kya-t- 'nearly, almost' -» *ke-kya~h (> Cree keka, Ojibwa gegaa [particle], Malecite-Passamaquoddy keka [particle], Penobscot keka) (lc) *pye-t- 'hither' -> *pye-h (> Creepe, Ojibwa bi, Potawatomi bye, Fox pye- (?).2 1. In some ways, it would be preferable to analyze mino-ayaawin as [[mino- ayaa]vwin]N, with mino still functioning as a modifier of the underlying verb rather than a "prenoun"; the approach taken here deals only with the surface morphosyntax and ignores some very challenging semantic problems. 326 DAVID H. PENTLAND (Id) *te-p- 'reach all the way, suffice, enough' -> *te'h (> Ojibwa de, Shawnee teh [cf. Costa 2002:153-155]) (2) Roots ending in a sonorant: (2a) *ki'w- 'around, about' -> *kr, changed *ka- (> Cree-Montagnais kd, Ojibwa gaa, Fox ki', Cheyenne e) (2b) *kataw- 'want to, intend' -> *kata future tense (> Cree (ka)ta, Ojibwa (ga)da, Illinois kata [particle], Arapaho he't [with initial change], Massachusett kat, Munsee kata) (2c) *pwa-w- 'fail, be unable' -> *pwa' (> Ojibwa bwaa, Potawatomi bwa, Menomini/?«a? [final -? unexplained], Shawnee pwa') (2d) *aOem- 'away from speaker' -> *a&e 'going away, on the way, in progress' (> Cree ati, Ojibwa ani, Shawnee hale, Munsee aid) (2e) *(en)ta0- 'there, at that place' -> *ta (> Shawnee tah [-h unexplained], Munsee tnta [with initial change], Unami enta) The key examples are the preverbs formed from *ki-s- 'finish', which ends in the obstruent *s, and *ki-w- 'around', which ends in the sonorant *w (cf. Clarke, MacKenzie & James 1993:32« and Goddard 1993:224«). The Fox reflexes are clearly distinct, and in Southwestern Ojibwa although both preverbs have the changed form gaa, the past tense preverb makes a following obstruent tense, whereas the relative marker, derived from *ki-w-, does not; in Rainy River Ojibwa, according to Alana Johns (1983), the past tense morpheme ends in a glottal stop, as shown in (3). (3) Rainy River Ojibwa (3a) inini gaa'- nagamod man PAST.IC sing.CJ.3 'a man who was singing' 2. The short vowel of Ojibwa bi has no obvious explanation. In western dialects the changed form is ba (Nichols & Nyholm 1995:20, Dumouchel & Brachet 1942:46); Mal- one (1999) incorrectly phonemicizes William Jones's <pa> as baa. According to Bloom­ field (1958:23) bi does not undergo initial change, but Rhodes (1985a:46) gives the changed form as e-bi or ebi; Valentine (2001:161) cites three possibilities: bi, ebi and e-bi. David Jones (1977:37-38) did not mention a changed form in the "Algonquin" (Nipissing) dialect of Maniwaki, Quebec. The Fox cognate was listed by Bloomfield but Goddard (1994:152) labels it "doubtful." PREVERBS AND PARTICLES IN ALGONQUIAN 327 (3b) mini gaa- nagamod man REL sing.CJ.3 'the man who is singing' Goddard's rule accounts for a number of preverbs, but not all of them.3 As might be expected, initials that end in a long vowel form homophonous preverbs: (4) Roots ending in a vowel: (4a) *kapew- 'for the duration of, across (time or space)' —> *kape- (> Cree kape, Ojibwa gabe, Potawatomi gbe) (4b) *ke-hte-- 'old' —» *ke'hte- (> Cree kehte, Ojibwa gete, Arapaho he'te-, Penobscot kehte) (4c) *memkwa'- 'in the midst of —> *me%kwa- 'while, during' (> Cree- Montagnais mekwd, Ojibwa megwaa [particle], Potawatomi megwa 'still' [particle], Menomini mS'k) It is more difficult to write a formal rule to account for initials that end in two or more consonants.
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