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Notes on Fox (Mesquakie) Inflection: Minor Modes and Incompletely Described Morphemes

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Notes on Fox (Mesquakie) Inflection: Minor Modes and Incompletely Described Morphemes Notes on Fox (Mesquakie) Inflection: Minor Modes and Incompletely Described Morphemes IVES GODDARD Smithsonian Institution The description of a language is a process rather than a single event. Although Fox must be counted as a rather fully known Algonquian language, it has a number of relatively rare inflectional morphemes that have not yet been described, beyond the brief notice of some in Goddard (1994:187-9). In this paper several of these are surveyed on the basis of evidence derived from texts written by native speakers. Except where noted, these forms have been confirmed during fieldwork on the Mesquakie Settlement, Tama County, Iowa, between 1990 and 1994.1 RARE AFFIXES Indefinite Possession Fox has a variety of ways to mark kinds of indefinite possession. Any noun can be marked explicitly for an indefinite person (X) as possessor by the affix combination o-inaw- (1-4). For example, oni-ca-pingwaki 'one's dolls' (1) is formed from ni-ca-pa 'doll', and oni-ca-nesinawaki 'one's children' (2) from onicanesani 'his child'.2 Often nouns inflected for indefinite possessor appear in sentences with verbs inflected for indefinite subject, marked in 1 and 2, for example, by |-k| (conjunct AI The texts were written in the years 1911-26; they are in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, and most are unpublished. The writers' names are abbreviated as follows: C = Charley H. Chuck; GBC = George Black Cloud; JP = Joe Peters; K = Alfred Kiyana; S = Sakihtanohkweha' The manuscripts are referred to by coded titles following the hyphen; these codes are for future reference to the eventual editions of the manuscripts. Citations with no internal hyphen refer to anonymous manuscripts. Some forms have been cited from my principal field consultant, Adeline Wanatee (AW). 2 The indefinite-possessor form of owi-yawi 'his body, himself is the uniquely irregular owiyaninawi (26). NOTES ON FOX INFLECTION 125 'X') and |-et| (conjunct TA 'X-3').3 When this occurs all the indefinite persons in the sentence co-refer to the same logical entity. (1) i-ni=ma-hi we-ci-nahikwa-soki, that=after.all how-X.learns.to.sew4 e-h=kokwe-cikwa-sikawgci oni-ca-pingwaki. (Auto.4A-B) by.X.practicing.sewing.for.them X' s.dolls 'That's how one leams to sew, after all, by practicing sewing for one's dolls.' (2) a-kwi ni-ske-nemecini oni-ca-nesinawaki e-h=ma-ne-heci. (K-WOLF.3) not X.thinks.them.a.burden X's.children when.X.has.a.lot.of.them 'One's children are not a burden when one has a lot.' (3) owi-picinawani 'one's teeth' (K-MED.3) (cf. owi-pici 'his tooth') (4) o-siseminawa 'one's grandchild' (K-MAE.1065) (cf. osisemani 'his grandchild') As the examples show, indefinite possessor may be marked for non- dependent nouns (1), dependent nouns of relationship (mostly kin terms) (2, 4), and dependent nouns of intimate possession (mostly body-part terms) (3).5 The ending -inaw appears to be cognate with Massachusett |-9nyay| (Goddard and Bragdon 1988:491), which would reflect PEA *-Tnay < PA *-inay; this is used together with the third-person prefix |wa-| exactly like Fox o-inaw-: Massachusett (wunnaumoniin) /wanam^nayan/ 'a son', (wunnaumoniineuh) /wanam^naysny^h/ 'the son(s) (obv.)' {l-'snyahl <— |-9nyay-ah|). The discrepancy between the semivowels is unexplained, 3 Grammatical abbreviations: AI = animate intransitive; AN = animate; AST = assertive; AOR = aorist conjunct; CC = changed conjunct; CON = conclusive; DIM = diminutive; EMPH = emphatic; EXCLAM = exclamation; EXPL = expletive; FUT = future; HRSY = hearsay; IFP = independent future potential; INAN = inanimate; incl - inclusive; IND = independent indicative; INT = interrogative; ITER = iterative conjunct; loc.obl = locative oblique; NEG = negative conjunct; obi = oblique; OBV = obviative; pi = plural; POT = potential; PPL = participle; PRET = preterite; PRi = prioritive; PROX = proximate; REL - relational; SECOBJ = secondary object; sg = singular; SUBJ = subjunctive; TA = transitive animate; TI = transitive inanimate; VCBL = vocable. 4 In the interlinear glosses the hyphens (marking preverbs) and double hyphens (marking clitics and cliticization) correspond to those in the Fox examples; if a space is added in the interlinear before a double hyphen the following word is not an enclitic but a cliticized word, or at least a word causing elision like a clitic. 5 The terminology is taken from Bloomfield (1962:44). 126 IVES GODDARD but another case in which Fox has w but other languages seem to point to PA *y is furnished by the following set of verbs: Fox awiwa AI 'he is, stays (there)', awiwe-wa TA, awiwa TI3 'he has, gets him, it'; Massachusett <ayeu) /ayaw/ 'he is, dwells (there)', (ayeuau) /ayawaw/TA, (ayim), (ayum) /ayam/ Tilb (reshaped) 'he makes (him, it)'. It also may be germane that the pluralizing suffix for a first-person plural inclusive possessor was PA *-enaw (Goddard 1967:68). The indefinite category in Fox is often used with a reference similar to that of the first plural inclusive, particularly as a generalization, as in 1 where 'one' has the referential meaning 'we women'.6 In addition to the inflection for indefinite possessor, dependent nouns have unpossessed forms, which indicate no link to any definite or indefinite possessor (5-9). The inflections are different for body-part terms and kin terms. For body-part nouns either me- or the third-person o- may be used, without a sharp distinction, as in the following references to a buffalo tail on the same page of a text by Alfred Kiyana: (5) i-ni mesowa-nowi 'that tail' (K-BLI.20) (6) nekoti osowa-nowi 'one tail' (K-BLI.20) It is possible that Fox (like Menominee; Bloomfield 1962:128) once used me- on unpossessed nouns referring to human body parts (and other nouns of intimate possession) and o- for animal body parts, but in all attested forms of Fox me- is used optionally with some animal body parts (5) and obligatorily with others: mete-hi 'a (human or animal) heart' (cf. ote-hi 'his heart'). Although nowadays words for unpossessed human body parts are ordinarily cited with o-, very few forms of this kind are found in traditional texts. An isolated but consistent example is owi-si 'a (human or animal) head, his head', which has no form with m-.7 The Fox nouns of intimate possession other than body-part terms are suppletive to non-dependent nouns that are ordinarily not inflected for 6 Original indefinite-subject verb forms are used also for the first-plural inclusive in Blackfoot; in some Arapaho paradigms the PA indefinite-subject form is used for the first plural exclusive. 7 One writer, Sakihtanohkweha, uses owisehkwayani 'scalps' beside the usual misehkwayani; this form may be influenced by owisani 'heads, scalps', which she uses interchangeably and perhaps even more commonly with the same reference. NOTES ON FOX INFLECTION 127 possession, and they make no unpossessed form: netaya 'my dog, horse, pef; ni-pi 'my arrow'; ni-ki 'my house'; nehkone-hi 'my blanket, robe'; neko-te-hi 'my skirt, dress'. The last two of these have non-productively derived non-possessed forms incorporating me-: mehkone-weni 'blanket, robe', meko-te-weni 'skirt, dress'. The unpossessed forms of kinship terms use the affix combination o-ema-w-: oni-ca-nesema-waki 'people's children': (7) o-ni=ki-na ka-tadce-ko-hi itahitama-ke-hkani and =you don't =anything (don't).ever.say.(so).about.people's oni-ca-nesema-waki. (K-AUT0.229B) people's.children "You must not say anything against anybody else's children." (tr. Ida Poweshiek)8 (8) a-ya-sehkote=meko-='ni e-h=anemi-owi-weti-wa-ci across.the.fire(?)=EMPH =then they.marry.each.other oni-ca-nesema-waki. (C-IW. HE) people's.children 'Then the children of one marry those of the other.' (9) ma-waci-osi-mema-waki (C-G.4M) of.all-younger.siblings 'the younger brothers' (refers to the two youngest of ten brothers) This formation is a passive agent noun made on a TA verb of possession (cf. Goddard 1990:472-3, exx. 107, 114). It has exact cognates in Menominee (Bloomfield 1962:44, 242, 337) and Cree (Lacombe 1874: 510). Verbal Affixes The verbal inflections of Fox have been described by Bloomfield (1927:191-219) and Voorhis (1971:67-70) on the basis of textual attestations and field data. The paradigmatic tables compiled by Goddard (1994:187-207) filled some of the remaining gaps. Citations for the most significant of the new forms in these tables and for an additional form confirmed subsequently are presented here. 81 quote some translations ("tr.") by bilingual native speakers; those by William Jones are published and the rest are in manuscripts written for Truman Michelson. 128 IVES GODDARD In the independent indicative the ending for the TA third-person passive, singular and plural, is -a-pi (replacing PA *-a-wa, *-a-waki; Goddard 1967:85, 90); the equivalent ending in the independent dubita­ tive is -a-petoke. There are endings for the obviative passive corresponding to these, which have the suffix -em added before the theme sign -a-: indicative -ema-pi (10, 11); dubitative -emapetoke (12): (10) wi-h=nesema-pi=ca-hi wi-h=o-sicini. (K-WAP.24E) X.will.kill.OBV=so OBV.that.PROX.will.have.as.father 'And the one who will be his father will be killed.' (11) anemi-mi-nemi-nema-pi9 owi-yawi. (K-MAE.218-219) X.kept.repeatedly.giving.(SEC.OBJ).to.OBV herself 'She kept being given away to them.' (12) wi-nadioci wi-h=te-pwe-htawoma-petoke he=of.course X.will.probably.believe.OBV wi-h=ketemina-kokwe-hini.
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