Re: infix(Lakota gloss included)

At 3/21/01 08:44 PM -0500, you wrote:

This was a very interesting post. Thank you very much.

Regarding the woman who teaches Lakhota here: she is by no means a real
teacher -- she is a woman who works a couple odd jobs to make ends meet,
who the linguistics department pays to come to school occassionally for
people to study her language for a linguists perspective.  She is an
absolutely wonderful woman and I have had quite a few lunches with her. I
do have some data that was collected from her though, including a full
naration of the Nativity. (My advisor, who works on Lakhota, likes to share
things like this with me even though they are not in my exact realm of
specialty).

Well, in line with the original topic I had meant that Lakota has mostly
>stopped using infixes, turining them to prefixes and suffixes, and began to
>detach them from the verb form.
>I should have been a lttle clearer about that part, sorry.
>Also Lakota is is different depending on who teaches you.  Colorado U teaches
>a form is very static and spells Lakota as Lahkota kola as khola etc., wheras
>at the OLC In Pine Ridge, it is more dynamic  and they skip the additional H
>(which is apparently meant to be sounded) in most words.
>(Word order is basically the same, but some are different, what the exact
>differences are I am unclear but I've disscussed it with proponents of both
>styles-unfortunatly I am more into the culture/history of the Lakota, and am
>by no means fluent in the language).
>The process of writing the language, and developing teaching styles has
>changed the language also.  My g-g-gramp's writings are fairly well known,
>and his writings are considered archaic sounding, or at least stilted by the
>native speakers I know.
>My grampa would always use the -ma- infix, but his pronounciation of Lamakota
>yelo sounded more like "lom-kod-a ye-luh", which when he came to speak to a
>class at the U here in Nebraska confused the heck out of the students.  He
>also had the somewhat annoying tendancy of including long pauses and skipping
>the use of the yelo/welo enclitic for longer speech, which caused all sort of
>chaos when I was first learning:)
>On the Reservations Pine Ridge Lakota sounds different from other Lakota
>resevations.  The Lakota were originally divided into seven groups, and the
>largest, the Oglala, was further divided into seven.  Each group had certain
>conventions understood by its constituent and usually by others (however
>OmaHa was Lakota once, and although they lived next and with us for the time
>of that split, there language is very different), and as modern Lakota
>language studies are meant to teach non-native speakers (those who did not
>grow up with it) different grammers have been developed that tried to include
>the majority of conventions, but they still hang in there in certain
>groupings.  A major difference was the so-called shamen's language which was
>Lakota vocabulary with some (unknown unfortunatly) different structure and
>maybe an additional word class for certain nouns.  As most of the earlier
>writers had at least some "shaminic" training this probably influenced there
>writing styles.
>
>Brandon DW


Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley