Re: About persons

On Tue, 22 May 2001, jesse stephen bangs wrote:

> dirk elzinga sikayal:
>
> I noticed something odd in the Uto-Aztecan data you gave here, Dirk.  Tell
> me if I'm right:
>
> > Shoshoni (1 is speaker, 2 is listener, and 3 is neither):
> >            sg      du        pl
> >     1+2   ----    taweh    tammen
> > Chemehuevi
> >     1+2       ----    tami      tawe
>
> It looks to me like /tami/ is cognate to /tammen/, and /tawe/ to /taweh/,
> which suggests that some of these forms have switched from dual to plural
> over time.  Or has one of the languages used an innovative ending that
> only coincidentally resembles the endings used in the other language?  I
> think that they actually switched, because of the following data:
>
> > Shoshoni
> >     1+3    ne     neweh    nemmen
> >       2    en     meweh    memmen
> >       3  suten   suteweh   suteen
> > Chemehuevi
> >     1+3        nee         nemi
> >       2        emi         memi
> >       3anim    iNa         ime       here
> >                maNa        mame      visible
> >                uNa         ume       invisible
>
> Here Ch. -mi or -me, which appear cognate to Sh. -men, always appear as
> the plural, suggesting that the use of this same ending for dual in the
> 1st person is anomalous.
>
> Am I right?
You are. The m ~ w alternations in Numic are phonological in
origin; intervocalically, an /m/ was realized as a [w] or a
nasalized [w~] (as it still is in Shoshoni). If /m/ is geminate,
no lenition takes place. So the real alternation in the set is
between original geminate /m/ and singleton /m/, which is
lenited and shows up as [w]. Consequently, the variation occurs
in which set of pronouns induce gemination--the dual or the
plural. Some Numic languages have gemination induced by plurals
(Shoshoni), others by duals (Chemehuevi).

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir