Plains Cree: A Grammatical Study - Computer Science Club

32 WOLFART: PLAINS CREE
[TRANS. AMER. PHIL. SOC.
contraction cf. appendix A: 4.2). Nouns in /enaw/
are derived from inanimate intransitive (II) verbs in
/ena/, with their most common inflected forms being
homonymous; e.g., ispatinaw II 0 'it is a hill,' or the
noun 'hill.' Since these nouns and verbs typically
denote topographical features, the semantic connection
with the /enahk/ suffix is obvious. However, none
of the nouns which take /enahk/ as a distributive
locative suffix are actually paralleled by a verb in
/ena/ (although a form like mostosondw 'it is buffalo
country' might well be expected). Thus, while the
/enahk/ forms must ultimately be regarded as derived
nouns, for all practical purposes /enahk/ functions
as a somewhat restricted inflectional suffix.
3.7. VOCATIVE
The vocative singular is formed in a variety of
ways while /etik/ is uniformly used for the plural.
3.71. Singular
Normally no special ending is used for the vocative
singular, e.g., T7p5, 20 nitokimam 'oh my king.'
However, most of the kin terms and a few nouns of
intimate possession have vocative forms which are
still largely used; the younger generation uses these
in free variation with the simple proximate singular
form (not the stem; but cf. Lacombe, 1874b: p. 6).
The vocative singular frequently ends in a long
vowel; this fact may well be related to phenomena
of rhetorical distortion. While some kin terms remain
unaffected, others undergo apocope (the loss of final
consonants, vowel-consonant, sequences, or whole
syllables) or add a suffix -e; vowels are often length-
ened or distorted. The following lists are by no
means exhaustive; the glosses are incomplete.
Apocope:
nohtawiy 'my father' nohtd
nikdwiy 'my mother' nekd
nimosom 'my grandfather'
nimoso
nohkom 'my grandmother'
nohko
nitihkwatim 'my cross-nephew,
son-in-law'
nitehkwd
nitawemaw 'my cross-sibling' nitawemd
nitdnis 'my daughter'
nitan
niciwdm 'my male parallel cousin' niciwa
nikwemes 'my namesake, friend'
Suffix -e:
nikweme
nimis 'my elder sister' nimise
nisikos 'my father's sister,
mother-in-law'
nisikose
nisis 'my mother's brother,
nisise
father-in-law'
nisim 'my younger brother' nisime
nistes 'my older brother' nistese
nicdhkos 'my (f) sister-in-law' nicahkose
Apocope and suffix -e:
nikosis 'my son'
nosisim 'my grandchild'
nikose
nosise
Vocative identical to proximate singular:
nipdpa 'my father'
nimamd 'my mother'
niscds 'my male cross-cousin'
nitotem 'my fellow tribesman'
3.72. Plural
The vocative plural is always formed with /etik/:
nisim 'my younger brother'
nitoskinikim 'my young man,
crew member'
dtayohkan 'spirit guardian'
3.8. "QUASI-NOUNS"
nislmitik
nitoskinikimitik
dtayohkanitik
Some otherwise non-paradigmatic forms, i.e.
particles, take the vocative plural (3.72) and simple
locative (3.61) suffixes and, in a few cases, even the
plural marker /k/ (3.31, 5.481). Syntactically, these
are predicative particles but because they make use of
nominal suffixes they are, for the nonce, called
QUASI-NOUNS.
3.81. Locative
The locative suffix /ehk/ occurs freely but not
very frequently, e.g., dstam 'here, come here': dstamihk
'on this side.' The same meaning is usually expressed
by the locative morpheme ita (which also occurs as a
particle by itself), e.g., dstamita 'on this side, closer.'
3.82. Vocative
More typical and more frequent are particles which
take the vocative plural suffix /etik/.
Extremely frequent are dstam 'come here,' awas 'go
away'; when more than one person is addressed, we
find dstamitik, awasitik.
A less common example is the particle mdcikotitdn,
mdcikocicdn 'look, let me show you' whose internal
structure is obscure. Although a "plural" form
mdcikotitak does occur in Bloomfield's texts, mdciko-
titan may be addressed to one or several persons. In
the narrow use, when only one person is addressed,
our texts oppose mdcikocicdn to a "vocative plural"
mdcikocicdnitik.
A more problematic form is ekotik 'let's go'
(T523p86) which seems to be based on the pronominal
stem eyakw--e-kw- (4.41).
3.83. Plural
A few particles have forms with and without final
/k/. Whatever the etymological origin of the /k/,
the forms with /k/ seem to be interpretable as plural:
S326-3 "niya, nisim, sipwehte!" 'Go, little sister,
depart! (AI 2)'. S69-23 "niyak! mdcik!" 'be off,
hunt! (AI 2p).'