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Abstract
The Siouan languages, and especially the Dhegiha subgroup of Mississippi Valley Siouan, are particularly rich in the use of positionals in classificatory constructions. This paper briefly summarizes the grammaticalization trajectory of the verb roots ‘sit, stand, lie’, expanding on Rankin (1977) and leading up to a discussion of a recent convergence of positional and evidential categories in the five Dhegiha Siouan languages. Within Dhegiha morphosyntax positional verbs have yielded: deictic classifiers; locative classifiers; interrogative classifiers, new sets of aspectual auxiliaries and new causative verbs of placing, all using the definite articles as roots. In Omaha, Ponca and Quapaw, homophony has caused reanalysis of an evidential particle as a positional article, giving rise to the use of certain of the positional articles as evidential classifiers and even evidential verb stems.
Abstract
The Kaw Nation is closely linked through its language to the Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Quapaw tribes, as well as, more distantly, to the Ioways, Otoes, Dakota Sioux and others. Clan names, place names and terms for the crops they grew link them to areas in the Ohio Valley and the American Southeast in the period before they moved up the Missouri Valley to present-day Kansas.