verb
physical_action
Proto-Siouan-Catawba
Proto-Siouan
*hi_E
Proto-Crow-Hidatsa
*hre, *-hi_E
Crow
-hili
‘do, work’
[not found as an independent stem]
RG
Hidatsa
hrÉ
‘do, make, work’
J
,
hirí
‘causative suffixes’
Pre-Mandan
Mandan
-here-
‘causative’
RTC
Proto-Mississipi-Valley
*-hi_(r)E
Proto-Dakota
*-_-yA
Lakota
-_-yA
Dakota
-_-yA
Proto-Hoocąk-Chiwere
Chiwere
-hi_ ~ -re
Proto-Dhegiha
*_-(r)e
Omaha-Ponca
_-(ð)e
Kanza/Kaw
_-(y)e
Osage
_-(ð)e
Quapaw
_-(d)e
Proto-Southeastern
Proto-Biloxi-Ofo
Biloxi
-ha-_-yE
PFE
Ofo
-ti
Proto-Catawba
Catawba
če
‘cause’
KS
General comment
The causative in Mandan is a transparent serial verb construction, both an
independent verb and a cliticized auxiliary verb in Hidatsa, and strictly a
cliticized auxiliary in Crow and the rest of the Siouan language family.
Historically it seems to have been a verb with medial inflection for person
*hi-_-E. Mandan and Hidatsa have both normalized inflection in the independent verb
by moving person markers to the left of the initial element. When the Hidatsa
auxiliary is suffixed to verbs in final -E, however, the original order of
elements is preserved and indicated by the -hi- which appears between the
final consonant of the root and the suffixed causative person markers. The
historical order is also reflected in Dakotan and DH, where aspiration
appears with the possessive reflexive ahead of the personal pronouns, and in
the hi element which appears ahead of the pronouns in Biloxi.
The glide which appears in many of the languages between the person markers
and -E is epenthetic everywhere but not reconstructible to a single Proto-Siouan
glide. Here, we represent it as *(r) because that fits every language but
Biloxi. This is a notational convention only, however. Except in the reflexive
possessive, Dakotan and DH have lost initial *hi-. In contrast, Chiwere/Hoocąk seem
generally to have lost *-(r)E, retaining it only in fossilized
(unconjugated) form with some verbs (cf. ‘hard > cane, walking stick’, ‘fall > lie down’). In modern Chiwere/Hoocąk the pronouns follow
*hi- as if the remainder of the causative were still present. In all
probability, *-(r)E has simply been absorbed by the pronouns. This is
clearly the case in Hidatsa, where the short vowels of the pronominal prefixes are
long in the causative. Reconstruction is facilitated by considering the
ordinary and the reflexive causatives together.
Catawba če may be related to Proto-Siouan *-(r)E, but the sound correspondences are
not well understood. It would be much easier to relate the Siouan form if
it were historically *ye.