LINGUIST List 4.335

Sat 01 May 1993

Disc: Crazy number-marking

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1. , "Crazy" number marking in Kiowa etc.

In recent postings on number marking, there was some discussion
of Kiowa having a system in which the same suffix (-ga as I recall)
being used with different nouns to mark different number categories.

The best analogue to the Kiowa I can think of is Tubatulabal (partial)
reduplication. In this language every verb had two different verb
forms, one simple, the other reduplicated (e.g., muugu- and uumuugu-).
And there were two classes of environments, one calling for one
form, the other for the other, call them environments A and B.
However, some verbs would be reduplicated in A and not in B, and
others would do it the other way around (with one pattern being
statistically quite preponderant). As for what A and B were, that
is simply stated once we accept the subclassification of Tubatulabal
suffixes into final and nonfinal ones (where final means it can't
be followed by another suffix, while nonfinal can). A vs. B
means in the presence or absence, resp., of a final suffix.

(Historically, aspectual distinctions may have been involved,
and Voegelin's description of Tubatulabal tries to operate with
the notion of telic and atelic aspect, but this is just something
he copied from Sapir's description of the related language Southern
Paiute, and does not at all account for the synchronic situation
he actually found in Tubatulabal, which is as stated.)

I thought it might be fun to collect other examples of what appears
to be the same morpheme being used to mark opposite categories for
different classes of morphemes. If anybody sends any examples,
I will post a summary.