PKU-Allied Disorders

A NOTE ON PARADIGMS AND ATTRITION The most common modes found in conversation and storytelling today are the indicative and negative. Many of the other modes described here are no longer fully in use. The preterite, dubitative, negative preterite and negative dubitative modes are frequently replaced by particles. In each case, the particle was optionally used with the inflected verb. The independent paradigm seems to be faring better than the conjunct. The preterite and dubitative modes of the independent are still used, whereas the conjunct dubitative is remembered only in part today. Also, for some speakers, the inverse forms of the conjunct are being replaced by passives. The verb paradigm charts include what we know of these paradigms by way of establishing a record for future generations. It is only by looking at old records and comparing Potawatomi with other related languages that we know some of these forms ever existed. Many fluent speakers today only have a limited knowledge of them, but the fact that they know of them to any extent suggests the paradigms could not have become obsolete very long ago. Although these changes are partially due to the natural evolution of a language over time, they are likely largely due to the fact that there are few fluent speakers left and many forms are being forgotten. Considering the size of the paradigms, it stands to reason that a speech community must to be fairly rigorous in order to maintain a common knowledge of so many forms. There are probably several other minor modes which have a restricted usage. We have encountered only one so far, which is the humiliative. Although its usage is very rare today, we have evidence that it was in use in the 1800's. Today, it may only appear in idiomatic expressions. This form of the verb is apparently used to humble oneself: Ndengatoshen zhonyames. 'I'm wasting what little money I have.' Another source of error results from forms that have a combination of greater complexity, low natural frequency of occurence and (perhaps consequently) borderline obsolescence. While I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible, many of the forms included here are considered uncommon, if not obsolete. This is particularly true of the conjunct preterite and more so of the conjunct dubitative. That Hockett only had a few dubitative forms, and therefore did not include a description of them, seems indicative of its infrequent use even in the 1940's. Today, it is possible (and common) to avoid use of morphologically complex forms by using paraphrastic combinations of verb plus particle, the particle bearing the burden of morphological endings. This is often the dominant strategy of less fluent speakers. This creates a difficulty when eliciting uncommon forms. Given a partial paradigm, it is not difficult to come up with plausible forms. In some cases, this may have led to over-regularizing endings. I have tried to reduce the impact of these "best guesses" by signaling them with "?", or "??" if we were especially dubious. I have also tried to limit the number of occurences of this type of error cross-checking forms with two very fluent elders at different sittings. Articles Engineering Newsgroups Usenet Usenet Newsgroups Newsgroups Server Colocation Music Lyrics

PKU-Allied Disorders