SYNTAX OF ADVERBIAL PARTICLES IN O'ODHAM: AN ANALYSIS OF HAB

Abstract

O'odham is a language of the Tepiman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken across southern Arizona and northern Mexico. O'odham contains a plethora of particles, that is small, typically cliticized, functional elements of an indeterminate syntactic category. Despite O'odham containing so many particles and these particles occurring so frequently (Hale 2001), there has been little pedagogical, descriptive, or theoretical work done about these particles. This is a topic mutually interesting to both linguists (who will need to account for these particles while developing theories that can better encompass languages like O'odham) and the O'odham community (as these particles can be difficult to explain). This project set out to create an syntactic analysis for the O'odham particles hab, cem, "˜ep, "˜i (inceptive), and "˜i (correlative). Hale's Preliminary Remarks on the Syntax and Semantics O'odham Particles (2001) provided the framework for these particles in which this project is situated in. It also provided some hypotheses as to the ordering of these particles which were used as a starting point for this project. This project analyzed sentences containing these particles from A Dictionary of Papago Usage by Madeleine Mathiot (1973) and Legends and Lore of the Papago and Pima Indians by Dean and Lucille Saxton (1969). Based on my analysis, I will present some generalizations about the particle hab.