Hochunk wa-

[Robert L. Rankin]

> Lipkinds
> (1945)idea is that wa- is a shortened form of the indefinite pronoun
> waza 'something'(I neglect diacritics here, z is a voiced palatal
> fricative, the second a is nasalized) which in turn derives from a
> combination of wa- plus hiza 'a, one', according to Lipkind. This is of
> course speculation because there is no noun *wa 'thing' attested.

I think Lipkind's analysis is highly unlikely.  The prefix wa- seems to
be pan-Siouan and is reconstructible.  On the other hand, hizhaN 'one'
is an innovation within the Mississippi Valley subgroup of Siouan and
perhaps just within Winnebago.  I don't know if I would regard wa- as a
true object pronoun or not.  Perhaps it just functions to alter the
valence of the verb.  But that is a separate question that others may
wish to weigh in on.

The H- of the prefixes ha- 'on' ho- 'in', etc. is epenthetic as far as
we can determine and only occurs in initial position, so it may be that
your other prefix, waa-, is best derived from *wa-a- rather than
*wa-ha-, at least historically.  Synchronic phonological derivations are
a separate story.

I'm glad to see someone doing extensive documentation of Winnebago.  The
morphology and syntax are badly under-represented in the literature.

Best wishes,

Bob Rankin
Univ. of Kansas