Bruce Ingham's "Nominal and Verbal Status ..." (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002 bi1 at soas.ac.uk wrote:
> ... One thing that I did not mention in the article which I think is
> very important is that one can use uN or hecha after these 'plain
> stems' which I think give different meanings though difficult to
> translate:  wauNspekhiya hemacha would I suppose mean 'I am a teacher,
> I am someone who teaches as a permanent characteristic' while
> wauNspekhiya wauN would mean something like 'I am/was engaged in
> teaching' (at a particular time).

This sounds a bit like the Spanish ser vs. estar opposition, though I has
the impression that that is frozen for particular cases.  Is there
something similar in Russian involving cases oppositions?  It's been a
while!

> The -ka ending in waoka 'marksman' etc I have taken to be a
> nominalizer, since I don't think waoka could occur with wa- or ma- ie
> wawaoka or wamaoka 'I am a marksman'.  I presume only waoka hemacha.
> Can anyone comment or give other examples.

I can give diachronic examples of -ka as a nominalizer (and with stative
verbs), e.g., Da c^haNte' 'heart', OP naN'de 'heart' vs. Wi naNaNc^ge'
'heart', if I recall these properly.  I think Mandan also has the *ka in
this ans some other body part nouns.  A number of Winnebago animal terms
have *ka (as -ge/C__ ~ -k/V__).  In stative verbs, cf. Da thaN'ka, OP
ttaN'ga vs. frozen c^aN in compounds in Wi.  I suspect, however, you mean
other specifically Dakotan examples where -ka precludes inflection!

JEK