Helmbrecht IJAL Paper: Some Semantic and Etymological Quibbles

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002 BARudes at aol.com wrote:

> For what it is worth, Catawba has a particle wi which is usually used as a
> third person plural definite object proclitic.  (The third person
> singular/plural indefinite object proclitic is pa.)

For what it's worth, pa > wa might be a source of *wa- as a third person
plural (definite) marker in Siouan, though (a) the third person plural
definite *wa- in Siouan is only attested in Mississippi Valley and (b) I
don't know if there is any other basis for presuming PSC *pa > PMVS *wa.
The sound change *p > w occurs in the development of Winnebago-Chiwere,
and explains the alternation stem initial w : fist person p in Winnebago.

> However, there are constructions where it occurs but a reading with a
> third person plural object is not logical.  Siebert referred to wi in
> those cases as a detransitiving particle.  The particle w(i) may also
> have at one time served as a nominalizer in Catawba (Bob has some good
> examples in his paper on Siouan, Catawba and Yuchi), ...

I'm not sure if I see wa- as a nominalizer in Siouan or as verbal prefix
that occurs for other reasons in certain kinds of verbs that are
frequently nominalized.  I think the consensus, though, is that wa- itself
acts rather like an incorporated nominal.

JEK