More regarding "wa"

[Rory M Larson]

John wrote:
> My gut feeling is the opposite, of course, though I really haven't
> presented any general line of evidence in favor of it.  However, at a
> minimum I feel it simplifies matters to have a single wa behaving in a
> consistent way in several different contexts, rather than one indefinite
> patient wa and one nominalization/head-marking wa, with overlapping but
> different patterns of agreement.

In OP, the patient wa- refers to (I think only animate)
'them', in about the same distribution as Dakotan wicha-.
It also refers to 'us', which I think in Dakotan is
handled with the same uN(k)- that is used for 'we'.
The latter has a quirk in that awa-, rather than wa-,
is used for 'us' in the causatives.  In Dakotan, wa-
is not used as an animate patient affixed pronoun in
either 'them' or 'us' cases.  Is this all correct?

What is the career of the animate patient affixed pronoun
use of wa- ?  Is it general in Dhegihan, Chiwere and
Winnebago, in both 'them' and 'us' usages?  Is it possible
that it has been spreading into these contexts in the same
way as we suppose Dakotan wicha did?


> At the moment I'm inclined to see wa prefixes in verbs as indefinite (or,
> really, non-specific) patients, and in some languages as third person
> plural object inflections (in OP not 3p subject inflections, even in
> statives).

Judging from the Dakotan examples given recently, I'd
like to propose an alternative hypothesis that wa- was
originally not a noun marker at all, but that it acted
to generalize the action of the verb.  I would be
interested in seeing a comparison between Dakotan
verbs starting with wa-, and the same verbs without
the wa-.  My prediction is that where both versions
exist and are transparently related to each other,
the form without the wa- should imply a specific
action, and the form with the wa- should imply that
the action is normative.  I would expect this rule to
be standard in MVS and at least well fossilized in
Dakotan.

Second, I would propose that generalized verbs were
favored as noun constructions.  If you are making up
a noun as a verb derivative, the entity is usually
being described in terms of what it does normally,
not by what it just does once.  Hence, we get many
verb-derived nouns beginning with wa-.  This also
should be normal and productive in MVS.

Third, as time passes and MVS splits into its
daughter languages, new forms develop to indicate
normative or habitual action, and wa- ceases to be
used productively as a normativizer in the non-Dakotan
languages.  In ancestral OP at least, the loss of the
original wa- rule forces a reinterpretation of wa- in
both the noun and verb contexts.  In the noun context,
wa- is now understood as a head-marker for an entity
normatively characterized by the action of the verb.
The verb itself can be either active or stative; it
doesn't matter, because in its role in forming a noun
characterized by its normative action, it is always
effectively stative in function, regardless of which
way the action goes.  In this context, it is always
a descriptor.  This semantic reinterpretation of wa-
should be able to take place without immediate
alteration of any preceding rules of syntax.

Meanwhile, the wa- on the verb side is also
reinterpreted from normative or habitual or
repeated action, to imply multiple objects
acted upon.  Since the ancestral language perhaps
had no patient pronouns for 'us' and 'them', wa-
was then readapted to fill these slots.

Finally, in the case of the Dakotan wa-wa- situations,
I would suggest that instead of functioning to cancel
multiple patient slots as we've been assuming, perhaps
all that is going on here is reduplication of a
generalizer.  What's happening is that the generalization
is being squared through all dimensions of possible
variance.  Wa-wa-speak would mean to speak repeatedly
in all possible conversations with all possible people.
House wa-wa-paint would mean to paint the house at
various possible times in various possible places in
various possible colors.


John, thanks for your thoughtful comments.  I've been
pondering them for the last few days.  The above
hypothesis is the current result.  Feel free to shoot
it down, or to expand on your own views about wa-
as primordial patient marker!

Rory







                      Koontz John E
                      <John.Koontz at colorad        To:       Siouan List <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
                      o.edu>                      cc:
                      Sent by:                    Subject:  Re: More regarding "wa"
                      owner-siouan at lists.c
                      olorado.edu


                      01/01/2004 12:10 AM
                      Please respond to
                      siouan






At the moment I'm inclined to see wa prefixes in verbs as indefinite (or,
really, non-specific) patients, and in some languages as third person
plural object inflections (in OP not 3p subject inflections, even in
statives).

In nominalizations I think they play the same role(s), and are not subject
references unless the subject is encoded as a patient.  I'm arguing this
in terms of Omaha-Ponca, but I think that similar arguments apply in other
Siouan languages, modulo the wa vs. wic^ha complexity in Dakotan.

I'll take advantage of Rory's examples to play the devil's advocate, as I
think his analysis of wa as the subject marker in nominalizations is
essentially different, and requires that wa in nominalizations be regarded
as having a different pattern of functioning than wa in unnominalized
verbs.  Again, I have not yet done any examination of standard grammars to
verify this, but I think his approach is not without its advocates.  In
essence in his analysis wa is the reference to the head of the
nominalization, or it might be considered to be just the mark of
nominalization, since it doesn't contrast with another marker of
nominalization.  Rory already draws the necessary distinctions, so I'm
just running through his arguments in reverse, so to speak.

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> The issue of wa- prefixes in nouns that Tom and John are discussing has
> perplexed me too, particularly in parsing names for tools and other
> technical terms.  In my posting last week, I suggested that wa- might
> refer to the subject as well as to objects.  What I had in mind was this
> apparent use of wa- as a nominalizer:
>
>   wa-sabe = 'the one that is black'
>   wa-s^abe = 'the one that is dark'
>   ...

I agree that wa here is a reference to the subject, but also to the
patient, as the underlying stems here are stative.

> These are all stative verbs, but it looks as if active verbs can be used
> in the same way:
>
>   wa-nidhe = 'the one that heals'

Here I think the form is essentially 3pInd-(A3)-heals 'he heals them',
i.e., that wa refers to the ones healed (indefinite or actually
nonspecific third person patients), not to the healer (a specific, if
indefinite reference).

> And then there is the whole suite of implement terms that are built on
> the framework of
>
>   [NOM]-i-VERB
>
> where /-i-/ is the instrumental that implies that VERB is enacted by
> means of something.  Usually, if a noun sits in front:
>
>   NOUN-i-VERB
>
> then the noun is the object of the verb's action. Rarely, however, it
> seems that the noun can be the head of the derived noun phrase, and
> implies that the noun is used to perform the verbal action, rather than
> that it is the object of the verbal action.  I only have one example at
> the moment, and it's not as clear as I would like.
>
>   moNzezi-i-gattushi
>   brass  -i-  explode
>   'the brass thing that is used to explode'
>   = 'gun cap'
>
> As a caveat, it isn't certain that the internal -i- exists; it might
> just be

I'd agree that it could be there, "hidden," and missed in transcription.

>   moNzezi-gattushi
>   'exploding brass'

Another possibility here is that in this case ga functions to form a
stative of the sort invariably formed by the outer instrumental na= 'by
heat'.  In essence the inner instrumental ga- here is an oblique reference
'with violence' and the (patient) subject is governed by the underlying
stem ttus^i.  The clause structure is similar to

maN'ze na'=      z^ide
iron   with heat red
"red hot poker"

> Assuming that such constructions do exist, however,
> I'm inclined to think that the wa- in we- < *wa-i-
> nouns is the head of the derived noun phrase, and
> means 'that which is used to enact VERB'.

I'd argue that as constructions like

NOUN(instrument) i-VERB

are admittedly more the norm it would be more likely that wa was standing
in for an unspecified instrumental noun, though if nouns in other
capacities can occur we might want to admit that wa might also stand in
those capacities, too.  Whether we might want to allow wa to occur with
agents "bronze that causes an explosion" depends on a number of factors,
of course - whether this is the same wa that marks indefinite patients or
not, and whether we're really convinced that that wa is itself restricted
to patients.

> In fact, we can find up to three variants of the
> same i-VERB nominalization.
>
>   NOUN-i-VERB
>   moNkkoNsabe-i-dhittube
>   coffee     -i-   grind
>   'coffee-grinder'
>
> Here, 'coffee' is an object noun.
>
>   i-VERB
>   i-dhittube
>   i-grind
>   'coffee-grinder', literally 'grinder'
>
> Finally, we can get the same thing with a wa-:
>
>   wa-i-VERB
>   wedhittube
>   wa-i-grind
>   'coffee-grinder'
>
> But does this last construction mean
>
>   'thing used to grind (things)'
>
> or
>
>   '(thing) used to grind things' ?
>
> My gut feeling favors the first interpretation, and I think our speakers
> have also favored that, but it is really hard to find words that clearly
> distinguish the matter.

My gut feeling is the opposite, of course, though I really haven't
presented any general line of evidence in favor of it.  However, at a
minimum I feel it simplifies matters to have a single wa behaving in a
consistent way in several different contexts, rather than one indefinite
patient wa and one nominalization/head-marking wa, with overlapping but
different patterns of agreement.