argument structure of k'u 'give'

[ROOD DAVID S]

Thanks, Linda -- that restores my faith in what I thought I knew.  Your
speaker was struggling to justify semantically something that has a purely
grammatical explanation: there is no room in the verb for two object
affixes except in the "transitive stative" forms, and they never use
"wicha" as far as I know.  Since the wicha-ma sequence is grammatically
impossible, the speaker tries to make sense of it when she hears it; that
can only happen if another meaning for "wicha" is pressed into service.

	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, cantemaza wrote:

>  From my perspective and how I speak Dakota, your correction is accurate
>
> -Cantemaza de miye do.
> (neil mckay)
> Dakota Language Dept.
> University of Minnesota
> 612-624-6808
>
> lcumberl at indiana.edu wrote:
>
> >I need to correct some information I sent back in November:
> >
> >"I have this in my data for Asb:
> >
> >pusapina wiNc^ha-ma-k'u-pi  'they gave me the kittens'"
> >
> >I noted that several people found this odd, and when I was checking some other
> >data with one of my consultants today - in fact, the one who gave me the above
> >example - she rejected it when I repeated it to her. I tried several other
> >sentences that might have produced wicha-ma-k'u and she rejected all of them. So
> >it appears that the original example was an error.
> >
> >s^uka yamni mak'u   'he gave me three dogs'   *wichamak'u
> >
> >but:
> >
> >s^uka yamni wicha-mnuha 'I have three dogs'
> >
> >suNkathaNka yamni ophe-wicha-wa-thuN 'I bought three horses'
> >
> >Her feeling is that, when used with k'u, wicha refers only to people, as she
> >says "wicha is 'man', like those men, a bunch of people." She could not think of
> >situation in which wich-ma-k'u would be acceptable. It's as if wicha has a
> >different, more literal, meaning to her when it is used with k'u. When it is
> >used with other verbs, as in the two acceptable sentences above, she does not
> >perceive wicha as referring to people.
> >
> >
> >Just wanted to set the record straight.
> >
> >Linda
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >.
> >
> >
> >
>
>