what you can ask

[Frans Plank]

Woleaian also has these boring old ordinal interrogatives utilizing ordinal
numeral morphology and a multal quantifier, see Sohn (1975: 81, 207):

ga-fite-uw-el yoos
ORD-many-CLASS:GENERAL-POSS horse
"the how manyth horse?"

The ordinal prefix ga-/ge- is homonymous with the causative prefix;  but
that seems coincidental.

As to the much more interesting question of interrogative pro verbs, to
Gilbert's Tahitian and Andy's Chukchi add Sadock & Zwicky's (1985: 184,
Shopen ed. vol. 1) Southern Paiute ('to do what, to act how?' and 'to say
what?') and Ultan's (1969: 53, WPLU 1) Western Desert ('The man did what?)
and Mandarin ('What are you crying for?' [???]).

Now, my questions to pro verb aficionados are these:

1.  Where else do we find such interrogative pro verbs?
2.  In what sense are they verbs?  Would it be fair to say that they are
(always) interrogative words that can, among other things, be used as verbs?
3.  When used as verbs, can they be used intransitively, transitively,
bitransitively?  (The dog WHATed? -- It barked;  The dog WHATed the boy? --
It bit him;  Smith WHATed the Salvation Army his BMW? -- donated ...) Or
are there ever distinct intrans/trans/bitrans interrogative pro verbs?
4.  Are there any other categorial distinctions for interrogative pro
verbs, enabling you, for instance, to ask specifically about being, doing,
having, perceiving, saying, etc.?
5.  Would somebody knowledgable about interrogative pro verbs write up what
is to be known about them and submit it to LT?

frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de