Wa Prefix

[Robert L. Rankin]

> Traditionally, wa- is regarded a detransitivizer.  This has the effect
> (on grammarians, anyway) of focussing our attention on the object.  It's
> as if there were a little balloon saying "Look, it's gone!" with an
> arrow pointing to the object slot, which is empty, but radiating a faint
> glow. 

> What I wondered was if this wasn't sort of an inside out understanding
> of what wa was doing.  Maybe it's a subject salience marker, instead. 
> The two ideas, detransitizer and subject salience marker, are not too
> different in some ways, and they have a lot of overlap in terms of
> contexts of usage, but they are different, and lead to subtly different
> expectations regarding contexts of usage.

I seem to recall that a number of language families have "indefinite
object" affixes (along with "indef. subj" as in Athapaskan?).
Functionally, what John is describing is akin to ANTIPASSIVEs in ergative
languages, except that in active languages like Siouan, you can't get the
resultant subject switch to (absolutive).  Nor do we see the object
demotion (to dative, instrumental, etc.) or its incorporation. What's
incorporated is just wa-.  I suppose it could also be compared
functionally to so-called "applicatives."  I guess what I'm asking here is
whether anyone has explored how this sort of thing works in "active"
languages generally?  Someone must have, surely. 

Bob