Hochunk wa-

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Johannes Helmbrecht wrote:
> since its the first time that I post something on this list, I would
> like to introduce myself a little bit. ...

I appreciate the introduction, Johannes!

> There is a third person plural object prefix wa- in Hochunk which is
> probably identical to another form (wa-) which seems to function as an
> intransitivizer - it occurs with transitive verbs and is usually
> translated with 'something' like in waruc = 'eat sth'.

This works very much like the comparable forms in Dhegiha, etc.
Omaha-Ponca has lost *rutE and substitues *rathE, so it has dhathe 'to eat
sthg.', wadhathe 'to eat; food', wa'dhathe 'table'.  I haven't actually
encountered ?a'dhathe 'to eat sthg. on sthg.'.

There are some not unexpected problems glossing wa- in English (and
similar languages), and I tend to gloss wa- 'something' or INDEFINITE (or
something [sic]) itself, but use '...' (no object) or '... things' for wa-
verbs.  '...  something' in a translation (as opposed to a definition)
would be with an explicit noun 'something'. To complete the travesty I use
'something' or 'someone' in glossing the plain verb if it's transitive,
cf. dhathe 'to eat something'.  One might very easily do things
differently! I'd be interested to hear what others think of this point of
procedure.

> Lipkind's
> (1945)idea is that wa- is a shortened form of the indefinite pronoun
> waza 'something'(I neglect diacritics here, z is a voiced palatal
> fricative, the second a is nasalized) which in turn derives from a

I suggest either z^ or something like that, or, when it can be gotten away
with, zh (or rz, etc.) for palatal z, to avoid confusion.  In Hochank I
think zh, etc., are potentially confusing, because of the status of h
initially.

> combination of wa- plus hiza 'a, one', according to Lipkind. This is of
> course speculation because there is no noun *wa 'thing' attested.

As it turns out, wa- is a universal component of Siouan (as opposed to
Caddoan) morphology, whereas hiz^a, etc., are Winnebago specific. I've
always assumed that Lipkind might have died in WWII from the specifics of
publishing his dissertation, though I know nothing of him that isn't in
that preface to his grammar.  In any event, he's a bit out of touch on
comparative Siouan, though his speculations make sense in the Winnebago
context and his work preceded the publication of Wolff and Matthews' work.

Wa- occurs in Chiwere and Dhegiha with similar patterns (including 3p
object) to Winnebago.  In Dakotan wic^ha takes the role of 2p object.  I
don't know if the parameters of use of wa- and wic^ha- in this sense are
exactly the same.

I'd guess that waz^a and hiz^a are both derived from a stem z^a, and that
wa- is just the wa- indefinite prefix, while hi- is a 3s prefix.  The
"early" students of Dakotan, Winnebago, etc., have a tendency to see the
least marked prefix (e-, (h)i-) as a part of the stem, especially as
native speakers would find the bare stem to be a somewhat unnatural
phenomenon. This is particularly easy with e-, as so many of the
demonstratives end in e anyway.  *Ka-based forms usually lack any trace of
the e-, however.  One would expect wee from wa + (h)i.

As to the origin of the stem z^a, I'm not sure what to guess.  One
possibility would be that it is cognate with the -s^(i) enclitic that
occurs here and there (cf. Dakotan adversative -s^).  There are several
ways to connect it with parts of Dakotan wic^a(s^a) ~ wic^ha(sta) 'man'
that are about as tendentious.

Forms for 'one' in many Siouan languages have wiN, which might be wa-iN-.
Omaha likes wiN=xti 'just one' instead of wiN in some contexts.  Just wiN
by itself occurs also as 'one', especially in series of numerals, and as
the indefinite article.

I hope this helps.  In fact, both wa- (for itself) and 'one' are
problematic areas in descriptive and comparative Siouan.