Helbrecht Paper: Terminology 'modal prefix'

[R. Rankin]

I always thought of this as "voice" rather than "mode".
To me, voice is what the more current notion of
"valence" is all about.  I'm surprised at the 'to eat'
and 'to eat the food' pair, since I'd have expected
sort of the reverse meanings.  The verb 'eat'
ordinarily implies 'eat SOMEthing', so I'd expect
waruuc (or waaruc or whatever it is) to just mean
something like 'to go around eating' -- the wa- ought
to take away the object.  My mistake I guess.  Are you
sure there's only one wa-?  As usual I suspect
homophony here.

Bob


----- Original Message -----
From: Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2002 10:09 PM
Subject: Helbrecht Paper: Terminology 'modal prefix'


> Lipkind (1945:17) refers to the Winnebago prefix wa-
'which probably means
> 'something' or 'thing' ... [and] is used to make
transitive verbs
> intransitive and to form nouns out of active and
stative verbs' as the
> 'modal prefix'.  Johannes says 'this is definitely a
misnomer', and I'd
> certainly agree if I thought Lipkind had anything
like the contemporary
> sense of modal in mind.  This prefix definitely has
nothing to do with
> concepts like ability, possibility, obligation and
the like.  However,
> I've always assumed that Lipkind had in mind here
either an old usage of
> modal or some idiosyncratic usage of his own, in
which modal was an
> adjective meaning 'having to do with modes' and
distinctions like
> transitive vs. intransitive or verb vs. noun (and
perhas also indicative
> vs. subjunctive) were conceived of as different modes
of signification.
> Does anyone know of such a usage?
>
> JEK
>