Helbrecht Paper: Terminology 'modal prefix'

[Ardis R Eschenberg]

Ok, I admit that I don't have the article (we just moved and if I got it
before moving, Rob packed it (where?!!!) or it just hasn't been forwarded
yet) but I think of wa and non-wa marked verbs (in Omaha anyway) as
activity versus accomplishment (or active-accomplishment) (a la Van Valin
and LaPolla or, originally, Vendler's aktionsart).  Many accomplishment
verbs (no wa added) become activities when the wa is added.
There are also verbs which are basic activites which don't need the wa
added to make them so.  I can't remember the verb and can't find my notes
of course but I got one nice example this year of a verb I expected to
function as activity-active accomplishment but turned out to not take wa.
Doubt this sheds any light, but it works very consistently and avoid
calling this phenomenon voice or mode (Mode is way overused anyway).
Regards,
Ardis


On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, R. Rankin wrote:

> 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
> >
>
>
>