Helmbrecht Paper: wii- as an indicator of nounhood

[Koontz John E]

Naturally Johannes is very interested in finding ways to diagnose nouns
vs. verbs in Winnebago.  One of his candidates is wii- < wa-(h)i-
'something with which to', of which he suggests (2002:18) that 'nearly all
derivations with wii- are nominal in the sense that they are not
personally inflected'.  This puzzled me, since I interpret it as meaning
that he doesn't think wii-forms are ever inflected, and I wouldn't expect
the corresponding w(e)e'-forms to be uninflectable in Omaha-Ponca,and I
don't think the analogous forms are uninflectable anywhere else in Siouan.

In Miner's glossary I find, for example, wiigi'kara'p 'add up, v. tr.',
wigi's^aNnaN' 'to do wrong to s.o.; damage or destroy property', wiigi'ze
'lade, n.; dish out, v.tr.', wiike'rak 'be still', wiira'k?o 'eat
everything up'wiiru'wiN 'sell, v. tr.', wiiwa'gax 'pencil, n.; pawn, v.
tr.'.  Also wikigu'c^ 'be (with more than one person)'.  Miner does more
than assert that these are verbs - he provides first persons, and the
patterns are:

Stem Class  Stem Form   First Person < Historically Underlying Form

*ka-instr:  wiigi'...   wa'i... < *wa-a-i-ki

    (OP we'agi... with wegi... dative)

???         wiigi'...   wawia'i... < *wa-wa-i-a-ki-
            wiki...     wawia'ki... < *wa-wa-i-a-hki-

    (These examples seem to be dative and reflexive.  The pattern of
     wawi- resembles what happens when you add wa- to itha in OP.
     Itha is like Dakota iya or Winnebago hira, a compound of the i
     and a locatives.  Wa + itha in OP becomes wawe or wa+a+wa+i,
     with the locatives apparently reversed.  Where the second wa
     comes from in the Winnebago context I can't say.  I'm not even
     sure where it comes from in the Omaha-Ponca context!  At least
     OP starts with two locatives.  Perhaps the Winnebago forms are
     actually or historically mixed paradigms?)

regular:    wiikere...  wiakere... < *wa-i-a-kr

*r-stem:    wiir...     wiit... < *wa-i-p-r-

*p-stem:    wiiw...     wiip... < *wa-i-h-p-

The patterns of inflection of wii-forms are somewhat irregular and perhaps
unexpected, but it does seem to be possible to inflect wii-forms.  As
Johannes observes in his paper, the forms in question are often
ambivalent, serving both as nouns and as verbs as far as English-based
interpretations go.  Most wii-forms in Miner don't have verbal glosses or
inflected forms listed.  It seems to me rather likely, though, that this
is partly the luck of the draw.  I'd bet, for example, that wiiwa'c^gis
'saw, n.' can be inflected as 'I sawed something, you sawed something,
etc.' The questions are, can we distinguish which they are generally or in
a given context, and how?  I think the inflectability of wii-forms makes
this a bit more difficult.

JEK