Helmbrecht IJAL Paper: Some Semantic and Etymological Quibbles

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:
> I heartily agree with Catherine's translation of wa- as "stuff."  That
> generally works well for Crow, too.

I think stuff works, but maybe better for mass-noun objects?

I'm kicking myself for eliciting words like 'saw' (Omaha we'basaN)  and
not going on to ask how to say 'I sawed the wood?', 'Did you saw the
wood?', 'I wonder if they will saw the wood for us?' and so on. At one
time Bob Rankin proposed we should assemble a set of suggestions for
Siouan fieldworkers - verbs likely to be irregular, elicit all persons of
verbs or at least 1st, 2nd, inclusive, etc.  Maybe we should add to that,
elicit all persons of any nouns that seem to be of verbal origin?
Find out how to say 'it is a whatever', too?  Not to mention how to say
'there is a whatever'.

JEK