Helmbrecht IJAL Paper: Some Semantic and Etymological Quibbles

[BARudes at aol.com]

For what it is worth, Catawba has a particle wi which is usually used as a
third person plural definite object proclitic.  (The third person
singular/plural indefinite object proclitic is pa.) However, there are
constructions where it occurs but a reading with a third person plural object
is not logical.  Siebert referred to wi in those cases as a detransitiving
particle.  The particle w(i) may also have at one time served as a
nominalizer in Catawba (Bob has some good examples in his paper on Siouan,
Catawba and Yuchi), but it was replaced in this usage in Catawba by the
particle d'apa 'something' (as in dapac'ikpu:? 'toad' [lit.
"something-forward-stumble"], compare: cikhip'u:re: 'one stumbles forward').
In Woccon, it was replaced by ru-, which may be cognate with the Catawba
relative pronominal stem du- as in du'we 'who', du'weye 'nothing'.  The
particle is also probably related to the Catwaba alienable possessive suffix
-wa? 'one's, his, her; your (plural); their', where the final -a? is common
to all of the alienable possessive suffixes (-na? 'my', -ya? 'your
(singular), -?a:? 'our').  The replacement of w(i) as a nominalizer in
Catawba and Woccon by indefinite pronominal forms may an old pattern in
Siouan-Catawban.  Certainly, the meaning of Catawba d'apa 'something' is not
too far off from 'stuff'.