Helmbrecht Paper - Status of wa-

Tue Jul 9 17:01:08 UTC 2002

Dear Siouanists,

of course I followed the discussion John started on occasion of the
appearance of my paper on nouns and verbs in Hocank (Winnebago). I
cannot reply to all aspects John and the others dealt with in their
contributions and I have to admit that I cannot say anything about the
historical-comparative background of the various forms in Hocank,
although I dared to produce and to repeat (Lipkind) some speculations on
the origin of wa- in may paper. I am grateful to John having indicated
the weaknesses of such speculations on the basis of the present
knowledge of comparative Siouan. What I know from research within the
field of grammaticalization is that third person pronouns mostly derive
etymologically form demonstrative pronouns, but may also occasionally go
back to nominal sources designating general concepts such as THING,
PERSON etc. These may be also the source for indefinite pronouns such as
something, somebody etc. This was the background for thinking of the
possibility of waz^aN as a source for wa- in Hocank, but alas, there
seems to be no comparative evidence for it. So, instead of pursuing this
question further, I would rather like to present some details of the
synchronic usage of wa- in Hocank, as far as I found out. This could
also be of interest for comparative purposes, since the exact
functional/ distributional behavior of this form may be different with
the respective cognates in other Siouan languages.

First of all, I think the characterization of wa- as an P argument
filling 3rd person pl pronoun is correct. Each transitive verb in Hocank
may take wa- indicating a third person plural, no matter whether the P
participant is human, animate or inanimate. In this case, the P NP is
optional (cf. 1a-b). If the P NP is there, wa- pluralizes the referent
of this NP (cf. 1c). Example (1d) shows that wa- can be used only in
case that the P NP is definite (def. article), and  (1e) shows that wa-
is not obligatory, in cases where the referent of the P NP is pluralized
by means of a numeral.

(1) guúc^ 'to shoot so/sth' (Vtr)
a) caa-rá ha-gúc^        'I shoot the deer'
    deer-the I-shoot
b) waa-gúc^                 'I shoot them'
    /wa-ha-/
    them-I-shoot
c) caa-rá waa-gúc^        'I shoot the many deer' (lit. I shoot them,
the deer)
    deer-the I->them-shoot
d) *caa waa-gúc^
e) caa-rá joóp ha-gúc^    'I shoot four deer'
    deer-the four I-shoot

There are only a few cases - as far as I found out - where wa- is indeed
used with transitive verbs as a true intransitivizer. Such an example is
the case ruúc 'to eat sth' which happened to be discussed in some of the
list contributions. Here, the wa- prefix seems to fill the P slot of the
verb without allowing a free P NP, i.e. there is no anaphoric agreement
with the NP referring to the food to be eaten. I give the relevant
examples in (2a-b).

(2) ruúc^  'to eat sth'
a) ks^é ruúc^    'he eats an apple'
    apple he.eats
b) wa-ruc^-náNk-s^aNaN
    ?-eat-prog(sitting)-DECL
    He is eating (sitting).
c) *ks^é-ra wa-ruc^-náNk-s^aNaN
    apple-the ?-  eat-prog(sitting)-DECL
    'he is eating(sitting) the apples'

Example (2c) shows that the verb warúc^ is rather an intransitive verb
than a transitive one with a specific P argument. In this case, wa-
cannot refer to the P NP, no matter whether it is a count noun such as
apples or rather a mass noun such as waníN 'meat'. It is this type of
examples where wa- is usually translated with 'something'. This warúc^
case (standing for some others too) requires some explanation. Is it the
same form as the wa- in the examples in (1) ?. Wa- in (2) rather
resembles an indefinite pronoun here reducing the valence of ruúc^ by
demoting the P argument. One might also argue that there is a semantic
connection, a continuum between the two usages of wa- in (1) and (2) in
terms of specifity. A plural participant is more specific than an
indefinite (not known and not specific) participant, but less specific
than a 3sg participant. You all know that 3sg is not marked at all in
Hocank verbs. The warúc^case suggests that the P participant is put back
from syntax (case frame) to the lexical meaning of the word. Other verbs
such as woorák (< wa+horák) 'to tell stories (etym. 'to tell them' ?)'
and woohí (< wa+hohí) 'to win (etym. 'to defeat them' ?)' work very
similar.

The next piece in the mosaic of wa- is the fact that wa- productively
derives nouns (or other verbs) from intransitive verbs only to a very
limited degree. E.g. the verb s^is^re 'to be broken, to break (intr)' is
not possible with wa-. There are not so many cases in the Hocank lexicon
(cf. Zep's lexicon) where an stativ intransitive verb takes wa- to
recieve a nominal meaning. An example in this direction is wa-c^ék
'young person, virgin' (< wa- + ceék 'new'). Lipkind gives other
examples, but they are not contained in the lexical sources available
for Hocank (which I consider a bad sign for the correctness of his
examples). In the vast majority of cases, wa- is restricted to the P
slot in the case frame of a tr. verb. This result is significant because
it clarifies to some extent the quite general assumption that wa- is
simply a valence reducing affix or something of that sort. Generally, it
does not reduce the valence of an intransitive verb and it is certainly
not the case that wa- is a productive means to derive nouns from
intransitive verbs.

Now, the reason why I had to discuss the wa- forms in my paper was the
claim by Lipkind that wa- is a nominalizing affix. The problem with this
claim is that many of the proposed nominalization in the lexicon can be
used also as verbs, some are, however, lexicalized in a nominal meaning,
ie. the original verb which is the basis of the derivation is no longer
be used as verb. I shall illustrate this.

(3)
a) woonáNz^iN      'shirt' (< wa-honaz^i)
b) honaNz^íN        'to stand in it'

(4)
a) wookáNnaNk     'cap, hat' (< wa-hokáNnaNk)
b) hokáNnaNk        'to wear sth. on the head'
c) woorákaNaNk
    /wa-ho-ra-kaNaNk/
    ?- stem-2sgSubj-wear
   'You wear several hats'

(5)
a) wooxé     'grave' (etym. probably from /wa-ho-xe/)
b) *hoxé     'to bury in it'

The proposed noun  woonáNz^iN  'shirt' (< wa-honaNz^iN) can be used with
an article (or without) as a referential expression in a clause
referreing to a shirt, it can also be used as predicate in the sense
somone is standing in them. The verbal basis is the verb honaNz^íN  'to
stand in it' with the locative prefix ho- introducing a direct object
slot into the case frame of the verb naNz^íN 'to stand'. The same holds
for the "noun" wookáNnaNk 'cap, hat' which is based on a regular verb
hokáNnaNk  'to wear sth. on the head'. Example 4c demonstrates that the
proposed noun can be used as a kind of intransitve active verb which has
incorporated the object of the wearing into the the lexical meaning by
incorporating the wa- prefix. That wa- occurs also in fossilized?
nominal derivations can be illustrated with example (5). The noun wooxé
'grave' is morphologicaly transparaent with regard to the potential
derivation, but there is no independent verb *hoxé 'to bury in it' which
could be the basis for the derivation, and in addition, the noun wooxé
cannot be used as verbal predicate. There are also many verbs in the
Hocank lexicon which begin with wa- where the wa- belongs to the stem
and is not a derivational prefix, this is e.g. the case with wagé 'to
mean to designate' which is conjugated by an infix between wa- and -ge,
like in derivations, but both components are part of the stem.

This are some of the facts about wa- in Hocank. I do not really know
what to do with it. One might doubt that wa- is a single morpheme as Bob
indicated in his contribution and I really would like to see that there
are two forms for the functions of wa- in other Siouan languages. If
this is not the case, one has to stick with the multifunctionality of
wa-. I think I have shown to some extent that the functions/ meanings of
wa- are not completely disparate, they are therefore better described in
terms of polysemy than arbitrary homonymy.

Johannes

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