Helmbrecht Paper - Status of wa-

[Ardis R Eschenberg]

I'd like to put 2 more cents in about this issue on 2 fronts.
1. Stuff vs. detransitivizer
I am opposed to stuff being used here.  I think it is a convenient calc
based on English centered translation.  That is: We want a one to one
correspondence between English and Omaha morphemes so adding stuff give
equality: wa-bth-atHe	stuff-I-eat
Detransitivizer isn't a very good English morpheme so it leaves us a bit
empty.  However, this is because English activities which are
detransitivized ( from active accomplishments) are not marked with a
morpheme.
They are consistently marked by a LAck of object instead.
Translation & elicitation make this especially clear.  If you asked for 'I
eat stuff' I BET you'd get 'AzhithoNthoN bthatHe' (I eat various-things).
TO get 'wabthatHE' we ask 'how do you say 'I am eating.'  Native speakers
translate 'wabthatHe' as 'I am eating' if you ask.  When asking for
activities naturally, we don't try to add stuff.  It is only when we try
to do the one to one correspondance that we pop it in.  THus, 'wa' does
not LITERALLY mean stuff (azhithoNthoN), it means the thing added to a
verb which detransitivizes or makes an accomplishment into an activity.
2. Aksionsart vs. Detransitivizer
I really am less concerned with this issue as  both describe the process
going on.  But I am convinced aksionsart is better for a number of
reasons. (The best is last, sorry, it's hard to edit in PINE,unix)
a. Activities and (active) accomplishments regularly
correspond cross-linguistically, but I guess you could say transitives and
dtransitivized transitives correspond regularly cross-linguistically?
Perhaps it's two sides of a similar coin but the result of
detransitivization is an intransitive, right?  This is a more general term
than activity (as is transitive vs. active accomplishment) and thus
describes the results less precisely.
You could fix this by calling it a detransitive, but this would be
creating (at least Trask doesn't have such a term).  Even then, a
detransitive does not seem so specific activity.  Activity predicts
semantic structure.  To convince me detransitive is better, I'd need to
find a detransitive that uses 'wa' and is not an activity.  I have no
examples of this.
b. The class of verbs which takes
part in this alternation is not an open set and tends to be fairly
consistent cross-linguistically.  Not all transitives can take wa and
detransitivize but all active accomplishments can.  The verbs that undergo
this are usually verbs of creation and consumption (VValin and LPolla).
For example:
I know the answer (transitive) and I know (intransitive) do NOT vary for
'wa.' Instead you get 'e' added to the verb for the intransitive (that is
, the 'it' of I know it is added).  That's because 'know' is a state not
an accomplishment.  The 'wa' doesn't detransitivize all the time.  Only
with active accomplishment-activity correspondences.
c. I have more to add but maybe only if someone wants the details
personally as I can get lengthy.
Regards,
Ardis




On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> > ...  But even in English (or better, in Montague grammar) the expression
> "eat-something" or "eat-stuff" is intransitive.  You can't eat-stuff an
> apple.  A transitive verb plus an object makes an intransitive
> expression.
>
> Uh, no. Not in my vocabulary anyway.  "Stuff" is a noun and the object of
> 'eat', even with a hyphen as I see it.  Yes, I know I'm being a stick in the
> mud insisting on analyzing what's actually there, but I think it's best to
> assume that the Montague people were simply naive about the ways the world's
> languages can work.  In English a verb may typically be either transitive or
> intransitive in many cases.  'Eat' and 'shoot' are good examples (Johannes
> pointed out that WI ruje means 'eat it', not 'eat').  In English we require
> no morphology in order to intransitivize; we just leave an object off and
> that's it.  In Siouan, verbs that are inherently transitive, like 'eat',
> require a marker if the speaker uses them intransitively.  That marker is
> wa-.  Many languages are of this sort, and I have to believe that Montague
> grammarians simply were unaware of such superficial things about various
> American and African languages.
>
> > In this sense what we've been calling indefinite object and
> detransitivizer or valence reducer are in fact the same.
>
> I agree that some of the problem revolves around terminology.  But I feel
> that for Siouan speakers it IS one or the other.
>
> Instances of incorporation (like "eat-stuff", as in *"eat-stuff an
> apple")are normally pre-posed to their verbs, as in "babysit", and the
> perfectly acceptable "I babysat John's little brother."  Or the even more
> generic "I babysat John's new Toyota."  I guess I don't feel we're justified
> in assuming that an invisible, imaginary superstructure of 'eat' in English
> includes 'stuff' without better evidence.
>
> > How do we know whether something is actually intransitive?  See whether it
> can take an(other) object.
>
> Yes indeed, I think I mentioned how peculiar it seemed to me that verbs with
> intransitivizing wa- could take an overt (and definite yet) object in WI.
> If that's the case, then either:
>
> (a) Wa- is NOT a valence reducer or intransitivizer, or,
>
> (b) There is more than one wa-, and we're dealing with homophony, not
> polysemy.
>
> Taka you choice.
>
> Bob
>
>