Lakota wa- 'variety object'

[REGINA PUSTET]

Dear Siouanists,



It all started with some innocent work on noun incorporation in Lakota. In this context, my Lakota speaker came up with forms such as



(1)        thi-w-í-wa-'uN

house-things.PAT-paint-1SG.AG-paint

(both components of the verb i'úN 'to paint' (also pronounced iyúN) are glossed by 'paint')

'I paint the house'



This example contrasts with

(2)        thi-'í-wa-'uN

            house-paint-1SG.AG-paint

'I paint the house'



The structural difference between (1) and (2) is that (1) contains the non-specific patient marker *w-*, whose full form is *wa-*. But there is also a subtle semantic difference between the two examples: according to my Lakota speaker, (1) actually means 'I paint the house in many areas', while (2) simply means 'I paint the house'. Syntactically, the remarkable thing about (1) is that this example admits two affixal objects: *thi-* 'house' and *w-* 'non-specific object'. But what puzzled me the most was the translation of *w-* by 'in many areas'. We get more of this in (3) and (4):



(3)            waks^í-w-i'uN

            plate-WA-paint

            'to paint different kinds of plates'



(4)            waks^í-'i'uN

            plate-paint

            'to paint plates', *'to paint different kinds of plates'



Moreover, *wa-* can, obviously, appear more than once per finite verb:



(5)        itówapi ki   hé  wa-w-í-wa-'uN

            picture   the that  WA-WA-paint-1SG.AG-paint

            'I am painting that picture with different colors'



The extra *wa-*, according to my speaker, refers to 'different colors' here. This analysis is substantiated by the following examples:



(6)        sápa w-í-wa-'uN

            black  WA-paint-1SG.AG-paint

            'I paint it black'



ungrammatical:

(7)        sápa wa-w-í-wa-'uN

            black   WA-WA-paint-1SG.AG-paint

            'I paint it black'



The ungrammaticality of (7) can be blamed on the fact that in (7), *wa-* and the color term *sápa* 'black' fill the same syntactic slot.

Unfortunately, so far, I was unable to identify the exact extra-linguistic referent of *w-* in (5) and (6).



Still, all this seems to imply that in the case of examples (1), (3) and (5), *wa-* has a semantic connotation that could be rendered by the gloss 'variety object', rather than simply by 'things, stuff, etc.' as is usually done for *wa-* (which is of course appropriate in most other cases). The following examples should bring this out even more clearly:



(8)        wa-yúha

            WA-have

            'he has all kinds of things'



(9)        wó-ha

            WA+YU-have

            'he has things/everything (like a rich person)'



The form *wó-* in (6) results from contraction of *wa-* with the instrumental prefix *yu-*. *wó-* conveys the meaning of "regular" non-specific patient, while *wayú-* seems to indicate a variety object. Not every verb that starts with *yu-*, however, admits the two contrasting expression formats for *wa-* that we see in (8) and (9): For *yu'échetu* 'to make it right', there is only *wayú'echetu*, but not *wó'echetu*. So far, all tested yu-verbs that do not have alternating *wa-*- forms have a *wayú-*-form but not a *wó-*-form, with one exception: *yúta* 'to eat'. *wóta* is fine but *wayúta* is not grammatical. Plus, not in every case in which there are alternating *wa-*-forms, corresponding meaning distinctions could be elicited.

A further argument for keeping *wó-* and *wayú-* forms apart, not only semantically, can be derived from the fact that for 1st and 2nd person, *wó-* and *wayú-* forms inflect differently:



(10)      wa-blús^taN

            WA-1SG.AG.finish

            'I finish a lot of things'



(11)      wó-wa-s^taN

            WA+YU-1SG.AG-finish

            'I am done'



The two main questions which are implicit in these data are:

(a) Does a distinction between a marker for "plain" non-specific object vs. a similar or identical marker for variety object surface in other Siouan languages as well? What are the exact semantic functions of the equivalent of *wa-* in other Siouan languages? Are there Siouan languages in which the etymological equivalent of Lakota *wa-* functions to code the notion of variety object only?

(b) On the assumption that the two meanings of Lakota *wa-* ("plain" non-specific object vs. 'variety object') are historically connected, which meaning is older? Grammaticalization theory, via the concept of semantic bleaching, would predict that the meaning 'variety object' is older than the meaning 'non-specific object' since it can be argued that the former meaning is less abstract than the latter. But generally, I don't care much for deductive reasoning of this sort, I'd rather draw my conclusions on the basis of data from related languages. That's why I'd like to see some "cross-Siouan" data on this.



Best,

Regina



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