Lakota wa- 'variety object'

[Rory M Larson]

My working hypothesis is that a noun (or NP) in
front of a verb in MVS can be one of at least
three things.  It can be the subject you're
talking about (whether agent or patient); it can
be a type of object of the verb; or it can be a
qualifier that acts as an adverb on that verb.
The /wa-/ is a generalizer that can fill any of
these noun slots with respect to the verb.  It's
roughly the equivalent of the everted palm ("Use
your imagination to fill in the blank!") in our
body language, in contrast with the pointing
thrust of definite reference.

Filling in for an object, it functions as a
detransitivizer.  So if ?i?uN means 'paint it',
and thi-?i?uN means 'paint the house', with 'house'
as the object, and wi?uN (< wa-?i?uN) means
'paint things in general', or just 'paint', then
/wa-/ is acting as a detransitivizer by taking
the place of the expected or implied object noun.

But if we have the construction thi-wi?uN, I
think there are three possibilities to explain
the apparent double object.

  1.  The verb ?i?uN might expect two separate
      objects, as John has suggested.

  2.  The verb wi?uN might have diverged
      semantically from ?i?uN, so that it no
      longer is equivalent to *wa-?i?uN.  In
      this case, wi?uN might be reinterpreted
      into a transitive verb, that can take
      thi, 'house', as an object.

  3.  The thi in thi-wi?uN is a qualifying noun,
      not an object (could I say "valence"?) noun.
      It gives circumstantial information about
      the verbal action, and is effectively an
      adverb.  Thus:

          ?i?uN           thi-?i?uN
          VERB            OBJ-VERB
          'paint it'      'paint the house'

          wi?uN           thi-wi?uN
          WA-VERB         ADV-WA-VERB
          'paint'         'house-paint'

      I think this is essentially Bob's view, and
      I like it too.

Now we hit Regina's example (5):

> (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 seems to present a problem for Possibility 3.
In third person:

      itowapi ki he wawi?uN
                 NP WA-WA-VERB
      'paint the picture with different colors'

The first WA would presumably represent a qualifier
that told the color of the painting action as in

> (6) sápa w-í-wa-'uN
>     black  WA-paint-1SG.AG-paint
>     'I paint it black'

or

      sapa wi?uN
       ADV WA-VERB
      'paint it black'

Filling in for the color qualifier, WA seems to
take on the specialized sense of "in various colors",
rather than "in some unspecified color".  This makes
sense.  But what is that WA just before the verb doing,
in either (5) or (6)?  It certainly doesn't represent
a subject, and the 'color' qualifier is handled by
the preceeding WA or an actual color term.  The object
in (5) is clearly the leading noun phrase, 'picture'.
Either there is a second object floating around here
(Possibility 1); or the detransitivized verb wi?uN
has been reinterpreted as transitive (Possibility 2);
or that WA has become a marker like an affixed pronoun
that can optionally be augmented in meaning by a free
noun phrase.  In the latter case, it would be pretty
much the same as the 'us' and 'them' affixed pronouns
in OP.

I wonder what Regina's informants would say about:

      */sapa ?i?uN/

and

      */itowapi ki he wi?uN/

Does throwing out the extra WA potentially cause
confusion?

Rory