Lakota wa- 'variety object'

[REGINA PUSTET]

Such case marking splits can be found in many languages, and one way of accounting for the particular type of split you quote from Russian is by means of the semantic parameter of affectedness of the object. More examples can be found in Hopper & Thompson's (1980) Language paper. But judging by the way affectedness of O is described in the literature, I'm not exactly sure if this characterizes the Lakota situation. So according to "affectedness theory", the standard transitive object case (mostly ACC) denotes action that has a quite thorough impact on the O, while the oblique (often INSTRumental) indicates a partial impact. My impression from working with Lakota, however, is that "variety wa-" actually emphasizes the notion of internal diversity in  the object, rather than less effective, less thorough, less completive action.

Regina

"R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

> But the 'paint the picture with many colors'
example needs musing.

My Dakotan muse has deserted me, but I'm reminded
of a sort of construction found in Slavic.
Russian doesn't have the same sorts of pronominal
arguments and/or valence markers, but it does have
special ways of distinguishing "I painted the
house" from "I painted here and there on the
house", and it does this with case selection.

"I painted the house" will have 'house' in the
accusative case.

"I painted about the house" or the like can have
'house' in the instrumental case if memory serves.

Or, "I threw the stone" -- 'stone' is accusative.

But "I tossed stones around" -- 'stones' is
instrumental.

Languages seem to have interesting special ways of
doing what we're calling "various ways" in
Dakotan.

Bob



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