Lakota wa- 'variety object'

[Carolyn Q.]

I think the use of *extra* wa in Osage adds the sense of 'around' as in 'ask
around' and 'paint around on things'  or some such and alludes to repeating
the action.  So maybe 'asking and asking', or 'painting and painting'.  I
don't have the example at hand but seem to remember 'to see things' (over a
period of time on different occasions) being wawedhe, with two instances of
wa:
wa wa iidhe, with iidhe 'see'.  The gloss would be something like 'he's been
seeing things'.  One wa is the valence reducer "things" and one is a sort of
multiplier of instances of the verb, as I see it.

In the house-painting example and the picture-paining example with "extra"
wa, do the speakers conceive of the action happening in several instances?
Is the actor sort of painting around on the house or the picture at
different settings (though not necessarily with the informality implied in
English by "painting around") ?

Carolyn
  -----Original Message-----
  From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of REGINA PUSTET
  Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 3:22 PM
  To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
  Subject: Re: Lakota wa- 'variety object'


  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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