Lakota wa- 'variety object'

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, REGINA PUSTET wrote:> One more thing worth checking is if the presence of a postposition such
> At this point, the hypothesis about the object-eliminating function of
> wa- collapses since, unless the verb iyuNg^a 'to ask' can take some
> mysterious additional types of semantic object whose exact nature could,
> so far, not be determined by my elicitation techniques, we have to
> interpret wa- and w- in (10) as coreferential with the full NPs itowapi
> ki 'the picture' and taku ota 'many things', respectively. I realize
> that these data do not really take us in the direction in which they
> hoped they would take us, since my initial idea was that by putting full
> object NPs and checking which wa-s would be eliminated by their
> presence, we'd get some more insight into the semantic reference of the
> wa-s.

The only thing that occurs to me is that perhaps wa does not so much act
to eliminate arguments as to background them.  In effect, it would be
something like an antipassive.  In simple object cases it might be
ungrammatical to include a backgrounded object, but in more complex cases
they might be permissible, or even necessary in some sort of functional
sense, to indicate the structure of the clause.  Foregrounding and
backgrounding are essentially the basis of the contrast between English
"spraypaint" examples, e.g., 'I painted the wall with yellow paint' vs. 'I
painted yellow paint on the wall'.  In a single object case like 'I shot
the deer' vs. 'I shot at the deer', the "antipassive" second alternative
indicates a lesser degree of affectedness or certainty of affectedness, or
perhaps only that the deer is of no further consequence, so that it
matters little whether it was hit or not.

However, for this to make sense with iyuNgha and i(y)uN we have to assume
that some cases of i introduce not one argument, but two - an instrument
or medium or similar sort of argument, and a thing more remotely involved.
I'm not sure I'm phrasing this well, but the two examples in question seem
to be 'with paint the thing painted' and 'some question about a subject'.
Given that the wawemaNghe examples in OP come from text with rather
approximate, one might suspect hurried, glosses, rather than from careful
examinations of the argumentation of the verb, it is possible that the OP
arguments of imaNghe are similar in nature to those of Teton iyuNgha, but
it's also possible that the second wa has come to indicate plurality in
some way, too.

Along these lines, in some cases plurality is a way of expressing a lack
of particularization, and would be a natural basis for translating some
kinds of wa-objects, or perhaps even a real part of the conception of
them.  But it might not work the same in all languages or even all verbs.
In OP wawemaNghe seems to imply multiplicity of questions (or perhaps
subjects of questions) relative to wemaNghe, while in Teton wi(y)uN seems
to imply multiplicity of paint applications (or perhaps places to which
paint is applied).

JEK