animate wa-

[REGINA PUSTET]

There are 182 occurrences of wa- 'non-specific
patient' in my Lakota texts (University of Nebraska
Press, forthcoming). In only one of these cases (!!),
wa- lends itself to analysis as 'non-specific animate
patient' in a straightforward way:

waná  ma-tháNka    cha wa-w-ó-wa-kiyiN          na …
now   1SG.PAT-big  so  WA-WA-help-1SG.AG-help   and
'now I was big, so I helped (people?) with the work to
be done'

On assuming that ókiya 'to help' is ditransitive in
that it has PAT slots for the beneficiary of the act
of helping and for the thing someone is being helped
with, one of the wa-s should express the notion of
'(help) people'. Regarding animacy of wa-, the
following example can also be taken into
consideration:

hé    thokéya   pteblés^ka   ki   wichá-kte-pi
that  first     cattle       DEF  3PL.PAT-kill-PL

na    wa-pháta-pi
and   WA-butcher-PL
'first they killed the cows and butchered them'

Pteblés^ka 'cattle' is the implied referent of wa- in
wa-phata-pi 'they butchered them'. But since the
(basically animate) cattle are already dead when being
butchered, does wa- still count as an animate referent
in wa-phata-pi 'they butchered them'? Similarly, the
following example raises the question of whether
plants or plant parts qualify as animate or not.

cha    eyás^na    wa-wópta   ománi        s^khé
so     sometimes  WA-dig up  walk about   QUOT
'sometimes she walked around digging (up edible
roots)'

There are, of course, cases in which wa- can be taken
to refer to both animate and inanimate entities at the
same time, such as

lé    líla  wa-khúl   wayúphika   kéye
this  very  WA-shoot  skilful     QUOT
'he was a very skilled hunter, i.e. "skilled at
shooting things"'

Wa-khul 'shoot things' refers to the ability to hit a
target, be it animate or inanimate. So on the basis of
these data, I conclude that in Lakota discourse, usage
of wa- with exclusively animate reference, as in the
first example, is extremely rare. Intuitively, the
idea of using wa- specifically with reference to
humans still strikes me as weird, but I think the
first example can be analyzed this way.

Regina




--- Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, REGINA PUSTET wrote:
> > wa-makha-s^kaN
> > WA-earth-move.ITR
> > 'animal (i.e. [on-]earth-mover)',
> >
> > we end up with animate reference for wa- again. Or
> is there a different
> > way of analyzing this form?
>
> I think this sort of consideration depends
> critically on whether we see
> wa- in nominalizations as marking the "subject" of
> the nominalization or a
> non-specific "patient" (stative-pronoun concord) in
> the case frame of the
> nominalization, which, of course, might be a
> subject.  If the latter then
> it would depend on the position of wa- in the case
> frame.
>
> In other words, in something like OP we'base 'saw' <
> wa + i + base 'cut by
> pushing', is wa- a reference to the saw (something
> you cut things with)
> or to non-specific things cut with the saw (a thing
> you cut non-specific
> things with).
>
> JEK


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