Winnebago =ire

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht wrote:
> The idea that -wi  is a general pluralizer is not quite correct. It is
> used to pluralize first and second person prefixes of the actor and
> undergoer series of pronominal prefixes. I never saw it pluralizing a
> 3sg which is zero in Hocank. The example you cited from Lipkind - if it
> really exists - is certainly not the standard form. I did not come
> across the form xawi as a regular form for 3pl-bury. Both forms we are
> talking about are in complementary distribution.

I thought I would look to see if there were any evidence that Lipkind
wasn't totally off track in this assertion, tbough I'm not sure where he
might have made it.  Was it perhaps Sussman?  The Siouan Archives
copy of SUssman, second file, contains wi 'general plurality'.
Lipkind's lack of a table of
contents makes it hard, sometimes, to find things in, but the discussion
of -wi vs. -ire that I've noticed in a quick scan is on pp. 37-8 and does
not include -wi with a third person.  See also p. 7, for a discussion of
-wi and ablaut.

However, looking in the Winnebago texts in the Siouan Archives I find:

hoc^iNc^i(N)=niNk=wi= ra 'boys' (as a vocative)
boy          DIM  ??? DEF

nigwadjirekdjawi '(they) come after you'

niNgoo=    aji-re=      kja= wi
you invite they set out will ???

I suspect that in the second case the =wi pluralizes the object you.
Perhaps vocatives are also taken as second persons?  This is certainly
worth pursuing a little further, if only to determine when and how the
confusion arose.

JEK