animate wa-

[R. Rankin]

Until I saw John's research from Bushotter, et al., below, I was going to
suggest that Violet's and Regina's examples militated strongly against the
'valence reducer' analysis of WA- and in favor of the more traditional
animate/inanimate, definite/indefinite analysis.  But it seems that wa + kte
*does* have a reading that is different from wicha + kte, and it seems to be the
intransitive meaning one would predict.   So I guess I'm back to wondering about
the distribution of wicha- and wa- in the context of a verb that virtually
requires an animate object (if there is an object at all) like -kta/-kte.  What
it is starting to look like to (an amateur Dakotanist like) me, is that wicha-
is indeed spreading at the expense of wa- in strictly verbal constructions.  But
wa- is found in the nominalized forms.  (Of course we can still debate whether
these two WA's are the same or different morphemes.)

Bob

> However, I have also found wakte-agli '(ones who) having killed return',
> apparently referring to men who have returned successfully from a war
> expedition, and waktoglapi 'they relate their (war) deeds (i.e., their
> killings)'.  These terms are also cited in Buechel, I see, and Buechel
> lists wakte' 'to kill, to have killed or scalped; to triumph', which seems
> to be the base term.  Perhaps this is a more specialized term than
> wic^hakte in wic^haktepi 'killing', etc., and so perhaps an older usage.
>
> These are far from a complete analysis of wa vs. wic^ha for animate/human
> (indefinite) patients, and it is rather presumptious of me to try to
> serialize the examples on the basis of it, but it looks to me like there
> is at least some potential for wic^ha and wa to alternate in animate/human
> references, though Regina's and Violet's assessments clearly favor wic^ha
> as the productive formation.