animate wa-

[bi1 at soas.ac.uk]

The wa-,in waphata could be the instrumental wa- 'by use of a knife'
Bruce

>
> Regarding the following:
>
> > 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.
>
> I would have expected wicha-phata-pi rather than wa-phata. Could the sentence
> mean something like, ‘they killed the cows and then they did some butchering’?
>
> >
> Linda
>