WA- once more.

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Thanks to Bob and John for pointing this out.  But I'm going to ask
> again: Is this wa-a actually two separate elements, i.e. wa + a ?  If
> so, are these reversed in the causatives, where we have awa- for the
> "us" form (but wa- for the "them" form)?

We know there are two elements by the logic that things come between them
- something similar happens in Winnebago, too - and by the logic that the
order is different in wea < wa-i-a or wa-gi-a and in awa.  Discontinuous
morphemes are not all that common in Siouan languages, but do occur, e.g.,
in some negatives, for example.

You might think of this as a single logical morpheme with two constituent
physical morphemes, though I think this rather distorts the historical
notion of a morpheme.

In some ways it's not different from the discontinuous (or infixing) stems
that Siouan and Caddoan and other languages have, in those cases where the
constituent elements neither one have a certain gloss outside of the gloss
for the wholem e.g., OP z^a=...he or z^u=...he.  We generally assume that
there are two separate morphemes (at least) involved historically, in such
cases, though I believe that in Caddoan and elsewhere it often turns out
that the location of inserted material is not necessarily an old morpheme
boundary.  Sometimes it's just a phonologically suitable spot in a form
for insertions - a place where the canons of the language permit
insertions to occur, as in English infixations like abso-damn-lutely.
(Far-freakin'-out is an example where the insertion occurs on a morpheme
boundary.)  I wish I knew some of the Caddoan examples.  I might be able
to track down some Navajo ones.

> And do we know that the wa- in wa-a is different from the wa- in the 3rd
> pl. patient, or might they be the same with an extra -a added for "us"?

No, we don't know, historically, though buried in what I've said in this
thread are some arguments for believing that this might be the case.  In
the context of modern Dhegiha grammars I'd have to say that these wa's are
definitely different.  The possible historical connections are not of the
sort that would enter into a speaker's intuitions, I think.