Non-wa Nominalizations

[Rory M Larson]

John wrote:
> In conneciton with the preceding on 'story' and some other activities I
> noticed two non-wa nominalizations in OP.

> i'...e 'speak; speech, unit of speech, e.g., word'
> hi'...gaN 'tell traditional story; traditional story'

Is there any particular reason we don't have an epenthetic
dh in i'e (not i'dhe) ?  Is this word completely "normal"?

> I don't believe you can prefix wa to these forms, which are active
> intransitives and taken no patient.  On the other hand, though
Omaha-Ponca
> seems to lack a nominalization of udha' 'tell', this verb does take a
> patient, the thing told, and that can be replaced with wa.  Forms for
> 'story' based on it have this wa, e.g., IO worage or Os (LaF) u'dhake.

What about the thing spoken?  Wouldn't a language fill this
slot?

For a while, I was trying to build classroom sentences on
lines of:

      X UmoN'hoN ie a' ga!  ("Say X in Omaha!)

The speakers recently corrected me.  I should have been
phrasing that:

      X UmoN'hoN ia' ga!

This would seem to mean that the verb ie can take a patient.

I wonder if ie isn't primarily a verb.  Like any other
verb or verb phrase, it can be turned into a noun describing
the action, in the way we might say "the speaking".  The
term we-e, however, if it existed, would mean "the thing
used for speaking", if we suppose that wa is a head-marker,
or "(something) used for saying things", if we suppose that
wa is a patient marker.  As implement terms, these words
may just never have been coined.

Rory