The relational noun marker in Tobelo (Northeast Halmaheran

2021

This paper proposes a reconstruction of subject marking in Proto-Austronesian (PAn). I depart from previous approaches in not reconstructing nominative case, per se. Rather, I propose that subjects in PAn surfaced as bare DPs, and the case markers that are reflected in present day Formosan and Philippine languages resulted from later innovations. The marking with initial /k-/ that appears widely on subjects projected from common nominals originated as a topic marker *k-in PAn. In contrast to this, case-marking on personal nominals like names and pronouns derives from the PAn locative preposition *i. The preposition was used in differential object marking of personal nominal absolutives in the newly innovated ergative clause type in a daughter of PAn, Proto-Ergative Austronesian. The preposition further grammaticalized into a determiner and subsequently into the marker of [PERSON] in PEAn's daughter Proto-Nuclear Austronesian. The person marker i-is ubiquitously reflected in case markers in Nuclear Austronesian languages. This analysis additionally accounts for the fact that nominative marking with a reflex of *i is not found in Rukai dialects. Proto-Rukai retained the accusative alignment of PAn and consequently did not have ergative clauses with nominative objects. Rukai dialects do have strategies for differential object marking, but this is found only with non-nominative objects. * My Rukai field data was collected with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (JS015-A-12),

Oceanic Linguistics

This chapter investigates how referential expressions are involved in establishing and maintaining textual cohesion in Bunun, an Austronesian language of Taiwan, and how this behaviour varies across genres. Relying on a model of referential cohesion inspired by systemic-functional grammar, it explores differences and similarities for encoding referential continuity across sentence boundaries in oral and narrative text. It concludes that, contrary to initial expectation, and despite considerable formal differences in how referential expressions are realized, at a more fundamental level the properties of referential cohesion are unexpectedly stable across genres. 6 Metaphor: Relations based on similarity, other than identity. Metonym: Relations based on proximity or, more generally, contiguity. Symbol: Relations based on conventional semantic connections that cannot be reduced to any of the previous six relations.

2021

This paper proposes a reconstruction of subject marking in Proto-Austronesian (PAn). I depart from previous approaches in not reconstructing nominative case, per se. Rather, I propose that subjects in PAn surfaced as bare DPs, and the case markers that are reflected in present day Formosan and Philippine languages resulted from later innovations. The marking with initial /k-/ that appears widely on subjects projected from common nominals originated as a topic marker *kin PAn. In contrast to this, case-marking on personal nominals like names and pronouns derives from the PAn locative preposition *i. The preposition was used in differential object marking of personal nominal absolutives in the newly innovated ergative clause type in a daughter of PAn, Proto-Ergative Austronesian. The preposition further grammaticalized into a determiner and subsequently into the marker of [PERSON] in PEAn’s daughter Proto-Nuclear Austronesian. The person marker iis ubiquitously reflected in case marke...

2019

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University Microfilms International eBooks, 1976

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. C h ap ter I I n tro d u c tio n 1 .0 B asic Goals 1 .1 The A u stro n e sia n Languages 1 .2 U n iv e rsa l Grammar C h ap ter I I The Noun P h rase 2 .0 I n tr o d u c tio n 2 .1 .0 A djunct + Noun and P alau an Grammar 2 .1 .1 The Bnndedness H ie ra rc h y l7 2 .1 .2 T agalog 2 .1 .3 Ilo k an o 2 .1 .4 Toba Batak 2 .1 .5 T o lai 2 .1 .6 Wolio 2 .1 .7 Malagasy 2 .2 D iachrony 2 .3 The Noun + Noun System 2 .3 .1 P alau an 2 .3 .2 T agalog 2 .3 .3 Q u a n tif ie r s in Toba Batak 2 .3 .4 Tongan 2 .3 .5 The Noun + Noun System i n U n iv e rs a l Grammar 79 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

This thesis discusses topics in the grammar of Lelepa, an Oceanic language spoken by about 500 people on the islands of Lelepa and Efate in the center of the Vanuatu archipelago. The areas of grammar covered in the thesis are phonology (chapter 2), morphology (chapter 3), word classes (chapter 4), noun phrases (chapter 5), possession (chapter 6), clause structure and grammatical relations (chapter 7), verb classes and valency changing devices (chapter 8), the verb complex (chapter 9), complex predicates (chapter 10), aspect and modality (chapter 11), coordination and subordination (chapter 12). The phonemic inventory is of medium to small size, with fourteen consonants and five vowels. It includes two typologically rare labial-velar consonants. Stress is not phonemic. Syllables can be complex and consonant clusters are allowed in onset and coda positions. The most important phonological process is vowel reduction, which represent a significant driver of language change. Clausal word order is SVO. Oblique arguments follow the object(s), and adjuncts occur in initial or final position in the clause. An exception is the benefactive phrase, an adjunct encoding beneficiaries which occurs between the subject proclitic and the verb, and makes the verb complex a discontinuous structure. The benefactive phrase is cross-linguistically unusual and makes central Vanuatu languages distinctive. Of typological interest is the split dividing objects along two classes of transitive verbs. It has its source in a semantic distinction between significantly affected Ps and less affected Ps. However, the split is lexical because borrowed transitive verbs are systematically classified with verbs taking less affected Ps regardless of the degree of affectedness of their P. Lelepa has serial verb constructions but has also developed other verbal constructions grouped in the class of complex predicates, which comprise auxiliary verbs, serial verbs, post-verbs and clause-final particles. These encode a broad range of semantic distinctions including aspectual, modal and directional values, manner, intensification, cause-effect and result. Lelepa distinguishes between inalienable and alienable possession, but the possessive constructions have diverged from the typical Oceanic model. In particular, relational classifiers are not found in the language, and a construction reflecting alienable relationships distinguishes between human and non-human possessors. An unusual feature is the marking of mood and transitivity on certain verbs with Stem Initial Mutation. In this process, verbs switch their initial consonant from /f/ to /p/ according to particular mood and transitivity values. This process is known in Vanuatu language but often limited to mood marking, whereas Lelepa and other central Vanuatu languages also mark transitivity. The morphological structure is agglutinative, but many grammatical features are encoded by particles, especially in the verb complex. In the nominal domain, inflectional affixes include possessor-indexing suffixes, a prefixed article and derivational affixes generating deverbal nouns. Compounding is a feature of both nouns and verbs. Word classes are clearly defined, and the main open classes are nouns and verbs. Nominals can be derived through nominalisation of verb roots or substantivisation, a process deriving referential items from all word classes except nouns and pronouns.

This chapter describes salient characteristics of Balinese, Sasak, and Sumbawa, the languages that form a distinct subgroup within Malayo-Polynesian, called “Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa” (BSS) (Esser 1938, Dyen 1965, 1982, Mbete 1990). In terms of their voice systems characterising Austronesian (AN) languages (cf. Himmelmann 2005), BSS languages show a continuum: from clear symmetrical voice morphosyntax and sporadic person marking in Balinese to Sumbawa with its lack of voice system, but pervasive person indexing on verbs. Sasak dialects show properties in between the two, with certain dialects exhibiting various degrees of attrition in Austronesian voice morphology and the emergence of argument/person indexing. For example, NN-Sasak is more like Balinese in showing verbal morphological marking for its AV-UV opposition whereas MM-Sasak is more like Sumbawa in lacking such verbal voice opposition. In terms of other morphosyntactic properties characterizing AN languages, the BSS languages share the following same typological features: post-posed possessors, no alienable/inalienable distinction, negators in pre-predicate position, and V-initial or SVX, rather than V-second of V-final, constituent order. On a broader note, the varying degrees of attrition and disappearance of AV voice morphology in certain dialects of Sasak and a total loss of it in Sumbawa clearly indicates that Lombok and Sumbawa are transitional zones towards a full-fledged subject (S/A) person marking/indexing system as typically found in the Austronesian languages of Sumba in eastern Indonesia. In terms of their clausal and phrasal syntax, the BSS languages are head-initial; e.g. preposition instead of postposition, VO instead of OV, the noun head preceding modifiers, the auxiliary (expressing TAM information) occurring before the main verb. They exhibit grammatical relations with robust morphosyntactic evidence for syntactic PIVOT/SUBJ, particularly in Balinese and NN-Sasak. All BSS languages are not case-marking languages. Yet, the distinction between core and non-core or Oblique arguments is typically clear: core arguments, which include intransitive subject, the agent-like argument, and the patient-like argument, occur in unmarked form (i.e. bare NP). On the other hand, non-cores or obliques, which typically express peripheral semantic roles, such as locations or instruments, appear with prepositional flagging. Alternations of argument status can therefore be assessed through this flagging, which also often correlate with verbal marking, such as the presence of applicative (transitivising) morphology. While this discussion has provided a succinct overview of BSS languages at various linguistic interfaces, there are many areas that would benefit from additional research. For instance, it remains unclear whether similar bare stems like lalo ‘go’ in Sasak and Sumbawa, and teri? ‘come’ in Sasak / teri’ in Sumbawa are indeed verbs; or whether the bound roots such as -rari ‘run’ in Sasak and Sumbawa are also verbs, or precategories. Thus, similar research to Clynes (2010) and Mistica et al (2010) is needed in Sasak and Sumbawa to settle the issue on roots and word classes in these two languages. Further, while Sumbawa has types of serial verb constructions as seen in Balinese, more research is needed to uncover their properties and distinguish them from ordinary bi-clausal coordination/subordination structures. Finally, the distinction of finite clauses is well studied in Balinese (Natarina 2018), but could benefit from additional investigation and comparative analysis in Sasak and Sumbawa.

Theoretical Linguistics, 2009

2019

As an article simply plays a syntactic role in a language, it is often overlooked in a linguistic research on syntax (Farrell 2005). If it happens to Austronesian languages like Agabag, it will be a fatal mistake since an article has significant roles (Hudson 1978). The discussion of this paper is aimed at describing the roles of articles in Agabag. Generative-Transformational Approach is applied for the sake of descriptive and explanatory adequacies (Haegeman 1991). All processes of analyses are based on transformational principles, which involve theories of head-modifiers relations, which are also used to describe the structures and patterns of articles in Agabag. The analyses of this research result in some findings. Agabag language has articles which function as a determiner of an NP and become role assigners to the NP. The interpretation of the articles of Agabag is based on their function as a determiner as well as role-assigners to the NP. As a determiner, articles of Agabag ...