PREVERBAL PARTICLES IN PINGELAPESE: A LANGUAGE OF MICRONESIA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AUGUST 2012 BY RYOKO HATTORI Dissertation committee: William D. O’Grady, Co-chairperson Kenneth L. Rehg, Co-chairperson Byron W. Bender Yuko Otsuka David L. Hanlon Keywords: Pingelapese, Micronesia, evidentiality, pronouns © Copyright 2012 by Ryoko Hattori ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to acknowledge the various funding agencies and institutions that have made my dissertation study possible. I wish to thank the Morita Scholarship Foundation for sending me to the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa for my graduate studies and the Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa for providing me with a Graduate Assistantship and a Pacific Asia Scholarship Tuition Waiver at various times during my graduate studies. I would also like to thank the East-West Center for providing me with a Degree Fellowship. Thanks also go to the organizations that funded my field work in the Federated States of Micronesia, which are the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (award reference # FTG0110); the American Association of University Women (Pacific Fellowship); and the Arts and Sciences Advisory Council at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. My deepest gratitude goes to my chairs, Professors William O’Grady and Kenneth Rehg. I wish to thank them for all the continuous and patient advising and moral support at the various stages of this challenging undertaking. Dr. O’Grady’s Introduction to Grammatical Analysis class Ling422 made me decide to study in this program, and Dr. Rehg’s Field Methods class Ling630 introduced me to language documentation and the Pingelapese language. With his deep knowledge in Micronesian languages, Dr. Rehg challenged me with data and facts from related languages that my analysis would have to cope with, but at the same time he always worked with me to develop a feasible analysis. With his extensive experience in the field of syntax and typology, Dr. O’Grady encouraged me to extend the scope of this study beyond the Micronesian languages and to develop a robust analysis to make this dissertation a contribution for a larger audience. I am very thankful that my co-chairs, each with different specialties, co-operated to make this dissertation possible. My study of the Pingelapese language was initiated and supported by my Pingelapese friends in Hawai‘i: Mrs. Billie-Jean Manuel, Mr. Adino Ehmes, Mrs. Alice iii Ehmes, Mr. Dayne Lemuel, and Mr. Allen Ehmes. These people not only assisted my study in Hawai‘i but also arranged my safe stay and study in Pohnpei and Pingelap, Federated States of Micronesia. In Pohnpei, my host mother Mrs. Susan Ehmes and her family welcomed me into their loving home and helped me to network with important people for my study in the community. Mr. Weldis Welly, one of the co-authors of a Pingelapese sketch grammar, kindly shared his linguistic intuitions with me. On Pingelap, my host father Mr. Charley Ilander and his family helped me to immerse myself in their culture and languages. Mr. Ensler Rizana was a brilliant assistant in this project. I am thankful to all of my wide range of Pingelapese friends from the young children in Mwalok Head Start and primary level class in Pingelap Sunday School to the oldest people in the community for their hospitality and friendship. My thanks also go to Dr. Valerie Guerin, who encouraged me to keep my writing mood, read my draft twice, and helped me to reorganize the flow of my dissertation. Last but not least, I thank my parents, Isamu and Sueko Hattori, for their love and support. My deepest appreciation also goes to my husband, David Arakaki, who has always been there for me. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a synchronic and diachronic study of Pingelapese pronouns and auxiliary verbs—ae, e, aen, and en. Synchronically, Pingelapese employs subject pronominal clitics, not subject agreement markers, unlike Proto-Micronesian and many other contemporary Micronesian languages. Pingelapese also possesses auxiliary verbs that express evidentiality—the speaker’s degree of certainty about propositions (ae for low certainty and e for high certainty)—as well as inchoative meaning (-n). The combination of evidentiality and inchoative auxiliary verbs yields a realis-irrealis contrast. Comparison with other Micronesian languages reveals that marking evidentiality in this way is unique to Pingelapese. These subject pronouns and auxiliary verbs together compose pronoun-auxiliary complexes. A diachronic study concludes that the root vowel of Proto-Micronesian subject agreement markers was leveled into a uniform vowel ae in Pohnpeic languages. This root vowel ae was innovatively reanalyzed as a low-evidentiality marker, which was accompanied by the development of a high-evidentiality marker e, in the history of Pingelapese. The development of the high-evidentiality marker e from the leveled root vowel ae was achieved through the merger of a following hypothetical high front vowel particle *i (with the high certainty meaning), vowel height assimilation, and final vowel deletion. In contrast, the inchoative morpheme -n of aen and en has a cognate in all Micronesian languages, descending from the Proto-Micronesian “immediateness marker” *nae. v Along with the reanalysis of the root vowel of Proto-Micronesian subject agreement markers into evidential markers, the pre-root vowel parts have turned into subject pronominal clitics: s- ‘1dual/pl exclusive’, k- ‘2sg’, Ø- ‘3sg’, r- ‘3dual/pl’. The Pingelapese stand-alone auxiliary verbs developed by extracting ae, aen, e, and en from the subject pronoun-auxiliary complexes, leaving the person/number morphemes behind. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ······································································· iii ABSTRACT ·························································································· v LIST OF TABLES················································································· xii LIST OF FIGURES ················································································xv LIST OF MAPS ··················································································· xvii LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS··································································· xviii Chapter 1 Introduction and language background ········································ 1 1.1. Introduction ·············································································· 1 1.2. General Background ···································································· 1 1.2.1. Location ····································································· 1 1.2.2. Classification································································ 3 1.2.3. Number of speakers ························································ 5 1.2.4. Social system ······························································· 5 1.2.5. Brief history of the Pingelapese people ································· 6 1.2.5.1. Early history ····················································· 6 1.2.5.2. Linguistic influence of colonial powers ······················ 8 1.2.6. Language policy ···························································· 9 1.2.7. Language shift ·····························································10 1.2.8. Communities ·······························································11 1.2.8.1. Pingelap atoll ···················································12 1.2.8.2. Mwalok ··························································13 1.2.8.3. Mand ·····························································15 1.2.8.4. Communities in the United States ···························16 1.2.9. State of language documentation ········································16 1.3. Choice of community ··································································17 Chapter 2 Basic linguistic facts about Pingelapese ······································ 19 2.1. The phoneme inventory ······························································· 19 2.1.1. Consonants ·································································19 vii 2.1.2. Vowels ······································································20 2.2. Orthography ·············································································24 2.2.1. Writing practices in Pingelapese ······································· 24 2.2.2. Literacy challenge ························································ 25 2.2.3. Orthography development ·············································· 26 2.3. Morphology··············································································31 2.3.1. Verbal morphology ······················································ 31 2.3.2. Nominal morphology ···················································· 33 2.3.3. Morpho-phonology······················································· 34 2.4. Grammatical typology of Pingelapese ···············································34 2.4.1. Accusative language ····················································· 34 2.4.2. No morpho-syntactic tense in Pingelapese···························· 35 2.4.3. Canonical word order ·····················································36 2.4.4 Prepositions ·································································36