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Asia-Pacific Linguistics a Grammatical Description of Kara-Lemakot Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access Monographs ____________________________________________________ Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia College of Asia and the Pacific The Australian National University A grammatical description of Kara-Lemakot Matthew S. Dryer A-PL 009 / SLIM 002 This is a grammatical description of the Lemakot dialect of Kara, an Oceanic language in the Lavongai-Nalik subgroup. It is spoken in the northwest part of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, to the southeast of Tigak and to the northwest of Nalik. This description is based on the translation of the New Testament into Kara, not on field work. Matthew S. Dryer is a Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo in the U.S. Apart from his extensive work in word order typology, he has been doing field work in Papua New Guinea since 2001 (in conjunction with Lea Brown) on Walman and Srenge, two languages in the Torricelli family, and on Poko- Rawo, a language in the Skou family. He is also one of the editors of the World Atlas of Language Structures. Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access Monographs ____________________________________________ Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia SLIM EDITORIAL BOARD: Isabelle Bril Bethwyn Evans Alexandre François (founder and Managing Editor) Bill Palmer Published by Asia-Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University Canberra ACT 2600 Australia Copyright in this edition is vested with the author(s) Released under Creative Commons Licence (Attribution) First published: 2013 URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/10703 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Dryer, Matthew S., author. Title: A grammatical description of Kara-Lemakot / Matthew S Dryer. ISBN: 9781922185099 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Kara language (Papua New Guinea) Kara language (Papua New Guinea)--Dialects. Oceanic languages. Papua New Guinea--Languages. Other Authors/ Contributors: Australian National University. Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access. Dewey Number: 499.5 Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... vi Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. vii 1. Introduction.............................................................................................................. 1 2. Phonology ................................................................................................................ 4 3. Pronominal morphemes ........................................................................................... 6 3.1. Weak subject pronouns .................................................................................. 6 3.1.1. The basic weak subject pronouns ....................................................... 6 3.1.2. Non-obligatoriness of weak subject pronouns .................................... 9 3.1.3. The incompletive third singular weak subject pronoun i .................. 12 3.2. The strong pronouns .................................................................................... 13 3.3. Object clitics ................................................................................................ 15 3.4. Object suffix on aan-nominalizations .......................................................... 19 3.5. Possessive suffixes ....................................................................................... 20 3.6. Suffixes on prepositions ............................................................................... 22 4. Morphology ............................................................................................................ 28 4.1. Noun morphology ........................................................................................ 28 4.1.1. Possessive suffixes ............................................................................ 28 4.1.2. Nonsingular forms of nouns .............................................................. 28 4.1.3. The singular prefix pa- ..................................................................... 30 4.2. Verb morphology ......................................................................................... 31 4.2.1. Object suffix ...................................................................................... 31 4.2.2. The passive suffix -an........................................................................ 31 4.2.3. The transitivizing suffix -an .............................................................. 33 4.2.4. The causative prefix fa- .................................................................... 37 4.2.5. The adverbial prefix fa- .................................................................... 39 4.2.6. The prefix fe- ..................................................................................... 40 4.2.7. The general nominalizing suffix -an ................................................. 43 4.2.8. The transitive nominalizing suffix -aan ............................................ 46 4.2.9. The intransitive suffix -ai .................................................................. 50 4.2.10. The associated motion suffix -maan ............................................... 51 4.2.11. The reduplicative prefix .................................................................. 54 4.2.12. The comparative prefix pe- ~ peCa- ............................................... 56 4.2.13. Ordinal numerals ............................................................................ 57 4.2.14. Adverbial numerals ......................................................................... 58 4.3. Prepositions ................................................................................................. 58 5. Noun phrase structure............................................................................................ 59 5.1. Articles ......................................................................................................... 59 5.1.1. The proper article na ........................................................................ 59 i 5.1.2. The common article a........................................................................ 61 5.1.3. The nonspecific article ta.................................................................. 63 5.1.4. Contexts where articles are absent .................................................. 64 5.2. Number words ............................................................................................. 70 5.2.1. The plural word mu .......................................................................... 70 5.2.2. The greater plural word maana ....................................................... 71 5.2.3. The dual word ro .............................................................................. 71 5.2.4. The paucal word nu .......................................................................... 72 5.2.5. The number word saxa ‘one, indefinite’ ........................................... 73 5.2.6. Indefinite plural word saxano .......................................................... 74 5.2.7. Indefinite paucal word saxanu ......................................................... 75 5.2.8. xasa, xasano, xasanu ‘other’ ........................................................... 76 5.3 Ordinal numerals ........................................................................................ 77 5.4. Adjectives ..................................................................................................... 77 5.5. (Cardinal) Numerals ................................................................................... 82 5.6. Demonstratives ............................................................................................ 85 5.7. Nominal possession ..................................................................................... 87 5.7.1. Inalienable possession ...................................................................... 89 5.7.2. Kin terms using si-possession ........................................................... 90 5.7.3. Body part terms using i-possession................................................... 92 5.7.4. Other uses of si-possession and i-possession ................................... 94 5.8. Relative clauses ........................................................................................... 97 5.8.1. Subject relatives ................................................................................ 97 5.8.2. Object relatives ................................................................................. 98 5.8.3. Object of preposition relatives .......................................................... 98 5.8.4. Possessor relatives .......................................................................... 100 5.8.5. Ambiguous relatives ........................................................................ 101 5.8.6. The absence of a after the relative word aava ................................ 102 5.8.7. Relative clauses with pronouns as head ......................................... 103 5.9. Prepositional phrases modifying nouns .................................................... 105 5.10. Miscellaneous other modifiers of nouns .................................................. 106 5.10.1. xapiak ‘all’ ................................................................................... 106 5.10.2. xurul ‘whole’
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