Aspects of Edolo Grammar
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ASPECTS OF EDOLO GRAMMAR The members of the Committee approve the masters thesis of Jan David Gossner Donald A. Burquest _________________________________________ Supervising Professor Jerold A. Edmondson _________________________________________ Kenneth A. McElhanon _________________________________________ Copyright © by Jan David Gossner 1994 All Rights Reserved ASPECTS OF EDOLO GRAMMAR by JAN DAVID GOSSNER Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 1994 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my appreciation, first, to Dr. Donald A. Burquest who served as my supervising professor. His academic assistance has certainly been great throughout my study program, but perhaps his most valuable assistance has been his belief that I could accomplish this task in the time I had allotted. I am indebted to him for his "speaking many words of encouragement" to me. My wife, Debbie, has helped me in countless ways, as she always does, not the least of which was as a colleague in language learning and analysis, and I thank her. I wish to express my thanks, also, to the Papua New Guinea branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics for financial support of this study program specifically, and for lo- gistical support during the period of field work. This support took many different forms, but I am particularly thankful to the personnel of the aviation department of the Papua New Guinea branch for their invaluable service in providing access to the language area. There are many others whose support, financial and otherwise, made this study pro- gram possible and who make our field work possible. I thank them and the God we serve. April 14, 1994 iv ABSTRACT ASPECTS OF EDOLO GRAMMAR Publication No. _______ Jan David Gossner, M.A. The University of Texas at Arlington, 1994 Supervising Professor: Donald A. Burquest The Edolo people (elsewhere Etoro and Etolo) live in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Edolo is a Papuan language, a member of the Bosavi family, with an SOV typology. Grammatical relations are indicated by case marking, which follows an ergative/absolutive system. Edolo uses a body part counting system, counting thirty-four parts, and has a complex system of spatial deictics. Clause chaining and tail-head linkage are widely used. Much of the present work consists of a word level description that includes an accounting of the complex verbal morphology. Phrase struc- ture and clause structure are examined following the Government and Binding paradigm. Discourse genre distinctions and participant reference are considered briefly. The system of participant reference is a bit unusual, there being very limited subject agreement marking and no switch-reference marking. Two appendices are included with interlinearized vernacular texts. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS............................................................................................. xi LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................ xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.......................................................................................... xiv 1 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 1.1 Purpose and scope....................................................................................................1 1.2 The language and setting .........................................................................................3 1.2.1 Linguistically interesting features...................................................................4 1.2.2 Speech variations ............................................................................................5 1.3 History .....................................................................................................................7 1.4 The corpus................................................................................................................8 1.5 Overview of the thesis ...........................................................................................11 2 PHONOLOGY.........................................................................................................12 2.1 Introduction............................................................................................................12 2.2 Phonemes and graphemes......................................................................................12 2.2.1 Consonants....................................................................................................12 2.2.1.1 Consonant phonemes ...........................................................................13 2.2.1.2 Consonant allophones ..........................................................................14 2.2.1.3 Consonant graphemes ..........................................................................15 2.2.2 Vowels ..........................................................................................................16 2.2.2.1 Vowel phonemes..................................................................................16 vi 2.2.2.2 Vowel allophones ................................................................................16 2.2.2.3 Vowel graphemes.................................................................................17 2.3 Phoneme frequencies .............................................................................................17 2.4 Syllable structure ...................................................................................................19 2.5 Stress......................................................................................................................20 2.6 Other area orthographies........................................................................................21 3 WORD LEVEL..............................................................................................................23 3.1 Introduction............................................................................................................23 3.2 Open word classes .................................................................................................23 3.2.1 Nouns ............................................................................................................23 3.2.1.1 Noun classes ........................................................................................24 3.2.1.2 Case......................................................................................................25 3.2.1.2.1 Core case markers.......................................................................27 3.2.1.2.2 Peripheral case markers ..............................................................29 3.2.1.2.3 Kasus...........................................................................................32 3.2.1.3 Inalienable nouns (kin terms) ..............................................................34 3.2.1.4 Nominalizing morphology...................................................................36 3.2.2 Verbs.............................................................................................................36 3.2.2.1 Verb classes .........................................................................................37 3.2.2.2 Verbal morphology ..............................................................................40 3.2.2.2.1 Inner operators ............................................................................41 3.2.2.2.1.1 Directionals........................................................................42 3.2.2.2.1.2 Modality.............................................................................42 3.2.2.2.1.3 Aspect ................................................................................45 3.2.2.2.2 Outer operators ...........................................................................48 vii 3.2.2.2.2.1 Illocutionary force..............................................................49 3.2.2.2.2.2 Tense..................................................................................50 3.2.2.2.2.3 Status (realis/irrealis) .........................................................52 3.2.2.2.2.4 Evidentials .........................................................................53 3.2.2.2.2.5 Miscellaneous ....................................................................54 3.2.2.3 Existential verbs...................................................................................57 3.2.2.4 Serial verb constructions......................................................................58 3.2.3 Adjectives .....................................................................................................59 3.2.3.1 Color terms...........................................................................................62 3.2.4 Adverbs.........................................................................................................63 3.3 Closed word classes ..............................................................................................64 3.3.1 Pronouns