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Clefts and Anti-Superiority in Moken

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Clefts and Anti-Superiority in Moken Citation Kenneth BACLAWSKI Jr and Peter JENKS. 2016. Clefts and anti-Superiority in Moken. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 9:81-96 URL http://hdl.handle.net/1885/105175 Reviewed Received 5 April 2016, revised text accepted 11 June 2016, published July 2016 Editors Editor-In-Chief Dr Mark Alves | Managing Eds. Dr Sigrid Lew, Dr Paul Sidwell Web http://jseals.org ISSN 1836-6821 www.jseals.org | Volume 9 | 2016 | Asia-Pacific Linguistics, ANU Copyright vested in the authors; Creative Commons Attribution Licence CLEFTS AND ANTI-SUPERIORITY IN MOKEN1 Kenneth Baclawski Jr. Peter Jenks University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley <[email protected]> <[email protected]> Abstract We describe an extraction asymmetry in Moken that presents apparent Anti-Superiority effects. We then show that this asymmetry is not rooted in Superiority at all. Evidence from island effects is used to demonstrate that the left-dislocation of wh-phrases is not the result of wh- movement as standardly conceived. Furthermore, the same Anti-Superiority effect obtains for non-wh-phrases and clefts. At the same time, standard Superiority effects in Moken do arise in certain environments. These observations lead to the conclusion that Anti-Superiority effects in Moken are not counterexamples to the universality of Superiority, but instead arise due to a constraint on crossed dependencies between arguments and non-argument positions. Keywords: Moken, constituent question, cleft, superiority ISO 639-3: mwt, cjm 1 Introduction The Moken language 2 (Austronesian: Thailand, Burma) displays an extraction asymmetry that, on the surface, is plainly an Anti-Superiority effect. The principle of Superiority was proposed by Chomsky (1973) to account for the requirement that subjects be fronted before objects in multiple wh-questions. Languages such as Bulgarian require that all wh-pronouns be fronted (1), and modern descendants of Superiority have been invoked to account for the requirement that subjects precede objects in this configuration (Richards 2001). However, when multiple wh-pronouns are fronted in Moken, the pattern is precisely the reverse (2) of the Bulgarian one. (1) a. Koj kogo običa? (Bulgarian) who whom loves ‘Who loves whom?’ (Bošković: 11a) 1 The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Moken on Hlao Island and Chang Island in Ranong Province, Thailand, and especially to See, the second author’s primary consultant in 2007, who provided most of the data in this paper. Errors are our own. Thanks also to Maria Polinsky, Eric Potsdam, and Joey Sabbagh for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1106400. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 2 Orthography is IPA. Examples are from the second author’s Moken fieldwork (2005–7), except when noted. Unmarked examples are from elicitation; coded examples are from narrative texts. Note that Moken displays frequent root allomorphy, especially between certain initial consonants (cf. Larish 2005). Abbreviations include: CLF = classifier, COP = copula, INCEPT = inceptive aspect, IMP = imperative, NEG = negation marker, PART = particle, PERF = perfect aspect, PROG = progressive aspect, Q = wh-particle, SG = singular, Y/N.Q = polar question marker. 81 Kenneth BACLAWSKI Jr & Peter JENKS | Clefts and anti-Superiority in Moken | JSEALS 9 (2016) b. *Kogo koj običa? whom who loves (‘Who loves whom?’) (Bošković: 11b) (2) a. *acaː=laː anoː=laː mane (Moken) who=Q what=Q ask (‘Who asked what?’) b. anoː=laː acaː=laː mane what=Q who=Q ask ‘Who asked what?’ Since modern syntactic theory captures Superiority effects like (1) and other similar cases with a hard-wired formal procedure called Agree (e.g. Miyagawa 2009), true counterexamples to Superiority could have profound consequences to syntactic theory. Further investigation into the Moken asymmetry, however, reveals that it does not seem to be an intervention effect specific to wh-movement. Left-dislocated wh-phrases do not obey island constraints, implying that they do not undergo wh-movement. In addition, we will show that the same extraction asymmetry also applies to the extraction of non-wh-phrases and clefts (3). (3) a. *olan kəlan nə mətok snake monkey COP bite ‘It's the monkey that the snake bit.’ b. kəlan olan nə mətok monkey snake COP bite ‘It's the snake that bit the monkey.’ We will conclude that the apparent Anti-Superiority effects in Moken are actually due to a constraint on crossed dependencies headed by non-argument positions. Along the way, we provide the first description of Moken wh-questions and clefts as well as a basic analysis of these constructions. This paper will examine the following questions: Do Moken questions involve movement? (Section 2); What is the structure of Moken clefts? (Section 3); and How can we account for the systematic extraction asymmetry in wh-questions and clefts? (Section 4). Finally, we will show that a Superiority effect does actually obtain, but only in the presence of an overt wh-cleft. 1.1 The Moken language Moken is an Austronesian language spoken on Mainland Southeast Asia primarily in the Mergui Archipelago. It is an endangered language (cf. UNESCO 2010) spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, and the situation may be even more dire than previous estimates imply (Say Bay 2015). The name “Moken” refers to what is considered a dialect continuum, including Moklen, which is spoken in the northern regions of the archipelago in Burma (Larish 2005). Data for this paper comes from the second author's fieldwork on the Moken spoken in the southern end of the archipelago in Thailand, off the coast of Ranong from 2005 to 2007. Much of the linguistic literature on Moken concerns its place within the Austronesian family (e.g. Larish 1999, Pittayaporn 2005). Similar to the Chamic languages (Thurgood 1999), Moken has undergone intense contact with Mainland Southeast Asian languages, rendering it difficult to assess what is an innovation and what is a contact effect. Theoretical analyses of Moken are largely restricted to the work of Larish on the Moklen variety. Since Moklen is not considered mutually intelligible with the Moken of Thailand, this data will only be alluded to for comparative reference when possible. Unlike insular Austronesian languages, Moken lacks initial voice morphology, likely due to a contact- induced shift to final stress, resulting the degradation of phonological material in non-final syllables. In fact, Moken is now a morphologically isolating language, with relatively few functional formatives and a total 82 Kenneth BACLAWSKI Jr & Peter JENKS | Clefts and anti-Superiority in Moken | JSEALS 9 (2016) lack of tense inflection or subject agreement on verbs, a total lack of number and gender markers on nouns, and no case to boot. Because of this, arguments for syntactic analyses must be based on configurational facts. The basic, unmarked word order is given in (4a). In the elicitation context (i.e. a sentence offered out of context), SOV, OSV, and VSO orderings are acceptable, perhaps due to scrambling and/or discourse configuration (4b–d). OSV order will become especially important later on in the discussion of the Anti- Superiority effect. Subject-final orderings, OVS and VOS result in the unintended gloss, ‘The bone is eating a dog’. (4) a. oj ŋam kəlan dog eat bone ‘The dog is eating a bone.’ b. oj kəlan ŋam c. kəlan oj ŋam d. ŋam oj kəlan e. *kəlan ŋam oj f. *ŋam kəlan oj Subject-final orderings are possible, however, under what is likely a marked information structure, such as a right-dislocated anti-topic (5). The precise information structural status of these forms is outside the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that Moken appears to be strongly discourse configurational.3 (5) makaːw toŋ acaː=laː biːŋ tell with who=Q 2SG ‘Who are you talking about?’ In Moken narratives, SVO ordering is predominant. Because of radical pro-drop (cf. Huang 1984) and frequent serial verb constructions, however, sentences often resemble long strings of verbs, as in (6). (6) malak chuwat bɔ salɔːj // taloŋ malak bɔ salɔːj wring cloth make dry help wring make dry ‘(She's) wringing the cloth to dry (it). (He comes to) help wring (the cloth) to make (it) dry.' [Narration-7_21: p.9] CONTEXT: Two friends are sitting together doing chores. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that of the six narratives recorded in our fieldwork, there are zero credible instances of a non-(S)V(O) utterance. While this may call into question the word order permutations accepted in (4) above, we assert that our consultants provided strong grammaticality judgments in elicitation and that narration typically exhibits low information load per sentence, at least in this narrative tradition. In the following sections, we will lay out basic properties of wh-questions, then an analysis of clefts, and finally the apparent Anti-Superiority effects. 2 Basic properties of wh-questions Moken wh-phrases are typically in-situ and optionally license a wh-particle laː (cf. Cable 2010). These facts are displayed in (7a–f); note the optionality of laː throughout. We have not yet been able to detect any 3 Larish (1999) even attests OVS ordering for Moklen, apparently derived via object topicalization. This example is repeated in (i). It is unclear why the verb precedes the subject here, though; it seems likely that there is more to this sentence than just topicalization. (i) kɯpʰut duk ʔɔlaːŋ hɛ̃ʔ namaʔ (Moklen) husk put they on flag ‘As for coconut husks, they [Moklen people] put (husks) on (the) flag [pole(s)].’ (Larish 1999: p.239) 83 Kenneth BACLAWSKI Jr & Peter JENKS | Clefts and anti-Superiority in Moken | JSEALS 9 (2016) meaning difference between the forms with and without this wh-particle.
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