UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Realis and irrealis: Chini verb morphology, clause chaining, and discourse Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36s8s9t4 Author Brooks, Joseph Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Realis and Irrealis: Chini Verb Morphology, Clause Chaining, and Discourse A dissertation in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Joseph Daniel Brooks Committee in charge: Professor Marianne Mithun, Chair Professor Bernard Comrie Professor Wallace Chafe Professor Marian Klamer, Leiden University September 2018 The dissertation of Joseph Daniel Brooks is approved. ___________________________________________ Wallace Chafe ___________________________________________ Bernard Comrie ___________________________________________ Marian Klamer ___________________________________________ Marianne Mithun, Committee Chair September 2018 Realis and Irrealis: Chini Verb Morphology, Clause Chaining, and Discourse Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Daniel Brooks iii Dedication With love for my grandmother, Beverly Hannah Brooks (1923-2016) iv Acknowledgments My graduate years have given me a deep appreciation for how much I owe to other people. Many helped steer me toward what I would often only later realize was the right direction, so I hope to be able to recognize those influences here at least in a small way. I am thankful to those Papua New Guineans, missionaries and expatriates who have helped me during my time in PNG. Thank you to: Katherine Epikana in Madang, my "sister from another mister" for her friendship and hospitality; Martha Wade for her hospitality in Angguna and also for multiple forms of help over the past several years; Bethany Butler with Pioneer Bible Translators who went out of her way to help a total stranger get to Aiome; Mark Eby, Ryan Shelby, Anne-Marie Wanamp, Ben Ruli, Henson Korio, and the librarians at DWU in Madang. Thanks to Don Daniels, who helped inform me about doing fieldwork in PNG and who went out of his way to get me to Andamang my first time in PNG. For their intellectual engagement and patience throughout the dissertation process, I owe a special thanks to the members on my committee: Wallace Chafe, Bernard Comrie, Marian Klamer, and my committee chair Marianne Mithun. In addition to saving me from some embarrassing mistakes, many aspects of the present analysis and presentation are direct results of their insights or insistence that I rethink certain things. I have benefited greatly from their input from the prospectus to the last draft. I am very thankful to the professors I have had over the years, and I would not be here without them. John Haiman, my professor at Macalester College, is the reason I became a linguist in the first place. His creative approach to teaching and to linguistics inspired me to go out into the world and try to understand the workings of a language different from my own. At UCSB, I have benefited from the rich training provided by Bernard Comrie, Carol Genetti, and Marianne Mithun. I know of no other department that provides its students with such an advanced education in linguistics, and I feel very lucky to have been part of the UCSB vision for the field. I reserve a special thanks for Marianne, who has been my advisor since I entered the program. She has always worked to teach me and her other students how to go about understanding a language for what it is and how it got that way. I am particularly indebted to her for imparting her knowledge about the relationships between data and theory and, relatedly, between description and explanation in linguistics. For their help along the way, I would also like to thank the following people: Carol Genetti for instilling in me and her other students the importance of argumentation in linguistics, and also for allowing me the use of her office to complete my dissertation; Bernard Comrie for giving me and his other students the tools to see language from a cross-linguistic perspective and also for his advice and support over the past years; Avrom Schwartz who spent many mornings teaching me Yiddish, a language I hope to come back to eventually. Thank you also to Ger Reesink for his generous help on a manuscript of mine that relates to Chapter 7 in this work. I would like also to thank Lise Dobrin who has been a true mentor and has helped me in so many ways over the past several years. She has enabled me to conceive of fieldwork in the New Guinea context in a deeper sense than I would have on my own. I would also like to thank: Sasha Aikhenvald, Laura Arnold, Marnie Atkins, Danielle Barth, Andrea Berez- v Kroeker, Eric Campbell, Fay Christensen, Ian Clarke, Kathryn Creely, Caroline Crouch, Don Daniels, Pete DeKever, Connie Dickinson, Vera Ferreira, Lauren Gawne, Harald Hammarström, Terence Hays, Darja Hoenigman, Elliott Hoey, Shannon Li, Megan Lukaniec, Martin Kohlberger, Amina Mettouchi, Simon Overall, Sara Petrollino, Nick Piper, Samantha Rarrick, Sophie Salffner, Hannah Sarvasy, Ryan Shelby, Sandy Thompson, Tim Thornes, Marine Vuillermet, and Tony Webster. Thank you also to Marian Klamer for sponsoring me as a visiting researcher at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics in 2015 & 2016, and also to Sasha Aikhenvald and Bob Dixon for welcoming me as a visiting researcher at the Language and Culture Research Centre in Cairns in 2016. I also thank the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme for generously funding two documentation grants for my research. I feel very fortunate to be part of that project, driven by such visionary and dedicated people. Thank you in particular to Mandana Seyfeddinipur for challenging me to produce the richest documentation that current technology and circumstances allow. The current understanding I have of my positionality in my research context owes much to several people: Max Amborkɨni, Veronika Añjirovim, Mary Bucholtz, Alfons Garɨmbɨni, Anne-Marie Wanamp, and especially: Emma Airɨmarɨ, Mark Askai, Lise Dobrin, Anton Manna and, through his scholarship, Ira Bashkow. They have helped me understand some of the limitations and pitfalls of my own perspective and privilege, and have helped me do the work to engage with people in their own cultural terms. I owe an immense debt to everyone in Andamang and Akrukay, as well as in Kuvru and other nearby hamlets. In particular I thank Anton Manna, Emma Airɨmarɨ, Dorothy Paul, Joseph Manna, Frank Manna, Veronika Añjirovim, Gordon Dingaram, Garvam Gordon, Alfons Garɨmbɨni, Paul Guku, Dorothy Paul, Blasius Guku, Richard Guku, Ros Njveni, Agusta Njveni, Adolfa Peter, Andmarɨŋɨnɨ Manna, Weki Manna, Tobias Manna, Maino Manna, Tresita Manna, Bil Airɨmarɨ, Martin Airɨmarɨ, Kristofilda Airɨmarɨ, Pais Airɨmarɨ, Max Amborkɨni, Roy Mayapar, Evelin Joseph, Peter, Kilian, and Monika. They have fed me, housed me, befriended me, fussed over me in ways I would be embarrassed to recount, and challenged my outlook in innumerable ways. I have learned so much from them. So I hope I will be able to return my debt, in ways that are meaningful to them. I am especially indebted to Anton Mbarɨŋɨnɨ Manna, my apakɨ (in Chini kin terms), teacher and closest friend in Andamang. I do not know what I would have done without his active guidance and support. He has also taken no small amount of time away from gardening and community responsibilities to teach me about his culture and his language, and also to transcribe the recordings and explain the meanings and uses of the different constructions. Much of what I have learned is a direct result of him teaching me, and I look forward to the time we have left to learn from one another. vi Figure 1: Mbarɨŋɨnɨ Manna (Anton) I also thank everyone in my family for their support, in particular Jackie, Sara, my dad Allan, and above all my grandmother Beverly Brooks. She nurtured my interests in language among other topics early on in life. I owe so much to her grandparenting, her compassion and intellectual spirit. She had hoped to make the journey to Santa Barbara to see me graduate but did not live to see it. She died in October 2016, and this dissertation is dedicated to her memory. This dissertation owes so much to the above influences. Any mistakes or inconsistencies in the analysis or presentation are my responsibility. The fieldwork on which this dissertation is based was funded by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) through the small grant SG0243 and the individual graduate scholarship IGS0294. Financial support from UCSB includes the Linguistics Department Fellowship, Dean's Fellowship, and three department-internal mini-grants. vii Curriculum Vitae Joseph Daniel Brooks Academic Appointments 2010 - 2018 M.A. & Ph.D. student, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States. Advisor: Marianne Mithun 2016 Visiting researcher, Language and Culture Research Centre, Cairns, Australia. 4 months. Sponsor: Alexandra Aikhenvald 2015 & 2016 Visiting researcher, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, the Netherlands. 8 months. Sponsor: Marian Klamer 2004 - 2008 Undergraduate student, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN., United States. Advisor: John Haiman Academic Degrees 2018 Ph.D. Linguistics. University of California, Santa Barbara. United States. Dissertation: Realis and Irrealis: Chini Verb Morphology, Clause Chaining, and Discourse Committee: Wallace Chafe,