Streams Converging Into an Ocean, 521-563 2006-8-005-021-000082-1 Reconstructing the Case-marking and Personal Pronoun Systems of Proto Austronesian Malcolm Ross The Australian National University Since Blust presented his reconstruction of Proto Austronesian and Proto Malayo-Polynesian personal pronouns in 1977, more data relevant to their reconstruction have become available. This paper takes account of relevant publications since 1977 and sets out a fresh reconstruction of Proto Austronesian personal pronouns, with supporting data from Formosan languages and interpretive arguments. Since personal pronoun systems in Formosan languages often incorporate the case-markers more generally used in noun phrases, and it is impossible to interpret the histories of the pronouns without taking account of the case-markers, a reconstruction of Proto Austronesian case-markers is also presented here. The goal of Blust’s 1977 paper was to show that all Austronesian languages outside Taiwan are characterized by certain innovations in their personal pronoun system, thus providing evidence for the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian. Blust’s findings are confirmed and augmented in the present paper. Key words: Proto-Austronesian, reconstruction, pronouns, case-markers 1. Introduction Blust (1977) reconstructs the pronoun system of Proto Austronesian (PAn) as part of his account of the internal subgrouping of the Austronesian language family. He describes pronominal innovations that occurred in Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP), the ancestor of all non-Formosan Austronesian languages, and that are reflected in its many daughter-languages. In the years since 1977, more data relevant to the reconstruction of PAn pronouns have become available, and in Ross (2002a) I published a revised reconstruction as part of a sketch of PAn morphosyntax. This reconstruction builds on the insights in Blust (1977) and on the work on pronouns in Dahl (1973) and Harvey (1982), as well as on advances in our understanding of the structure of PAn clauses originating largely in Starosta et al. (1981). In addition to new descriptions of Formosan languages, I have been able to draw on two papers on the typology of Formosan pronoun systems, namely Li (1997a) and Huang et al. (1999). Malcolm Ross My 2002 reconstruction was published with almost no supporting data or arguments, and in the present paper I seek to fill that gap. I dedicate this paper to my friend Paul Jen-kuei Li, without whose tireless labour and leadership the data for reconstruction would not be available. Professor Li has himself written about case-markers and pronouns (Li 1978, 1995, 1997a), as well as providing data in his descriptive works (e.g. Li 1973, Li and Tsuchida 2001, 2006). Less obviously, but just as significantly, he has inspired and enabled many younger scholars to describe Formosan languages. In the course of preparing this paper, I have examined recent accounts of pronoun paradigms for each Formosan language, paying particular attention to the functions performed by each pronoun set. To this end, I have preferred to use the fullest grammatical descriptions that I could find. My data survey is limited to Formosan languages. The reconstruction of PMP that I have used here was done some twelve years ago. I paid careful attention to form, but perhaps not as much attention to function as in my Formosan survey. To update the Malayo-Polynesian survey (for which organised supporting data have not been published) would be a gargantuan task, as it would entail looking at all available descriptions of non-Formosan Philippine-type languages. Blust (1999b) has argued that ten primary subgroups of Austronesian can be identified: nine in Taiwan (the so-called Formosan languages) and one outside Taiwan (Malayo-Polynesian). This paper is based on a thorough survey of the first nine subgroups and a somewhat less reliable examination of the tenth. In an alternative subgrouping, Sagart (2004) proposes that Austronesian has (ignoring extinct languages) only three primary subgroups: the Formosan languages Pazeh and Saisiyat are primary subgroups, and all other Austronesian languages fall into a group which Sagart labels ‘Pituish’. PMP is a fourth-order subgroup of Pituish and is even less significant for PAn reconstruction than under Blust’s proposal.1 Formosan languages (except Rukai) and a large number of languages in the Philippines, northern Borneo and northern Sulawesi are of the so-called ‘Philippine type’ (Himmelmann 2002, 2005, Ross 2002a). They have two voices: actor voice and undergoer voice. The latter is always transitive, and assumes two or three applicative-like forms which permit various semantic roles to assume subject position (this interpretation goes back at least to Starosta 1986). The transitivity of the actor voice remains a matter of controversy: it is morphosyntactically intransitive in some languages but apparently transitive in others, albeit of lower transitivity than the undergoer voice (Chang 2004, Liao 2004, Reid and Liao 2004, Ross and Teng 2005). Philippine-type languages typically have noun-phrase case-markers and case-marked pronoun sets indicating the 1 Reid (1982) suggests Amis as the closest Formosan relative of PMP, implying yet another Austronesian subgrouping, but I have shown in Ross (2005) that the innovations allegedly shared by Amis and PMP are either not exclusive or based on incorrect reconstruction. 522 Reconstructing the Case-marking and Personal Pronoun Systems of Proto Austronesian grammatical function of the noun phrase or pronoun within the voice construction, and in many languages there are sets of nominative and genitive clitic pronouns which tend to occupy second (Wackernagel) position (Billings and Kaufman 2004). The organisation of this case-marking varies from language to language, and to describe it with an acceptable degree of faithfulness to the data means that cross- linguistically applicable case labels must needs be based on a listing of the grammatical functions found across the languages. The grammatical functions found in this analysis include first the core arguments of the verb: (1) VSBJ subject of verbal clause AGT agent argument of undergoer-voice clause PAT patient argument of actor-voice clause, third core argument of undergoer-voice clause (e.g. patient when, say, a location or instru- ment is subject) Usually, subject case-marking is identical in both verbal and non-verbal clauses. In this case I recognise a single SBJ grammatical function. However, sometimes more narrowly defined subject functions appear, and nonverbal clauses introduce functions of their own: (2) SBJ subject of verbal and nonverbal clauses AVSBJ subject of actor-voice verbal clause NSBJ subject of nonverbal clause PREDN predicate noun Certain peripheral arguments in verbal clauses need separate recognition: (3) LOC location argument (‘at my place’, ‘from me’ etc), goal, source BEN beneficiary argument Certain grammatical functions arise from information structure: (4) DISJ disjunctive, i.e. one-word answer FRFOC focus-fronted argument TPC fronted topic, often followed by a topic marker And finally possessor functions occur in noun phrases: 523 Malcolm Ross (5) PSRA possessor adnominal (‘my’ etc) without a ligature PSRN possessor nominal (‘mine’ etc; in some languages it also occurs adnominally with a ligature) On the basis of these functions I define a set of case-marker labels similar to those used by Huang et al. (1999). (6) NEUT free form with functions including DISJ, TPC, FRFOC and one or more core grammatical functions (i.e. of SBJ, AGT and PAT) NOM free or clitic form serving as SBJ or VSBJ GEN free or clitic form serving as AGT and often as PSRA or occasionally PSRN PSR free form serving as PSRA and/or PSRN ACC free form serving as PAT only OBL free form serving as PAT and LOC (and sometimes in other peripheral functions) LOC free form serving as LOC (and sometimes in other peripheral functions) Other abbreviations used in this article are: 1S etc first person singular etc; C common; D definite; EP exclusive plural; IP inclusive plural; P plural; PS personal; S singular; SP specific; V visible. Conventions used in the tables of data and reconstructions are: (x) a form either with or without x occurred. [x] forms with and without x occur(red). (x,y) a form with either x or y occurred. [x,y] forms with both x and y occur(red). (*xxx) a parentheses around a reconstruction indicate uncertainty because the supporting data are insufficient. 2. Case-markers Reconstructing the PAn pronoun paradigm presupposes a reconstruction of its case-marker paradigm, as the pronouns of Philippine-type languages incorporate case-marking and usually have the same case-marking possibilities as personal lexical NPs (common NPs often have somewhat different possibilities). Tables 1 and 2 set out the material for the reconstruction of PAn case-markers. This is not quite raw material. In 524 Reconstructing the Case-marking and Personal Pronoun Systems of Proto Austronesian the interests of presentation, where data are available for several related dialects, I have reconstructed a local protolanguage (Proto Atayal from Atayal and Seediq dialects, Proto Amis, Proto Puyuma, Proto Rukai and Proto Bunun). The supporting data are in Appendix A. Reconstructing the PAn case-marking paradigm is not a simple task, and a glance at the tables gives some idea of the problems. Formosan case-markers tend to be (C)V monosyllables, where C- or ∅- indicates the case, -i a personal singular case-marker, -a a personal singular case-marker, and a vowel other than -i a common case-marker. This means that -a occurs in both personal plural and common case-markers (see discussion below). Thanks to diachronic shifts in constellations of grammatical functions, cognate forms in two Formosan languages quite often mark different cases. There is, for example, considerable crossover between OBL and LOC. Conversely, it is common for the same case in two languages to be differently marked. Some NOM forms are ∅-initial, others k-initial.