THE FIJIAN LANGUAGE THE FIJIAN LANGU AGE THE FIJIAN LANGUAGE Albert J. Schütz University of Hawaii Press Honolulu Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824881658 (PDF) 9780824881665 (EPUB) This version created: 29 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. © 1985 BY ALBERT J. SCHÜTZ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Fijian Language is dedicated to the two people who have most inspired and encouraged my study of Fijian—Charles F. Hockett, of Cornell University, and G. B. Milner, of the School of Oriental and African studies, University of London. The completion of this grammar nearly coincides with their respective retirements, and I offer it as a festschrift for the occasion. May we continue discussing, (perhaps) disagreeing, and—above all—learning about Fijian. By the term Fijian language … I mean the language of the predominant race of people resident in what have been long known as the Fiji Islands and which is fast becoming the lingua franca of the whole group … “The Fijian Language” Beauclerc 1908–10b:65 Bau is the Athens of Fiji, the dialect there spoken has now become the classical dialect of the whole group. In it all translations and official documents are written, and it will probably soon supersede all other forms of the language, except among the lowest orders of the people. Two Years in Fiji Forbes 1875:167–68 The most elegant of these is the dialect of Mbau, which is as much the Attic of Fiji, as those by whom it is spoken are the Athe- nians of the group … Fiji: Our New Province in the South Seas De Ricci 1875:38 v CONTENTS CONTENTS DEDICATION iv EPIGRAPH v PREFACE xxvii Purpose 27 Methodology 28 Acknowledgments 32 Pacific Collections Consulted 34 Abbreviations 35 SECTION I BACKGROUND 1 1 DISCOVERY 3 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Prelude to discovery 3 1.3 Contact 6 1.4 Explorers, traders, a missionary in flight, and the first philologists 7 1.5 Interpreters 18 1.6 Place names and personal names 19 1.7 Summary 20 2 ORTHOGRAPHY 21 3 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SPELLING: EXTERNAL IMPRESSIONS 31 4 THE SOCIOLOGY OF SPELLING: INTERNAL PROBLEMS 41 4.1 Word division 41 4.1.1 I- nouns 41 4.1.2 Subject “pronouns”: words or phrases? 43 4.1.3 Forms with gā 43 4.1.4 Compounds 44 4.2 The use of w and y 46 4.3 The use of the apostrophe 48 4.3.1 The putative lost a 48 vi CONTENTS 4.3.2 Other noncontractions 49 4.3.3 Some real contractions 50 4.3.4 The apostrophe: a summary 50 4.4 Long vowels versus vowel sequences 51 4.5 Variant spellings and pronunciations of loanwords 51 4.5.1 P and f vs. v 52 4.5.1.1 P in borrowings from English 52 4.5.1.2 P in borrowings from English 53 4.5.2 J vs. ji vs. ti and di 54 4.5.2.1 Introducing z 56 4.5.3 Reintroducing h 57 4.5.4 Spellings that disrupt the accent pattern and the canonical form of syllables 58 4.5.5 Miscellaneous problems with borrowings 60 4.6 The use of hyphens and capital letters within a word 61 4.7 Peatures of the sound system not reflected in the orthography 62 4.7.1 Vowel length 62 4.7.2 Measure division 63 4.7.3 Phrase accent 64 4.8 Summary 64 5 PRELUDE TO THE GRAMMAR: THE TONGUES OF MEN AND ANGELS 66 5.1 Cargill 66 5.2 Hale 69 5.3 Dialectal Babel: the problem of language diversity 72 5.4 Standardization 80 5.5 Hazlewood and his colleagues: the grammar and dictionary as a cooperative enterprise 81 SECTION II SENTENCES AND VERB PHRASES 87 6 SENTENCE TYPES 89 6.1 Sentences: a semantic approach 89 6.2 Sentence types 90 vii CONTENTS 6.3 VP types 91 6.3.1 Active 92 6.3.2 Stative 93 6.3.3 Existential 93 6.3.4 Identifying 94 6.4 Juxtaposed NPs (NP + NP) 95 6.4.1 A cava and o cēī 96 6.5 Phrase order and intonational features 96 6.5.1 Intonation as a guide to grammatical structure and meaning 97 6.6 NP sentences 97 6.7 Summary 99 6.8 Discussion 99 6.8.1 Existential and identifying VPs 99 6.8.2 Subjects and predicates? 102 6.8.3 A reanalysis of subject 105 7 CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES 108 7.1 Root vs. marker 108 7.l.1 The gray areas of morpheme classification 111 7.2 Discussion 112 7.2.1 Root vs. marker 112 7.2.2 Noun vs. verb 113 8 VERB CLASSIFICATION I: EXISTENTIALS, ACTIVES, AND STATIVES 117 8.1 Existential verbs 118 8.1.1 Tiko, tū 118 8.1.2 E + numeral 119 8.2 The active-stative opposition 120 8.2.1 A functional criterion 121 8.3 Problems with the classification 122 8.4 Summary 126 9 VERB CLASSIFICATION II: ONE- AND TWO-REFERENT VERBS 127 9.1 One-referent verbs 128 9.1.1 A1 verbs 128 9.1.2 S1 verbs 130 viii CONTENTS 9.2 Two-referent verbs 131 9.2.1 A2 verbs 131 9.2.2 S2 verbs 132 9.3 Summary 134 10 VERB CLASSIFICATION III: SEMANTICS 135 10.1 Verbs referring to motion 135 10.2 Verbs referring to emission or projection 136 10.3 Verbs referring to processes 136 10.4 Verbs referring to states of mind 137 10.5 Verbs referring to judgment 138 10.6 Verbs referring to skills 139 10.7 Miscellaneous verbs 140 11 VERB CLASSIFICATION IV: HISTORY AND DISCUSSION 142 11.1 Cargill 142 11.2 Hazlewood 142 11.3 Churchward 144 11.4 Milner 146 11.5 Wilson and Pawley 146 11.6 Arms 148 11.7 The active-stative opposition 150 12 TRANSITIVITY 153 12.1 The transitive suffixes 154 12.2 Different transitive suffixes with the same verb 155 12.3 The meanings of the -Caki forms 156 12.3.1 Reason 156 12.3.2 Means or accompaniment 160 12.3.3 Intensive 162 12.3.4 Lexical change 807 12.3.5 General transitivizer 164 12.3.6 Duration 166 12.3.7 Dispersive movement: -yaki 168 12.4 Constructions without the transitive suffix 169 12.4.1 The gunu-yaqona construction 169 12.4.2 The viri na polo construction 174 ix CONTENTS 12.4.2.1 Discussion 176 12.5 Summary 177 13 TRANSITIVITY: HISTORY AND DISCUSSION 178 13.1 Definitions of transitivity 178 13.2 The meaning (?) of -C- 181 13.3 Suffix or part of stem? 182 13.4 -CA vs. -CI 183 13.5 The various functions of -Caki 183 13.5.1 The independence of vaka- and -taki 183 13.5.2 The meaning of the -Caki forms 186 13.6 Transitivity as focus? 189 13.6.1 A definition of focus 189 13.6.2 Proposals for Fijian 190 13.6.3 An evaluation of the proposals 190 13.6.4 Arguments against focus as a grammatical category for Fijian 191 13.6.5 Summary 196 14 VERB DERIVATION, OR HOW VERBS CHANGE CLASSES 197 14.1 A2 ⤏ S2 199 14.2 A2 ⤏ S2 (LĀŪ-) 199 14.3 Stative to active 200 14.3.1 S2 + C-a ⤏ A2 200 14.3.2 S2 + reduplication ⤏ A2 201 14.3.3 S2 + modifier ⤏ A2 202 14.3.4 Vēī- + S2 ⤏ A2 202 14.4 S1 ⤏ A2 202 14.5 Prefixes that delete the actor 203 14.5.1 The distinction among statives 206 14.6 A prefix that deletes the goal 206 14.7 Discussion 208 14.7.1 Reduplication as a means of providing contrasting forms 208 14.7.2 Discussion: ta-, ca-, etc. 208 15 VERB AFFIXES: VAKA- 212 15.1 Causative 213 x CONTENTS 15.1.1 S1 ⤏ S2 214 15.1.2 S2 ⤏ S2 215 15.1.3 S2 ⤏ A2 215 15.1.4 Causatives with the object signaled and expressed (S1 ⤏ A2) 217 15.1.5 A1 ⤏ A2 218 15.1.6 A2 remains A2, but with a change of roles 219 15.1.7 Some special kinds of causatives 220 15.1.8 Causatives: a summary 221 15.2 Frequentive / Distributive / Intensive 221 15.3 Statives indicating manner and time 223 15.3.1 N < vaka-N 223 15.3.2 V < vaka-N 223 15.3.3 V < vaka-V (stative) 224 15.4 Possessing N or characterized by N 225 15.5 Pretend, perform as a game 226 15.6 Vaka- and grammatical ambiguity 227 15.7 Discussion: vaka- 228 15.7.1 Previous treatments 228 16 VERB AFFIXES: VĒĪ- / VĪ- 231 16.1 Reciprocal, mutual—‘Active’ 231 16.1.1 Types of verbs 232 16.1.2 Expressing an object 233 16.2 Reciprocal, mutual—Stative 234 16.2.1 Kin terms and other relationships 234 16.2.2 Spatial and distance relationships 236 16.3 General, formalized vēī- forms 236 16.3.1 General, formalized—verbs of motion 237 16.3.2 General, formalized: other active verbs 237 16.4 Discussion 240 16.4.1 Previous treatments 240 16.4.2 Classifying reciprocals 243 17 VERB AFFIXES: VIA-, VIAVIA-, TAWA- AND OTHERS 245 17.1 Desiderative: via- 245 xi CONTENTS 17.2 Impression: viavia- 247 17.3 Negative: tawa-, tabu- 248 17.3.1 Tawa- 248 17.3.2 Tabu- 248 17.4 The stative prefixes 249 17.4.1 Lāū- 249 17.4.2 Ma- 250 17.5 Artificial or created circumstances: -tā- 251 7.6 More -tā-forms 252 17.7 Sa- 253 17.8 Sāū- 253 17.9 Stative suffix: -(C)a (with or without reduplication) 253 17.10 Distributive counter: yā- 254 17.11 Discussion 255 17.11.1 Via-, viavia- 255 17.11.2 Stative prefixes 256 18 VERB REDUPLICATION 257 18.1 To indicate repetition, frequency, or prolongation 258 18.2 To allow an S2 verb to be used actively without signaling or expressing the object 260 18.3 To form SI from a variety of roots (with -(C)a) 261 18.4 To allow certain verbs to modify nouns 261 18.5 To indicate collections, groups 262 18.6 Pretense, aimlessness (with vaka-) 263 18.6.1 Vaka-, -tā-, and partial reduplication 264 18.7 Verb modification through reduplication 265 18.8 Partial reduplication: discontinuous, dispersive 266 18.9 To form S1 verbs from S2 verbs 266 18.10 To indicate a partitive sense 267 18.11 To indicate aimless