A SKETCH GRAMMAR OF PONDI A SKETCH GRAMMAR OF PONDI RUSSELL BARLOW ASIA-PACIFIC LINGUISTICS Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760463830 ISBN (online): 9781760463847 WorldCat (print): 1175268620 WorldCat (online): 1175268668 DOI: 10.22459/SGP.2020 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph by Russell Barlow. This edition © 2020 ANU Press CONTENTS Acknowledgements . ix List of abbreviations . xi List of maps, figures, and tables . xiii 1 . Introduction . 1 1 .1 Organisation . 1 1.2 Previous research on the language . 2 1.3 Methodology . 2 1.4 Orthography and presentation . 3 1.5 Pondi: The language and its speakers . 3 1.5.1 The name of the language . 4 1.5.2 The environment . 4 1 .5 .3 Langam village . 5 1.5.4 The people . 6 1.5.5 Relationships with neighbouring villages and borrowing . 8 1 .5 .6 Variation . 11 1.6 Language vitality . .11 1 .6 .1 UNESCO’s nine factors . 12 1 .6 .2 EGIDS . 12 1 .6 .3 LEI . 13 1.7 Classification . 14 1.8 Typological overview . 18 2 . Phonetics and phonology . 21 2 .1 Consonants . 21 2 .1 .1 Voiceless stops . 22 2 .1 .2 Prenasalised voiced stops . 23 2.1.3 Prenasalised voiced affricate . 24 2 .1 .4 Nasals . 25 2.1.5 Liquid . 26 2 .1 .6 Fricative . 27 2 .1 .7 Glides . 28 2 .2 Vowels . 29 2.2.1 The high front unrounded vowel /i/ . 29 2.2.2 The mid front unrounded vowel /e/ . 30 2.2.3 The low central unrounded vowel /a/ . 30 2.2.4 The mid back rounded vowel /o/ . 31 2.2.5 The high back rounded vowel /u/ . 31 2.2.6 The high central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ . 31 2.2.7 Diphthongs . 32 2.3 Syllable structure . 33 2 .4 Stress . 35 2.5 Morphophonemic processes . 36 2 .5 .1 Vowel coalescence . 36 2 .5 .2 Glide formation . 36 2.5.3 Vowel degemination (or shortening) . .. 37 2.5.4 High central vowel deletion . 37 2.5.5 High vowel gliding . 37 2 .5 .6 Glide insertion . 38 2.5.7 Monophthongisation . 39 2.5.8 Degemination and quasi-degemination . 40 2 .5 .9 Sibilant voicing . 41 2.6 Metathesis . 41 2.7 Lexically determined alternations . 42 3 . Nominal morphology (number) . 43 3.1 Plurals ending in -al . 44 3.2 Plurals ending in -ïl . 46 3.3 Plurals ending in -e . 47 3.4 Plurals ending in -se . 49 3.5 Plurals ending in -ate . 51 3.6 Plurals ending in -ange . 51 3.7 Plurals ending in -une . .. 52 3.8 Non-plural -mo, plural -me . 52 3.9 Plural ending in -mbe . 53 3.10 Non-plurals ending in -m (singulative suffix) . 54 3.11 Suppletive forms . 55 3.12 Additional remarks on nominal number . 55 4 . Verbal morphology . 59 4.1 Basic verbal morphology . 59 4.2 The imperfective aspect . 63 4.3 The perfective aspect . .. 64 4.4 The irrealis mood . 65 4.5 The imperative mood . 66 4.6 The perfect prefix a- . 67 4.7 The detransitiviser prefix l- . 68 4.8 Nonfinite verb forms . 71 4.9 The simultaneous suffix -e . 71 4.10 The conditional suffix -se . 72 4.11 The locative verb p- ‘be (at)’ . 73 4.12 The motion verbs i- ‘come’ and mal- ‘go’ . 74 5 . Other word classes . 75 5 .1 Adjectives . 75 5.1.1 Adjectival number morphology . 77 5.1.2 The derivational suffix -wï ‘-like’ . 78 5.2 Pronouns . 79 5.2.1 Personal pronouns . 79 5.2.2 Reflexive/reciprocal pronouns . 80 5.2.3 Possessive pronouns . 81 5.2.4 Intensive pronouns . 83 5.2.5 Indefinite/interrogative pronouns . 84 5 .3 Determiners . 85 5 .3 .1 Deictic demonstratives . 85 5.3.2 Subject markers and object markers . 87 5.3.3 Quantifiers . 88 5 .4 Postpositions . 90 5 .5 Adverbs . 94 5 .5 .1 Temporal adverbs . 95 5 .5 .2 Locative adverbs . 97 5.5.3 Other adverbs . .. 98 5 .6 Negators . 100 5 .7 Interrogative words . 100 5.8 Conjunctions . 101 5.9 Numerals . 103 6 . Phrase-level syntax . 109 6.1 Noun phrases . .109 6.1.1 Nominal number . 110 6 .1 .2 Possession . 112 6.2 Verb phrases . 113 6.2.1 Auxiliary verbs . 113 6.2.2 Compound verbs . 118 6.2.3 Equational constructions . 121 6.3 Adpositional phrases . 122 7 . Clause-level syntax . 125 7.1 Basic constituent order . 125 7.2 Core argument alignment . .. 127 7.3 Obliques . 128 7 .4 Ditransitive alignment? . 131 7.5 Monoclausal (or simple) sentences . 134 8 . The syntax of sentences . 135 8 .1 Complex sentences . 135 8 .1 .1 Coordination . 135 8.1.2 The functional equivalent of relative clauses . 136 8.1.3 Permissive constructions . .137 8.1.4 Subordination . 138 8.1.5 Simultaneous action . 139 8 .1 .6 Parataxis . 140 8.2 Questions . 141 8.3 Commands and requests . .. 145 8 .4 Negation . 149 8.5 Reported speech . 151 8 .6 Conditional sentences . 154 9 . Lexicon . 157 9.1 Pondi-to-English word list . 157 9.2 English-to-Pondi finder list . 170 Swadesh 100-word list . .. 181 Swadesh 200-word list . .. 185 Standard SIL–PNG word list (190 items) . 191 References . 197 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Above all, I have to thank the Pondi speakers who patiently and enthusiastically shared their language with me—in particular, Clement Katram, Bonny Koiama, and Robert Kupoa. I must also thank Mr Thomas Ambata and Mrs Betty Ambata of the Manu Primary School for accommodating us while we worked on documenting the language. Some of the research that led to this sketch grammar was conducted while I was a PhD student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Thanks to my amazing dissertation committee for teaching me how to write a reference grammar, and above all to Lyle Campbell. My field research in Papua New Guinea in 2016 was supported in part by a Firebird Foundation fellowship, for which I am also grateful. The remainder of the research leading to this grammar I undertook as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. I would especially like to thank Russell Gray for his continued support and encouragement. Thanks also to Bill Foley for coaxing me to the Sepik in the first place, and to Timothy Usher for our lively discussions about the linguistic prehistory of the region and for his helpful comments on an earlier draft. The present work has been greatly improved by the comments of Bruno Olsson as well as an anonymous reviewer. ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations have been used in the glosses of Pondi. Wherever possible, the conventions of the Leipzig Glossing Rules (Comrie et al. 2008) have been followed. 1 1st person obj object (or ‘non-subject’) 2 2nd person obl oblique 3 3rd person pfv perfective cond conditional pl plural (or ‘more than two’) detr detransitiviser poss possessive du dual prf perfect fut (immediate) future proh prohibitive imp imperative q question indf indefinite refl reflexive int intensive sg singular ipfv imperfective sim simultaneous irr irrealis subj subject neg negative/negator vol volitive npl non-plural (‘less than three’) The following is a list of other abbreviations used in this book. EGIDS Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale excl exclusive f feminine incl inclusive IPA International Phonetic Alphabet ISO International Organization for Standardization LEI Language Endangerment Index m masculine NP noun phrase PARADISEC Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures PNG Papua New Guinea PP postpositional phrase xi A SKETCH GRAMMAR OF PONDI sp. species (not necessarily used in a scientific sense) SVC serial verb construction TAM tense-aspect-mood TP Tok Pisin VP verb phrase xii LIST OF MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES Maps Map 1.1. Papua New Guinea ................................5 Map 1.2. Langam village and its neighbours .....................6 Figures Figure 1.1. The Keram family ...............................17 Tables Table 1.1. Pondi’s endangerment according to UNESCO’s nine factors ........................................12 Table 1.2. Pondi’s endangerment according to the LEI ............13 Table 1.3. Keram pronouns ................................15 Table 1.4. Proto-Keram pronouns compared with non-cognate forms. 16 Table 1.5. Keram deictics ..................................16 Table 1.6. Keram suppletive alternation for the word ‘thing’ ........16 Table 1.7. Keram TAM suffixes .............................17 Table 2.1. Pondi consonants (in practical orthography) ...........22 Table 2.2. Pondi vowels (in practical orthography) ...............29 Table 3.1. Final segments in Pondi nominal plurals ..............56 xiii A SKETCH GRAMMAR OF PONDI Table 3.2. Final segments in Pondi nominal plurals (grouped allomorphically) .............................56 Table 4.1. Basic TAM suffixes in Pondi ........................60 Table 4.2. Paradigms for verbs with nasal-final stems .............61 Table 4.3. Paradigms for verbs with stems ending in (covert) -m .....61 Table 4.4. Verbal prefixes ..................................62 Table 4.5. Paradigms for i- ‘come’ and mal- ‘go’ .................74 Table 5.1. Adjectives ......................................76 Table 5.2. Irregular adjectives ...............................78 Table 5.3. The derivational suffix-wï ‘-like’ ....................78 Table 5.4. Personal pronouns ...............................80 Table 5.5. Reflexive/reciprocal pronouns ......................80 Table 5.6. Possessive pronouns for non-plural possessum ..........81 Table 5.7.