MARK DONOHUE National University of Singapore [email protected] 3 October 2004 Abbreviated table of contents 1 ..........Introduction 1 2 ..........Phonology 33 3 ..........Grammar outline 105 4 ..........Pragmatic marking 123 5 ..........Word classes and clause types 149 6 ..........Pronouns 185 7 ..........Verbs 200 8 ..........Nominal Phrases 278 9 ..........Possession 296 10 ........Nominal Classification 328 11 ........Non-subcategorised participants 355 12 ........Serial verb constructions 372 13 ........Valency changing processes 392 14 ........Adjunct nominals 421 15 ........Complements and Control 441 16 ........Negation, quantification and obliques: the syntax of postverbal position 458 17 ........Non-verbal predicates 471 18 ........Non-statement speech acts 477 19 ........Conjoining, coordination, and switch reference 488 Appendix 1 Wordlists 518 Appendix 2 Verbal paradigms 539 Appendix 3 Acoustic data on tones and vowels 546 Appendix 4 Texts 554 Appendix 5 Comparative data on the Macro-Skou family languages 641 References 687 Index... 692 i ii Contents Abbreviated table of contents List of pictures.........................................................................................xiii Tables ................................................................................................xiii Figures .............................................................................................. xviii Maps .............................................................................................. xviii Preliminaries...........................................................................................xix Abbreviations and Glossing conventions......................................................xix Updates .................................................................................... xxiii Acknowledgments................................................................................... xxiv Pictures ..............................................................................................xxvii Dedication...........................................................................................xxxiii 1.......... Introduction 1 1.1 The Skou language...........................................................................3 1.2 The tides of history...........................................................................5 1.3 The Skou ethnic group......................................................................10 1.4 Skou in its linguistic context ...............................................................16 1.5 Skou as a ‘Papuan language’...............................................................19 1.6 Earlier work on Skou .......................................................................24 1.7 Recent changes in Skou? ...................................................................27 1.8 An brief summary of Skou grammar......................................................29 1.8.1 Historical environment..................................................................29 1.8.2 Sociolinguistic environment............................................................29 1.8.3 Phonetics and Phonology...............................................................30 1.8.4 Morphological profile ...................................................................30 1.8.5 Syntactic patterns ........................................................................31 1.8.6 Semantics.................................................................................31 1.8.7 Lexicon....................................................................................31 2.......... Phonology 33 2.1 Phonotactics..................................................................................33 2.2 Segmental phonemes........................................................................34 2.2.1 Consonants...............................................................................34 2.2.1.1 /p/.......................................................................................35 2.2.1.2 /b/.......................................................................................36 2.2.1.3 /w/......................................................................................36 2.2.1.4 /m/, /f/, /n/.............................................................................37 2.2.1.5 /t/........................................................................................37 2.2.1.6 /l/........................................................................................38 2.2.1.7 /r/ .......................................................................................38 2.2.1.8 /j/ and /ƒ/...............................................................................39 2.2.1.9 /k/.......................................................................................40 2.2.1.10 /h/.......................................................................................40 2.2.2 Consonantal analysis....................................................................40 2.2.2.1 Consonantal analysis.................................................................41 iii 2.2.2.2 An alternative arrangement of the consonants.....................................42 2.2.3 Vowels....................................................................................43 2.2.3.1 Further vowel allophony ............................................................48 2.2.3.2 Changes in vowels for number or gender of argument..........................51 2.2.3.3 Vowels and syllabification ..........................................................52 2.2.4 Segmental phonology: a summary.....................................................52 2.3 Suprasegmental phonology ................................................................53 2.3.1 Tone.......................................................................................54 2.3.1.1 Tone Sandhi...........................................................................54 2.3.1.2 Pitch contours on disyllabic roots..................................................56 2.3.1.3 Pitch contours on trisyllabic roots..................................................57 2.3.1.4 Tone melodies and pitch contours..................................................59 2.3.1.5 A model of the tone system of Skou...............................................65 2.3.1.6 Grammatical uses of tone/pitch.....................................................66 2.3.1.7 Excursus: brief comparison of the tone systems of related languages .........67 2.3.1.8 Tone in compounds..................................................................69 2.3.1.9 Tonal suppletion and tonal stripping...............................................74 2.3.2 Nasalisation ..............................................................................77 2.3.2.1 Segmental effects of phonological nasalisation...................................77 2.3.2.2 Nasal spread ..........................................................................79 2.3.2.3 Stress patterns ........................................................................82 2.4 Minimal and near-minimal pairs...........................................................83 2.4.1 Segmental minimal pairs................................................................83 2.4.1 Suprasegmental minimal pairs .........................................................85 2.5 Phonotactics revisited.......................................................................86 2.5.1 Consonant and pitch.....................................................................86 2.5.2 Vowel and pitch..........................................................................90 2.5.3 Consonant and vowel...................................................................90 2.5.4 Vowel and Nasalisation.................................................................92 2.5.5 Consonant, vowel and nasalisation....................................................92 2.5.6 Pitch and Nasalisation...................................................................93 2.5.7 Consonant clusters and unusual onsets...............................................93 2.6 Reduplication ................................................................................93 2.7 Orthography..................................................................................97 2.7.1 Segmental orthography .................................................................97 2.7.2 Tone and nasalisation ...................................................................98 2.7.3 Resolving conflicts in the orthography.............................................. 100 2.8 A note on difficulties faced in identifying tonal systems.............................. 102 2.9 Summary of phonetics and phonology ................................................. 104 3 ..........Grammar outline 105 3.1 Word Order ................................................................................ 105 3.1.1 Topicalisation and word order ....................................................... 106 3.1.2 Word order within the NP............................................................ 107 3.2 Morphological marking.................................................................. 109 3.3 Verbal agreement.......................................................................... 110 3.4 The grammaticalisation of pronominal forms.......................................... 111 iv 3.5 Serial verbs.................................................................................112