Yale University EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale Linguistics Graduate Dissertations Department of Linguistics 6-2014 Windesi Wamesa Morphophonology Emily A. Gasser Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ling_graduate Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Gasser, Emily A., "Windesi Wamesa Morphophonology" (2014). Linguistics Graduate Dissertations. 1. http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ling_graduate/1 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Linguistics at EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics Graduate Dissertations by an authorized administrator of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Windesi Wamesa Morphophonology A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Emily Anne Gasser Dissertation Director: Dr. Claire Bowern December 2014 Copyright © 2015 by Emily Anne Gasser All rights reserved. ii Abstract Windesi Wamesa Morphophonology Emily Anne Gasser 2015 Wamesa [] is an endangered Austronesian language spoken in the south-eastern Bird’s Head of New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of West Papua. is disserta- tion provides a description and formal analysis of the phonology and morphology of the Windesi dialect based on the author’s fieldwork with speakers of the language. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the language, its speakers, and the cultural, ge- ographic, and linguistic context in which Wamesa is spoken. It also provides background on the fieldwork which forms the basis of this dissertation and the resulting corpus. Chap- ter 2 describes the phonology of Wamesa, including its phoneme inventory, phonotactics, and productive phonological processes, with phonetic detail. e second half of the chap- ter gives an account of the phonological adaptation of loan words into Wamesa. Chapter 3 gives a formal analysis of stress assignment in the language based in Optimality eory. Chapter 4 describes the Wamesa clitics and affixes, and Chapter 5 gives an account of the three major word classes, nouns, verbs, and adjectives, as well as modes of spatial expres- sion and a selection of other minor word classes. Chapter 6 gives a formal synchronic analysis of the infixation of verbal subject agreement affixes in Wamesa, followed by a di- achronic account of how the paern might have arisen from incremental improvements in speech production and perception. is dissertation provides the first in-depth description of the grammar of Windesi Wamesa, as well as the first formal analysis of its structures. e data presented here will be of interest for typological and historical studies of Austronesian, particularly the understudied South Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup to which Wamesa belongs. In addition to enriching our understanding of this family, the dissertation presents data and analyses which will be of interest for morphological and phonological theory more narrowly. Contents List of Figures viii List of Abbreviations x Acknowledgments xii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Dialects, Location and Speakers .......................... 3 1.1.1 Geographic Position ............................ 3 1.1.2 Dialects .................................... 4 1.1.3 Speakers ................................... 7 1.2 Wamesa Genetic Affiliations ............................ 8 1.3 Fieldwork ........................................ 11 1.3.1 e CELD ................................... 11 1.3.2 Travel within Papua ............................ 14 1.3.3 Consultants and Methods ......................... 15 1.3.4 e Corpus .................................. 17 1.4 Language Aitudes, Use, and Endangerment . 18 1.5 Previous Literature .................................. 21 1.5.1 Existing Sources ............................... 21 i 1.5.2 Unpublished Student Research ...................... 25 1.6 Outline of this Dissertation ............................. 26 2 Segmental Phonology 27 2.1 e Phonemes of Wamesa .............................. 27 2.1.1 Consonants .................................. 27 2.1.2 Vowels .................................... 34 2.1.3 Orthography ................................. 37 2.2 Phonotactics ...................................... 37 2.2.1 CC sequences ................................ 37 2.2.2 Vowel Sequences .............................. 37 2.2.3 Syllable Structure and Word Shape ................... 38 2.3 Phonological and Post-Lexical Processes ..................... 43 2.3.1 Mid-Vowel Raising ............................. 43 2.3.2 Cluster Simplification ........................... 44 2.3.3 v/r/k Spliing ................................ 46 2.3.4 Verbal [a] Deletion ............................. 53 2.3.5 Reduplication ................................ 55 2.3.6 High Vowel Reduction ........................... 57 2.3.7 Paragogic [e] ................................. 63 2.3.8 Reductions in Fast Speech ......................... 64 2.4 Loanword Phonology ................................ 65 2.4.1 History of Language Contact ....................... 65 2.4.2 eories of Loan Adaptation ....................... 68 2.4.3 Adaptation of Consonants ......................... 75 2.4.4 Adaptation of Vowels ............................ 85 ii 2.4.5 Illegal Clusters ................................ 86 3 Stress 91 3.1 Introduction ...................................... 91 3.2 Basic Stress Paern .................................. 92 3.2.1 Primary Stress ................................ 92 3.2.2 Secondary Stress .............................. 97 3.3 Areal Context ..................................... 99 3.4 Analytical Preliminaries: Non-Gradient Constraints . 100 3.5 e ree-Syllable Stress Window . 105 3.5.1 W Constraints ............................105 3.5.2 e Stress Window in Wamesa . 112 3.6 Placing Wamesa Stress ................................115 3.6.1 Motivating Faithfulness to Heads: McCarthy & Prui (2013) . 118 3.6.2 Placing Stress on Shorter Words . 127 3.6.3 T ...................................129 3.6.4 Intermediate Summary and Constraint Ranking . 132 3.6.5 Longer Words ................................133 3.6.6 Multiple/No h-Specified Syllables . 135 3.6.7 Intermediate Summary and Constraint Ranking . 137 3.7 Stress Shi With Clitics ...............................138 3.7.1 Domain of Lapse ..............................139 3.7.2 Accounting for Shi: e Basic Paern . 140 3.7.3 Longer Enclitics ...............................143 3.7.4 Five-Syllable Words .............................145 3.7.5 Summary and Rankings . 149 iii 3.7.6 FS . ................................150 3.8 Multi-Morphemic Words ..............................152 3.9 Native-Speaker Intuitions ..............................153 4 Dependent Morphemes: Affixes and Clitics 156 4.1 Clitics, Affixes, and Stems ..............................156 4.1.1 Wordhood ..................................156 4.1.2 e Dependent Morphemes . 158 4.2 Distinguishing Clitics from Affixes . 159 4.2.1 Test 1: Host Selectivity . 161 4.2.2 Test 2: Paradigmatic Gaps . 163 4.2.3 Test 3: Movement ..............................165 4.2.4 Clitic-Affix Interspersion . 168 4.2.5 Intra-Word Phonological Processes . 170 4.3 Wamesa Clitics ....................................171 4.3.1 Definite Determiners ............................172 4.3.2 Wamesa DP Structure . 176 4.3.3 Topicalization ................................180 4.3.4 Directional Clitics ..............................183 4.3.5 Aspectual =pa ................................184 4.3.6 =Ya ‘again’ ..................................185 4.3.7 e Intensifier Clitics ............................186 4.3.8 e Negation Clitics ............................187 4.3.9 Durative =re .................................188 4.3.10 Conjunction .................................189 4.3.11 Plural Pronouns ...............................192 iv 4.4 Affixes .........................................193 4.4.1 Subject-Verb Agreement . 194 4.4.2 Applicative it- ................................198 4.4.3 Causatives ..................................203 4.4.4 Essive ve- ...................................204 4.4.5 Number Marking: NPs and DPs . 207 4.4.6 Number Marking: Verbs . 212 4.4.7 Inalienable Possession . 216 5 Word Classes 220 5.1 Differentiating Word Classes ............................220 5.2 Nouns .......................................... 223 5.3 Verbs .......................................... 227 5.4 Adjectives .......................................230 5.5 Prepositions ......................................233 5.6 Other Spatial Constructions ............................236 5.6.1 Frames of Reference ............................237 5.6.2 Locational Nouns ..............................239 5.6.3 Locational Relators .............................242 5.6.4 Directional Adverbs ............................244 5.6.5 Locational Deictics .............................245 5.7 Additional Categories ................................246 5.7.1 Numerals ...................................246 5.7.2 Determiners and Demonstratives . 247 5.7.3 Pronouns ...................................249 5.7.4 Adverbs ....................................250 v 5.7.5 Interrogatives ................................252 6 Verbal Infixation: Synchronic & Diachronic 256 6.1 Introduction ......................................256 6.2 Wamesa Verbal Agreement: Background