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Conjunctive agreement in Lamaholot1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2010

KUNIO NISHIYAMA
KUNIO NISHIYAMA*
Affiliation:
Ibaraki University
*
Author's address: College of Humanities, Ibaraki University, 2-1-1 Bunkyo, Mito, 310-8512, Japan[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper presents a description and a theoretical analysis of agreement within coordination in Lamaholot (Austronesian), where the first conjunct agrees with the conjunction ‘and’. Conjunctive agreement is obligatory in the subject position but is optional in the object position. The analysis is couched in terms of markedness of case and proposes that the case of the subject (nominative) is unmarked compared to the case of the object (accusative), and that only unmarked case enables phi-features of the agreement control to be copied onto the agreement host. Apparent optionality is accounted for by manners of case spreading in coordination. Conjunctive agreement is also reported in the genetically unrelated but areally related language of Walman. Although conjunctive agreement originates in verbal agreement with the comitative function in both languages, it is shown that grammaticalization from the comitative to the conjunction is more advanced in Lamaholot, at least in terms of syntax and morphology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 381 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

[1]

This study is part of a larger project on Lamaholot, started while I was visiting the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 2004 to 2005. I first thank Herman Kelen for his enduring patience and cooperation in providing me with Lamaholot data. I also thank the Language Documentation Project of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii for providing us with the opportunity to work together. Part of this paper was presented at the University of Hawaii, and I would like to thank the audiences there for comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to the three JL reviewers and other reviewers of earlier or related versions of this article, as well as Luis Lopez, Yoshiki Ogawa, William O'Grady, Yuko Otsuka and Kamil Ud Deen. This study has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Program and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant #19520325).Abbreviations: 1, 2, 3=1st, 2nd, 3rd person; acc=accusative; c=complementizer; dat=dative; defl=default agreement; ex=exclusive; f=feminine; fut=future; gen=genitive; imp=imperfective; in=inclusive; m=masculine; nom=nominative; obj=object; pl=plural; pst=past; red=reduplication; sg=singular; subj=subject.Working orthography for Lamaholot (following Nishiyama & Kelen 2007): v=schwa; '=glottal stop; word-final n indicates that the preceding vowel is nasalized.

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