Searching for insubordination: An analysis of ləbo in Lamaholot

In this paper, we present a description and analysis of ləbo ‘although’ in Lamaholot of eastern Indonesia, which is a subordinating conjunction that expresses a concessive relation between main and subordinate clauses. Although clause-initial conjunctions are predominant in this SVO language, the conjunction ləbo appears in clause-final position. Interestingly, subordinate clauses headed by ləbo can stand alone without a main clause, conveying the speaker’s irritation or blame toward the hearer or an undesirable event. By providing synchronic evidence of different kinds, this paper proposes that this construction involves insubordination, the independent use of constructions exhibiting prima facie characteristics of subordinate clauses (Evans 2007)

Demonstrative prepositions in Lamaholot

<p>This paper presents a description and analysis of demonstratives in the Lewotobi dialect of<br> Lamaholot. There are two major findings in this paper. First, demonstratives in Lamaholot<br> have basic, nominalized, and adverbial forms. These three forms have different functions in<br> different syntactic environments: locative adverbial, prepositional, prenominal, verbal,<br> referential, noun-modifying, and manner adverbial. Second and more importantly,<br> demonstratives in this language can serve as prepositions. In this function, they can be used<br> to mark NPs as adjuncts and add deictic spatial meanings to them. This use of<br> demonstratives is rarely found in other languages and is an important characteristic of this<br> Austronesian language of eastern Indonesia.</p

Ludlings and Phonology in Tagalog

This paper presents an analysis of the Tagalog “G-word” ludling and addresses its implications in Tagalog phonology. It is shown that the G-word ludling is best analyzed as an iterative infixal ludling, where the sequence of -Vg- is inserted after every onset, rather than infixation of -gV-. Crucially, the G-word ludling reveals constraints on Tagalog phonology that otherwise would be difficult to observe: *C1 VC1 V, hiatus avoidance, and iambic stress. Furthermore, our analysis of the G-words raises an important issue in Tagalog phonology: the possible emergence of the disyllabic “perfect prosodic word” in the G-words. Taken together, this paper offers another case study supporting the important role that ludlings play in phonological theory

The Lamaholot Language of Eastern Indonesia

This study presents the grammar of the Lewotobi dialect of Lamaholot, an Austronesian language spoken in the eastern part of Flores Island and neighboring islands of Indonesia. Lamaholot belongs to the Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian, within which it is in a subgroup with the languages of Timor and Roti. The number of speakers of the Lewotobi dialect is approximately 6,000. Despite its importance in the history and typology of Austronesian languages, this dialect of Lamaholot has not been fully described yet. This study is the first thorough grammar of this dialect. In the absence of available description of the language, the data presented here have been collected through fieldwork conducted at the Nurri village of Kabupaten Flores Timur for a total of eight months. The purpose of this sturdy is two-fold. The first goal is to provide an empirically-based description and analysis of the entire range of the Lamaholot grammar from phonology through morphology to syntax and semantics. It begins with the discussion of phonetics and phonology, proceeds to examine morphological processes and parts of speech and then turns to the form and function of each part of speech: nouns, pronouns, numerals, measure words, verbs, adjectival nouns, adjectival verbs, demonstratives, directionals, the locative, TAM markers and other minor parts of speech. Building upon these foundations, subsequent chapters offer a detailed analysis and discussion of the following syntactic phenomena: (i) agreement, (ii) clause structure, (iii) voice and grammatical relations, (iv) verb serialization, and (v) spatial language. A mini dictionary and texts are provided as appendices to a grammatical description. The second and equally important purpose of this study is to shed new light on issues surrounding the history and typology of Austronesian languages from a perspective of Lamaholot data. Attention is drawn particularly to two grammatical phenomena: (i) the position of Lamaholot in a typology of voice and grammatical relations in western Austronesian languages and (ii) spatial language and frames of reference. It is hoped that this study will help advance both research in Austronesian linguistics and our knowledge of human language in general

On the Syntactic Transitivity of Tagalog Actor-Focus Constructions

日本学術振興会 特別研究員(SPD)JSPS Research Fellow (SPD)本稿は,フィリピン言語学においてもっとも難しい問題の一つといえる,タガログ語の行為者焦点動詞構文の統語的他動性について考察する。この問題については,それが統語的に他動詞なのか自動詞なのか,長らく議論されている。この論文では次の二つの主張を行う。一つ目は,タガログ語の行為者焦点動詞構文は単一の均質なカテゴリーを形成するわけではなく,統語的にも意味的にも相異なる複数の構文からなっているということである。本稿が明らかにするように,ほとんどの行為者焦点動詞構文は自動詞節であり,本当にその統語的他動性を精査しなければならないのは逆受動タイプの行為者焦点動詞構文のみである。二つ目は,逆受動タイプの行為者焦点動詞構文が自動詞節である統語的証拠がいくつもあるということである。このタイプの構文の主格動作者名詞句が非行為者焦点動詞構文の動作者名詞句や被動者名詞句と同じように振る舞うのに対して,属格被動者名詞句はそうではない。こうして,二つの観察をあわせて,タガログ語の行為者焦点動詞構文は統語的に自動詞節であると分析するのが一番よいと結論づけることができる。In the literature of Philippine linguistics, Goal-Focus (GF) constructions in Tagalog have been generally considered as transitive, both syntactically and semantically; however, whether Actor-Focus (AF) constructions should be analyzed as syntactically transitive or intransitive is controversial. This paper addresses the question of the syntactic transitivity of Tagalog AF constructions from a new perspective. We argue two points in this paper. First, AF constructions do not form a homogenous construction type but rather consist of both syntactically and semantically varying construction types: ambient, agentive, patientive, reflexive, and antipassive types. Moreover, AF construction types other than antipassive are clearly intransitive. This means that only antipassive AF constructions should be examined in a discussion of the syntactic transitivity of AF constructions. Second, it is argued that antipassive AF constructions are syntactically intransitive; specifically, in this construction type, nominative agent NPs behave like grammatical arguments of GF constructions, but genitive patient NPs do not. It is concluded that Tagalog AF constructions are best analyzed as syntactically intransitive

Variation in the Encoding of Motion Events in Turkish

東京大学東京大学 大学院生東京外国語大学 学部生The University of TokyoGraduate Student, The University of TokyoUndergraduate Student, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies国立国語研究所における移動事象に関する通言語的プロジェクト（Motion Event Descriptions Across Languages，略称：MEDAL）は，移動事象表現の通言語的および個別言語的なバリエーションを研究する共同研究プロジェクトである。このプロジェクトの目的の1つは，ビデオを使った産出実験を行うことで，移動の経路が通言語的にどのようにコード化されているのかを解明することである。本論文では，典型的な経路主要部表示型言語といわれてきたトルコ語を対象にその実験を行った結果を報告する。この論文のもっとも重要な発見のひとつは，トルコ語が経路をコード化するときに経路の種類に応じてコード化のバリエーションを示すことである。経路FROM, TO.OUT, TO.IN, THROUGH, PAST, VIA.UNDER, VIA.BETWEEN, AROUND, ACROSS, UP, DOWNにおいては経路主要部表示型の表現パターンが支配的であるものの，経路ALONG, TO, TOWARDにおいては経路主要部外表示型の表現パターンが優勢である。こうして，本論文は，トルコ語の経路表示のパターンについてより細やかな一般化が必要であると指摘し，経路が違えば経路表示も異なるという事実に注目するべきであると主張する。この論文ではさらにトルコ語と他の言語の対照言語学的な違いについても言及する。The NINJAL project on Motion Event Descriptions Across Languages (MEDAL) is a collaborative research project on crosslinguistic and intralinguistic variations in motion event descriptions. One of the purposes of this project is to investigate how Path of motion is coded across languages by conducting a video-based production experiment. This paper reports the results of Experiment C undertaken on Turkish, an allegedly prime example of a verb-framed language. One of our important findings is that Turkish displays considerable variations in Path coding across different types of Path. A head Path-coding (≈ verb-framing) pattern is found to be dominant for the Path types of FROM, TO.OUT, TO.IN, THROUGH, PAST, VIA.UNDER, VIA.BETWEEN, AROUND, ACROSS, UP, and DOWN. In contrast, a head-external Pathcoding (≈ satellite-framing) pattern is found to be preferred for the Paths ALONG, TO, and TOWARD. Rather than simply assuming a consistent "verb-framed" pattern, we claim that a more nuanced generalization is required for Path-coding patterns in Turkish and that more attention should be paid to variations in Path coding among different types of Path. We further make a crosslinguistic comparison of Turkish with other languages supposedly of the same typological type such as Japanese and Spanish

Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages

Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar’s chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser’s chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite &amp; Riester; Shiohara &amp; Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers’ perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka &amp; Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as “topic” and “focus” categories, should better be described in terms of ‘packaging’ and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place

Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages

Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar’s chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser’s chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite &amp; Riester; Shiohara &amp; Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers’ perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka &amp; Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as “topic” and “focus” categories, should better be described in terms of ‘packaging’ and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place

Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages

Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar’s chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser’s chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite &amp; Riester; Shiohara &amp; Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers’ perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka &amp; Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as “topic” and “focus” categories, should better be described in terms of ‘packaging’ and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place