Turning owners into actors: Possessive morphology as subject-indexing in languages of the Bougainville region
A fundamental communicative task for all languages is to show which participant in a sentence is the subject. Languages have various ways of identifying the subject, including word-order, agreement, and case-marking. However, there is another unique and strange method, almost entirely unknown until now, found only in Northwest-Solomonic (NWS), a group of Oceanic languages of the Solomon Islands and Bougainville. In some constructions, these languages indicate subject using word-forms normally indicating possessors of nouns. This use of possessive morphology to mark subjects is theoretically highly significant. To define language fully we must understand the limits on subject-marking. This almost unresearched phenomenon is crucial to our understanding of the fundamental issue of how subjects can be marked. This project investigates this almost unresearched phenomenon: how it works, how it varies, what it does, and where it comes from. Unfortunately, the key languages are highly endangered, so the project is timely, and as a by-product, the project will result in the partial primary documentation of at least one of these languages.
Project
arts-humanities.net
Book:
Bill Palmer, Kokota grammar. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009)
Peer review journal articles:
Bill Palmer, "Subject-indexing and possessive morphology in Northwest Solomonic." Linguistics (in press)
Bill Palmer, "Clause order and information structure in Cheke Holo." Oceanic Linguistics 48/1 (2009): 213-249.
Bill Palmer, "Passive and characteristic possession in Oceanic." Studies in Philippine languages & cultures 18 (2008):119-141.
Bill Palmer & Dunstan Brown "Heads in Oceanic indirect possession." Oceanic Linguistics 46/1 (2007):154-164.
Bill Palmer, "Imperfective aspect and the interplay of aspect, tense and modality in Torau." Oceanic Linguistics 46/2 (2007):499-519.
Book chapter:
Bill Palmer, "Pointing at the lagoon: directional terms in Oceanic atoll-based languages." in Language description, history and development: linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley, eds. J. Siegel, J. Lynch and D. Eades (London: Benjamins, 2007) pp101-117
Bill Palmer, "Kiribati - language situation." In K. Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (London: Elsevier, 2006)
Bill Palmer, "Marshall Islands - language situation." In K. Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (London: Elsevier, 2006)
Bill Palmer, "Nauru - language situation." In K. Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (London: Elsevier, 2006)
Bill Palmer, "Papua New Guinea - language situation." In K. Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (London: Elsevier, 2006)
Bill Palmer, "Solomon Islands - language situation." In K. Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (London: Elsevier, 2006)