Pronouns in Kelabit: case-marking or clitic status? 1

Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association 23 10-12th June 2013 Charlotte Hemmings, SOAS, University of London [email protected]

Pronouns in Kelabit: case-marking or clitic status? 1. Introduction  This paper considers how to analyse a set of variant pronouns in Kelabit, an Austronesian language spoken in Northern Sarawak.  It offers a comparison with pronouns in Philippine-type languages – where cognate pronouns tend to be analysed as GEN case – and Indonesian-type languages, where cognate pronouns tend to be analysed as verb-adjacent clitics  It considers the implications of Kelabit pronouns for Austronesian typology 2. Kelabit Pronouns Table 1. Basic Kelabit Pronouns 1.INCL 1.EXCL 2 n/a uih iko SING kiteh kediweh meduweh DUAL teluh keteluh meteluh TRIAL kamih muyuh PLURAL tauh

3 ieh diweh deteluh ideh

Table 2. Variant Pronouns FORM 1 FORM 2 uih kuh 1SG iko muh 2SG ieh neh 3SG ideh deh 3PL 3. Pronouns in Western Austronesian 3.1 Case-Marking  Philippine-type languages have case-marking of pronouns, which reflects their function within the voice system.  NOM pronouns are used for subjects (or arguments privileged in the verbal morphology).  GEN pronouns are used for actors in non-actor voices (1) a.

Kimaragang Dusun Actor Voice Mangalapak okuh do niyuw AV.TR.split 1SG.NOM GEN coconut ‘I will split a coconut/some coconuts’


b.

c.

d.

Undergoer Voice Lapak-on kuh split-UV 1SG.GEN ‘I will split the coconut(s)’

it NOM

niyuw coconut

Dative Voice Lapak-an kuh do niyuw split-DV 1SG.GEN GEN coconut ‘I will split some coconuts for the pigs’ Instrumental Voice Nokuroh.tu n-i-lapak why PST-IV-split

nuh 2SG.GEN

do GEN

dangol kuh? knife 1SG.GEN ‘Why did you use my bush knife to split coconuts?’

it NOM

wogok pig

niyuw coconut

inoh MED.NOM

(Kroeger 2005)

 Indonesian-type languages are not typically analysed as having case-marking and in many cases the same form can be used for actor subjects and actor non-subjects (though see 3.2 on clitics below) (2) a.

b.

Madurese Actor Voice Sengko’ mokol Alwi 1SG AV.hit Alwi ‘I hit Alwi’ Undergoer Voice Alwi e-pokol sengko’ Alwi UV-hit 1SG ‘Alwi was hit by me’

(Ritsuko 2008: 69)

3.2 Clitic Status  Clitic Phenomena are widespread among Austronesian languages (cf. Billings and Kaufman 2004) and are reconstructed back to Proto-Austronesian (see Ross 2005)  Typically, both NOM and GEN pronouns are treated as second position enclitics in Philippine-type languages: (3) a.

Seediq clitics Prosodic host = negation Ini=ku imah sino NEG=1SG.NOM AV.CNG.drink wine ‘I don’t drink wine’


b.

Prosodic host = tense/aspect marker Wada=mu puq-un ka damac PST=1SG.GEN eat-UV NOM food ‘I ate the food’

c.

Prosodic host = subordinator […] Ado=ku m-beyax because=1SG.NOM AV-strong ‘[…] Because I am good at running’

d.

Prosodic host = interrogative Ye=ku ini huwa Q=1SG.NOM NEG how.CNG ‘Is it ok if I smoke here?’

talang run

m-ekan tmaku AV-eat tobacco

yaku 1SG

hini? here (Holmer 2005: 190)

 In Indonesian-type languages, forms that appear cognate with GEN pronouns are analysed as verb-adjacent proclitics. NOM pronouns are typically free-standing words (Himmelmann 2005): (4) a.

b.

Indonesian Free-standing 1SG pronoun in AV Aku (akan) membaca buku 1SG FUT AV.read book ‘I read books’ Clitic 1SG pronoun in UV Buku (akan) ku=baca book FUT 1SG=read ‘The book was read by me’

(adapted from Musgrave 2002: 38)

 There are also transitional languages in Sulawesi where both NOM and GEN pronouns are clitics but their behaviour differs.  E.g. Kulawi, where GEN clitics attach pro- or enclitically to verbs, and NOM pronouns are either second-position enclitics or free-standing pronouns (Billings & Kaufman 2004) (5) a.

Kulawi Clitics GEN clitic Moma i-epe=ku ka=rata=mu NEG REAL-hear=1SG.GEN NOM=come-2SG.GEN ‘I haven’t heard about your arrival’


b.

clitic Moma=’a tai NEG=1SG.NOM come.here ‘I didn’t come here’ NOM

(Billings & Kaufman 2004: 21)

3.3 Summary  In Philippine-type languages, NOM and GEN pronouns are distinguished according to their case-marking function but are typically both enclitics  In Indonesian-type languages, there is no case-marking but cognate forms with GEN pronouns can be analysed as verb-adjacent proclitics in contrast to free-standing pronouns.  Finally, there are languages like Kulawi where NOM and GEN pronouns also differ in their clitic type.  This begs the question of how to analyse Kelabit? 4. Distribution and Prosody in Kelabit 4.1 Distribution  Most typically, FORM 1 pronouns are used for subjects and FORM 2 pronouns for actors in non-actor voices. This is similar to NOM and GEN pronouns in Philippine-type languages: (6) a.

Kelabit Actor voice Nih uih natek bubpuq ih DEM 1SG.1 AV.close door PT ‘I’m closing the door’ (elicitation, BAR17102013CH_01 00:51:09.585-00:51:12.558)

b.

Undergoer voice Senatek kuh neh bubpuq ih UV.PFV.close 1SG.2 PT door PT ‘I already closed the door’ (elicitation, BAR17102013CH_01 00:53:02.138-00:53:04.854)

c.

Instrumental voice Enun pe-natek kuh bubpuq ih? what IV-close 1SG.2 door PT ‘What do I use to close the door?’ (elicitation, BAR17102013CH_01 01:01:13.792-01:01:16.702)

 However, there are several differences that prevent a straightforward case analysis of pronouns in Kelabit.


 Firstly, FORM 1 pronouns can also be used for non-actor, non-subjects: (7) a.

Kelabit Actor Voice Ieh ni’er 3SG.1 AV.see ‘He sees me’

uih 1SG.1 (elicitation, fieldnotes)

 Secondly, FORM 1 pronouns can be used to represent actors in non-actor voices in certain contexts: (8) a.

b.

(9) a.

b.

(10) a.

b.



Kelabit Undergoer Voice, FORM 2 Seni’er kuh UV.PFV.see 1SG.2 ‘I saw him’ Undergoer Voice, FORM 1 Seni’er uih UV.PFV.see 1SG.1 ‘I saw him’

ieh 3SG.1

tieh (teh+ieh) PT=3SG.1 (elicitation, fieldnotes)

Experiencer Verbs Na’am uih keliq NEG 1SG.1 know ‘I don’t know’ Na’am keliq kuh NEG know 1SG.2 ‘I don’t know’

(elicitation, fieldnotes)

Accidental Prefix Ne-bilaq uih bigan ih ACCID-break 1SG.1 plate PT ‘I accidentally broke the plate’ Ne-bilaq kuh neh bigan ih ACCID-break 1SG.2 PT plate PT ‘I accidentally broke the plate’


1 actors are preferred where the actor is focused, and ungrammatical in this context: FORM

FORM

2 actors are


(11)

Kelabit Focus Q. Senuruq iih tieh UV.PFV.order who PT=3SG ‘Who ordered her to cook for us?’

ngelaak AV.cook

ngen for

tauh? 1PL.INCL

A1: Senuruq uih tieh UV.PFV.order 1SG.1 PT=3SG ‘I ordered her’ A2: *Senuruq kuh tieh UV.PFV.order 1SG.2 PT=3SG ‘I ordered her’


 This suggests that the two pronouns may constitute differential marking rather than case-marking in the sense of uniquely identifying a particular grammatical function or semantic role.  Nonetheless, the distribution of FORM 2 is more limited than FORM 1 since it cannot occur before the verb: (12) a.

Kelabit *Kuh seni’er 1SG.2 UV.PRF.see For: ‘I saw him’

ieh 3SG.1

 This may suggest that FORM 2 is prosodically weaker… 4.2 Clitic Status  Clitics are defined as unstressed items that form a single prosodic word with their host (van der Leeuw 1997). The can be subcategorised according to their position and their type (see 3.2).  On the basis of syntactic distribution, we can conclude that FORM 2 pronouns are verb-adjacent in Kelabit, since they always follow the verb: (13) a.

b.

Kelabit Fronted Adverb [Iyuk~iyuk] niding =neh sineh keyh grow~REDUP UV.PFV.lift 3SG.2 DEM PT ‘Gradually he lifted that same one’ (text, BAR03082014CH_01 00:00:44.550-00:00:46.560) Negation Na’am keliq kuh NEG know 1SG.2 ‘I don’t know’


c.

*Na’am

kuh keliq NEG 1SG.2 know For: ‘I don’t know’


 They appear syntactically enclitic.  However, clitics are defined prosodically and therefore a prosodic methodology is required to establish whether the pronouns are clitics and if they attach pro- or enclitically.  This involves identifying word boundaries in order to see whether the pronoun forms a single prosodic word with either the preceding or the following word.  As in many languages, word boundaries are demarcated in Kelabit via lengthening of the final syllable (Himmelmann & Ladd 2008: 247). Hence, syllable duration is used as the dependent variable in this study.  Examples sentences were developed that included the pronouns in 9 different contexts that varied according to the position, function and form of the pronoun and the voice of the clause. Table 3. Prosody Test Contexts Context 1 FORM 1 Intransitive S in post-verbal position Context 2 FORM 2 Intransitive S in post-verbal position Context 3 FORM 1 Transitive UV A in post-verbal position Context 4 FORM 2 Transitive UV A in post-verbal position Context 5 FORM 1 Transitive AV A in post-verbal position Context 6 FORM 1 Transitive AV U in post-verbal position Context 7 FORM 1 Transitive AV A in pre-verbal position Context 8 FORM 1 Transitive AV A in post-object position Context 9 FORM 1 Transitive UV U in post-object position  These were read by 5 speakers and subsequently divided into syllables in Praat.  The pronoun syllable and the syllables immediately preceding and following were measured for duration using the Praat script Prosody Pro (Xu 2013). Finally, a two-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted using the independent variables of syllable position and test context to identify a) where the word boundaries lie and b) whether the two pronouns differ in their prosody. 4.2.1 Results  In contexts 3 & 4 - where only the form of the pronoun differs - the following predictions for syllable duration can be made on account of the fact that the postpronoun syllable is a mono-syllabic word: (14) a.

Prosody Experiment Predictions Enclitic Pre-Pronoun Pronoun Short Long

Post-Pronoun Long


b.

c.

Proclitic Pre-Pronoun Long

Pronoun Short

Post-Pronoun Long

Free-standing Word Pre-Pronoun Pronoun Long Long

Post-Pronoun Long

 The results showed a significant effect of syllable order on duration (F(2, 32) = 16.69, p < 0.01), but no significant effect of pronoun type (F(1, 16) = 2.42, p > 0.05) and no significant interaction between the variables (F(2, 32) = 0.37, p > 0.05). Table 4. Mean Duration in Contexts 3 & 4 Mean Duration (ms) Pre-Pronoun Pronoun Post-Pronoun FORM 1 (uih) 248.28 184.95 310.73 FORM 2 (kuh) 245.01 162.64 297.44  This suggests that both FORM 1 and FORM 2 pronouns are proclitics in this context.  We could, however, question whether FORM 1 is always a clitic, given that it has a much wider distribution than FORM 2?  In fact, if we compare the FORM 1 pronouns across all the contexts in which they occur, there is a significant difference in duration (F(8,121) = 4.193, p < 0.01) – which suggests that the pronouns sometimes appear as free-standing words (contexts 7-9): Table 5. Mean Duration of Pronouns in All Contexts Context Mean Duration (ms) 1 211.53 2 173.43 3 206.99 4 172.27 5 156.42 6 186.19 7 261.09 8 273.55 9 275.34  The determining factor appears to be position, since pronoun syllables were found to undergo final lengthening in positions other than that immediately following the verb (F(2, 121) = 6.24, p < 0.01).  Hence, FORM 1 and FORM 2 do differ in their prosody in the sense that FORM 2 is always a verb-adjacent clitic, whereas FORM 1 pronouns can be realised in other positions where it functions as a free-standing prosodic word.


5. Conclusion  Kelabit pronouns do not appear to have the typical patterns of NOM and GEN pronouns in Philippine-type languages. Instead the variant forms may serve as differential case marking.  Kelabit pronouns are also different from Indonesian-type languages in that FORM 1 pronouns can be proclitic when they follow the verb.  However, there is a prosodic distinction between FORM 1 and FORM 2, since FORM 2 is always a clitic and FORM 1 is optionally clitic or non-clitic.  This suggests that the Kelabit pronoun system may be transitional like Kulawi.  This is important as it suggests that a two-way distinction into Philippine-type and Indonesian-type cannot capture all of the relevant distinctions between Austronesian languages. 6. References Billings, Loren & Daniel Kaufman. 2004. Towards a typology of Austronesian pronominal clisis. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 34: 15-29. (Proceedings of AFLA 11.) Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. & Robert D. Ladd. 2008. Prosodic Description: An Introduction for Fieldworkers. Language Documentation & Conservation 2(2): 244–274. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2005. The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar: Typological Charactersistics. In Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar, 110-181. London: Routledge. Kroeger, Paul. 2005. Kimaragang. In Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar, 397–428. London: Routledge. Ritsuko, Kikusawa. 2008. ‘Historical Changes in Pronoun Positions in Extra-Formosan Languages’. Studies in Philippine Languages and Cultures 17: 66–87. Ross, Malcolm. 2005. ‘The Batanic Languages in Relation to the Early History of the Malayo Polynesian Subgroup of Austronesian’. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1 (2): 1-24. van der Leeuw, Frank. 1997. Clitics: Prosodic Studies. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. Xu, Y. 2013. ProsodyPro — A Tool for Large-scale Systematic Prosody Analysis. In Proceedings of Tools and Resources for the Analysis of Speech Prosody (TRASP 2013), Aix-en-Provence, France. 7-10. 7. Acknowledgements  With many thanks to the Wolfson Foundation for sponsoring the research and, of course, the Kelabit community for all their help in learning about the Kelabit language. The data was collected over two periods of fieldwork between 2013-2014.